PT-LawMom

The New York Times has a piece today about the increasingly common practice of repatriating immigrants, both documented and undocumented, who are critically ill and cannot afford ongoing medical care. While many states have victim assistance funds for people injured during a crime, such as the drunk driving accident that left the main subject of this article brain damaged and requiring lifelong medical care, the funds are limited and meant to cover limited hospital bills, not years of care in a nursing facility.

I’m not sure what to say about this practice. On the one hand, if I were a family member in the victim’s homeland, I would be happier to have them home with me. On the other hand, you’d hope that the governmental medical facilities in the people’s homeland would be better equipped to care for them. The medical care in rural Guatemala, especially if you don’t have the money for supplemental private care, is very basic and the facilities extremely crowded. This story is pretty heart-wrenching.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 2nd, 2008 at 9:45 pm and is filed under Immigration . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.