Pedro Gonzales, American Thinker, February 22, 2015

The LA Times reported that illegal aliens are unhappy that not enough doctors speak Spanish. The article never used the words “illegal” or “undocumented” or “dreamer” or “super virtuous” or however we are to call illegal aliens nowadays; only referring to “Hispanics” who can’t understand English. But since all citizens understand English, or should, I presume that the article is only talking about illegal aliens. Now let the sob story begin:

Every day, chronically ill Latino patients stream into Harbor-UCLA Medical Center’s family medicine clinic. Some have neglected their health because they’re flummoxed or alienated by the medical system, Dr. Gloria Sanchez believes.

The illegal aliens are . . . alienated! How ironic is that! They are also flummoxed! Have you ever seen an illegal alien flummoxed? If we put up a double layer fence across the US Mexico border, I do believe we’d see a lot of them flummoxed!

But such doctors are in short supply, said Sanchez, a professor and physician at the Harbor City facility. In 1980, there were 135 Latino doctors for every 100,000 Latinos in the U.S. By 2010, that number had fallen to 105.

The number of doctors hasn’t “fallen”. The number of illegal aliens had dramatically increased.

Irma Torres, 75, remembered one conversation with her 70-year-old husband, Miguel, when he was hospitalized for a heart condition. “I asked him, ‘What did the doctor say?'” she recalled. “And he said, ‘I don’t know.'”

Don’t you hate it when you invade another country and when you seek out free medical care, they don’t speak your language???

Angelina Campos, a 55-year-old who suffers from high blood pressure and migraines, was at the clinic to have her injured knee checked by Sanchez. Campos said she preferred doctors who were fluent Spanish speakers, but that sometimes it was hard to get an appointment because wait times could be very long.

Why isn’t the American taxpayer paying for translators? If someone broke into your home and demanded things from you in Spanish, wouldn’t it be your obligation to understand the trespasser’s language?

Dr. Faustina Nevarez, an obstetrician at Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center, said that internal studies by Kaiser had shown that Spanish-speaking patients were more successful controlling their diabetes, depression, and blood pressure when they were able to consult with Spanish-speaking doctors.

If that’s the case, do you think such patients should have illegally immigrated to a Spanish-speaking country?

Hayes-Bautista said programs that once helped Latino students reach medical school and thrive have been dismantled.

We used to allow Latinos to go to medical school, but no longer. Only whites are admitted now.

The elimination of race-based admissions at California’s public universities, he said, probably contributed to a drop in Latino enrollment that began in the 1990s.

Oh, so it’s not that Latinos are no longer admitted, it’s just that they have to compete based on merit. Isn’t that racist?

Improving the Latino doctor-to-patient ratio isn’t the only way to improve care, he said

How about deporting illegal aliens, won’t that improve the ratio as well?

And what about all the illegal aliens who are doctors–illegal alien family doctors, illegal alien cardiologists, illegal alien neurologists, illegal alien pediatricians–can’t they help out too? With millions of illegals flooding across the border, there must be a fair share of doctors, lawyers (abogados), engineers, too, right? Illegal aliens are suffering everywhere; just recently the NYT reported how unhappy they are living in suburbia.

Exit question: If people here illegally can’t find doctors in America who speak their language, where can they go to find doctors who do?