Uganda Child Collector Causes Health Scare

This story is making its way through the “savior”-sob-circuit media, so we need to put a stop to the spin.

The NCFA must be happy that its Hall of Fame Gannett Company  is spreading this story today.

Lise Seivers, 50, has adopted ten children over the past twenty years. The stories indicate that these were US adoptions and perhaps others have special needs. Were they from foster care? Is she getting monthly stipends for the other children?

She also has two biological children, at least one of whom is an adult. Now, she is in the process of adopting two special needs children at the same time from Uganda. She had been in Uganda since January 2012. Of course the media doesn’t dare ask who is taking care of the other children during this long absence.

Making the story worse (and fitting into the typical Savior Mentality profile), she was returning to the US to fundraise for travel home for the two prospective adoptees. She had no problem wasting money on her own plane ticket home (or did she fundraise for that too?) to ask people to fund her desires. Does she plan on putting the children onto Medicaid as soon as they get home? Why don’t the standards for other immigrants apply to international adoptions? As we discussed in our Exploring Visas post “(4) Public charge.-

(A) In general.-Any alien who, in the opinion of the consular officer at the time of application for a visa, or in the opinion of the Attorney General at the time of application for admission or adjustment of status, is likely at any time to become a public charge is inadmissible.”

Yet time and time again, PAPs are adopting multiple special needs children at the same time and setting them up to be public charges.

No questions at all were asked about why a Ugandan adoption may have a lot of issues right now.

Star Tribune portrays her as “a mother who wanted only to help ” and asks the softball, schmaltzy question “Is Lise Sievers a saint? “I get asked that a lot,” her son said. “And I have to say, yes.””

They hope to twist this into a positive story for adoption. Star-Tribune continues “Despite all the publicity over what was a misunderstanding, Roger Sievers hopes a little good may come out of the national publicity.

“I hope people see there’s an international adoption taking place. There are kids coming back from a country to get much needed medical assistance. That’s my take on it,” he said.”

WHY would Taxpaying US citizens be happy that they will be paying for their medical assistance?Are these children entering  the US on medical visas or adoption visas? The line is blurred again between international adoption and medical assistance.

The Health Scare

Lise lives in Minnesota and her mother lives in Indiana. When Lise told her mother that she had sores on her skin, her mother called the CDC to ask what she should do about it. Once the CDC hears about a traveller entering the US who may have a contagious infectious disease (monkeypox in this case), they follow a quarantine protocol. Throughout the media coverage of this case, the journalists and biological son play down the idea that adopting a child could carry any kind of public health infectious disease risk. None seem to be concerned about what exact disease the potential adoptee WHO DOES HAVE PUS-FILLED SORES actually have and they fail to make the connection that Lise was exposed to it or that this child may be coming soon to the US.

Star Tribune says “While talking to her mom, who lives in Indiana, Sievers mentioned that the little boy she planned to adopt had been to the doctor because he had some pus-filled bumps on him, said Sievers’ son, Roger, of Red Wing. And then Lise Sievers mentioned that she must have been bitten by bedbugs in the hotel where she was staying.”

The media is saying that this is a misunderstanding on the part of the old, kindly grandmother-to-be of these children to contact the CDC, but being in contact with a child from an orphanage with pus-filled bumps IS a SANE CAUSE for concern and I am glad the CDC delayed the passengers. Any sane person would travelled with someone with this kind of contact would want the same.
Lise’s son Roger downplays the bumps. Star Tribune states “As the plane landed at Midway, the pilot announced that the passengers would have to remain on the plane. “The emergency response team surrounded the plane,” Roger Sievers said. Health officials wearing facemasks boarded and to Sievers’ surprise, they surrounded her. “They took photos, and sent them to Washington,” Roger Sievers said.

About two hours later, the findings were in: Bedbugs. Sievers and the other 42 passengers finally got the go-ahead to leave the plane.

“It was all misinformation from a speculative call that my grandmother made,” Roger Sievers. “She’s just a concerned old lady. As sweet as can be. And she makes a mean banana bread, I can tell you that right now.””

In USA Today, Roger says “Those two very different bumps — one with pus, one without — got jumbled up in Siever’s mother’s mind, and she called a hospital near her Indiana home to ask about treatment for her daughter.

Sources:

Confusion over Red Wing woman’s rash causes hours-long lockdown of Delta plane in Chicago
[Star Tribune 4/27/12 by Mary Lynn Smith]

False health scare causes delay at airport
[UPI 4/27/12]

Son: Bedbug bites caused rash that stopped flight
[USA Today 4/30/12 by Don Babwin And Gretchen Ehlke, Associated Press]

REFORM Puzzle Pieces

What social worker approved this PAP who can’t afford to bring her new children back into the country?

Will the taxpayers be bearing the cost of the medical treatment? Let’s hope that the child is diagnosed in Uganda before coming to the US with pus-filled sores. Adopted children from Africa have entered the US with Multi-Drug Resistant TB in the recent past (but they don’t want you to know that because that may make “adoption” look bad and “scare” people and “anger” people that they may be exposed to hard-to-treat and contagious diseases that cost the US taxpayer and insurance companies who will pass along costs to others a lot of money), so know that the US embassy does not always catch these cases.