While concerns are rightly focused on the infectious disease risk to United States citizens via illegal immigration from Mexico and Central America, illegal immigrants from other regions also threaten the health of legal American residents.

In addition to the large Mexican and Central American illegal immigrant population in the U.S., there are also hundreds of thousands of illegals from countries such as the Philippines (310,000 as of the latest Homeland Security estimate for 2012), India (260,000), South Korea (230,000), China (210,000), Ecuador (170,000), Vietnam (160,000), and about another 1.8 million from other countries.

Since 2008, an additional 80,000 Vietnamese have entered the U.S. illegally. Add to that tens of thousands more from each of these other nations. Like Mexico and Central America, these regions have generally lower quality health care systems and a higher proportion of the population carrying infectious diseases than exists in the U.S. Consequently, these illegal migrants represent a substantial -- and poorly defined -- source of infectious diseases to the United States.

The table below shows immunization coverage among these nations compared to the U.S.

Keep in mind these are claimed rates of immunization coverage as of 2012. In previous years for many disease/country combinations, immunization coverage was much lower -- and much of the pre-existing stock of illegal immigrants from these nations arrived during these lower immunization coverage periods. As well, because of the impossibility in verifying the rates of immunization coverage, the safe assumption is that they represent either upper limits or even aspirational goals.

For communist and socialist nations, there are long-standing reasons for wanting to falsify health system outcomes in order to promote the international acceptance of socialized medicine systems -- especially in the United States. In other words, the statistical tables provided by international organizations can be tilted to make the socialized medical systems appear to offer superior health care relative to that in the U.S., when in fact reality tells a far different story.

And then there are the very high numbers of cases of infectious diseases in these countries.

Illegal immigrants are not representative of the general populations in their home countries. They are generally poorer both economically and health wise. Thus, they will be more likely to carry infectious diseases than would be assumed by looking at general rates of occurrence (i.e., illegal immigration "distills out" the least healthy members of a society).

Not only does illegal immigration pose a traditional national and economic security threat to the United States, but the potential health impacts -- which carry their own economic costs -- are enormous.