Application for U.S. Citizenship: $1,410. Additional cost to female immigrants ages 11 to 26 for the HPV Vaccine: $375. The ability to make informed health decisions and not be discriminated against: DENIED.
When U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (US CIS) added requirements to citizenship applications last July, they did so without attracting much attention. I’m assuming they kept it as quiet as possible because of the obvious issues with adding on a gender specific requirement for one, and the only sexually-transmitted disease vaccine for another.
US CIS was trying to be sneaky when they included the vaccine to prevent human papillomavirus. Who would oppose young women receiving a vaccine that prevents cervical cancer? No one, except when it’s involuntary and accompanied by a $375 fee.
Maria Elena Garcia-Upson, a spokesperson for US CIS says, “I think the public would agree that people who are coming into this country to adjust their status, if they have a contagious disease, we don’t want that disease to be spread around.”
Sorry to break it to you Ms. Garcia-Upson of CIS, but vaccines PREVENT contagious diseases, they don’t CURE them. So if a woman is entering the U.S. with HPV then a vaccine isn’t going to do anything about it. Furthermore, that woman would be in very good company, as 50% of sexually active adults (men and women) in this country have already contracted the human papillomavirus.
Just to prove a point here, I’m going to divulge some personal information. I have tested positive for HPV. My two best friends have tested positive for HPV. My gynecologist even has HPV. In fact a third of American women are infected by HPV before they are 24 years old. Would I have gotten the vaccine if I could have? Sure! But I wouldn’t have wanted my immigration status to be dependent on it.
Immigrant women who gain citizenship are more likely to receive a better education, and a better educated woman is able to make more informed decisions about her health. I would rather a woman gain legal status, then be given information about the benefits of a vaccine, just like any other American woman. Immigrants are just as capable of making sound health decisions for themselves and their children given the same access to information as the rest of us.
This vaccine requirement is nothing more than a thinly-veiled attempt by US CIS to prevent poor immigrants from gaining access to citizenship. Much like how a predator targets the weakest members of the herd, the anti-immigrant movement in this country is going after vulnerable immigrants: the young, the poor, and women, or in this case poor young women.