IMMIGRATION
Fastest-growing source of illegal immigrants is India
A recent Pew Research Center report has shown that the net number of Indians staying in America illegally has been growing much more than the number of illegal Mexico-born immigrants in the country.
Even though the total number of unauthorized Mexicans in the United States is more than ten times higher than the number of Indians, most of them arrived more than a decade ago. The total for illegal immigrants born in Mexico has been been shrinking while the total from India has been growing more than any other country.
Pew estimates that between 2009-14, the number of unauthorized Indian immigrants in the United States increased by 43 percent to a total of about 500,000. During the same period, the number of unauthorized Mexican fell 8 percent to 5.85 million.
India now ranks fourth after Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala in terms of countries that are the largest source of unauthorized migrants to the United States.
Despite concerns expressed during the 2016 presidential campaign that illegal immigrants are pouring over the border, there has been a steady decline from Latin America for years. However, this decline has been partly offset by people arriving from Asia, particularly by India.
“The U.S. unauthorized immigrant population — 11.1 million in 2014 — has stabilized since the end of the Great Recession, as the number from Mexico decline but the total from other regions of the world increased,” the report said. — Joana Suleiman
DRUGS
Medical marijuana may reduce deaths from pharmaceuticals, report says
Columbia University epidemiologist June Kim and her colleagues reported in an article published this month by the American Journal of Public Health that fatally injured drivers are less likely to test positive for opioids in states that allow medical use of marijuana.
That finding, together with the results of earlier studies, indicates that making marijuana legally available to patients saves lives by reducing their consumption of more dangerous medications.
Kim focused on 18 states that drug-tested at least 80 percent of drivers who died in crashes. She collected data from 1999-2013 from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System.
“Among 21-40-year-old deceased drivers, crashing in states with an operational medical marijuana law (MML) was associated with lower odds of testing positive for opioids than crashing in MML states before these laws were operational,” the researchers write.
“Although we found a significant association only among drivers aged 21-40 years, the age specificity of this finding coheres with what we know about MMLs: a minimum age requirement restricts access to medical marijuana for most patients younger than 21 years, and most surveyed medical marijuana patients are younger than 45 years.”
The fact that a driver tested positive for opioids does not necessarily mean the painkillers he took contributed to the crash, so it is not safe to draw any conclusions about medical marijuana’s impact on traffic safety from this study. But the data are an indirect way of measuring the extent of opioid consumption in a given state.
The researchers note that “severe or chronic pain is among the most common indications cited by medical marijuana patients.” It therefore makes sense that opioid use would decline (or rise less) in states that recognize cannabis as a medicine. — Joana Suleiman
EDUCATION
Student loan deferral for terror victims?
Terrorist attack survivors in the United States don’t get any leniency on their student loan payments, but Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., wants to change that.
Rubio introduced a bill on Sept. 19 that would allow terrorism survivors to receive automatic deferments for up to one year on student loan payments owed to the federal government.
“Unfortunately, existing law does not automatically recognize an extraordinary situation like this, where giving survivors some time to regroup and delay their payments should be common sense,” Rubio said in a press release.
“My bill would change that, and I hope we can get it passed this year because the last thing anyone who survives a terrorist attack needs is to have to jump through a bunch of hoops in order to get their life back on track.”
Rubio mentioned that his office worked with a constituent whose injuries suffered at the Orland, Fla., nightclub shooting left him temporarily out of work and thus unable to afford his student loan payments.
Rubio’s bill designates whichever federal agency investigates a terrorist attack as responsible for identifying victims.
The bill has yet to garner any co-sponsors. It was referred to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. — Jason Russell
