Will You See Dora the Explorer in the Emergency Room?

By now, you’ve seen what happened to our old friend Dora the Explorer. No, it’s not pretty.

According to my pals at the Huffington Post, the doctored images of Dora “reveal some Americans' attitudes about race, immigrants, and where some of immigration reform debate may be headed.”

The creator of the battered Dora is Debbie Groben, who says she didn’t make the image to protest Arizona’s infamous SB 1070 law. Regardless of Groben’s intention, both sides in the debate have used it at rallies, and “whether through irony or protest [images] are being used by those who oppose and support Arizona's law.”

I’m amused that so many conservatives have embraced the image. After all, it was created by a person who opposes the law, and it’s not a terribly flattering image of the potential consequences of SB 1070. Also, right-wingers are not exactly known for their senses of humor or irony, so I have to think that they’ve missed the point.

In any case, my chief concern is that Dora heal up quickly. To that end, I’m sure that she will soon be rushing into her local emergency room.

After all, we’ve heard multiple stories about emergency rooms packed to the ceiling with undocumented immigrants, all of whom are demanding free healthcare and draining our social services. Hell, some hospitals have even closed their doors forever, so overwhelmed were they with the flood of "illegals."

The only problem is that all that may not be true. According to the Reason Foundation, uninsured patients (including, one presumes, "illegal" immigrants) “only account for 2.7% of total healthcare spending.”

That doesn’t seem like much of a budget-buster to me. But I’m no economist.

So let’s look specifically at undocumented immigrants. How often do they stuff the ER and drive hospitals out of business? Well, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, “among the three ethnic groups: white, black and Hispanic, Hispanics had the lowest rates of emergency room visits” in the United States.

And it should go without saying that not all Hispanics are undocumented (well, to Lou Dobbs they are, but that’s another story). Therefore, one is more likely to see a white person in the emergency room than a Latino undocumented immigrant, at least when looking at America as a whole.

But what about those areas of the country where undocumented immigrants thrive? Let’s look at my current home state, California, which has more than a few Latino immigrants.

The Public Policy Institute of California has found that “immigrants are not crowding the state’s emergency rooms — in fact, foreign-born Californians who are not U.S. citizens are among the least likely to seek treatment in the ER.” Furthermore, “undocumented immigrants use less medical care and contribute less to healthcare spending.”

It appears, therefore, that all the talk of the undocumented flooding the ER appears to be a right-wing “fact” of dubious veracity. Personally, I’ve never encountered one of those before.

In any case, all this means that Dora can get her injuries treated without worrying about driving the hospital out of business. Maybe that kid Diego can pick her up at the ER — that is, if he can avoid getting his ass kicked on the way over.

Photo Credit: Debbie Groben