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See: The Impact of Immigration on Health Coverage in the United States, June 2005. "Immigrants and the Uninsured: More than 11 million immigrants in the United States were uninsured in 2003, accounting for 26.1 percent of the all uninsured individuals in the country. Immigrants accounted for about one-third of the increase in the uninsured between 1994 and 1998, but between 1998 and 2003 they accounted for 86 percent of the growth in the uninsured, presumably because PRWORA restricted their benefits under public assistance programs for five years after they entered the United States. To the degree that immigration continues to increase, it is likely that the uninsured will also continue to increase as a proportion of the population."

Immigrants Represent Most of Rise in Numbers of Uninsured By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Los Angeles Times, Dateline Washington, June 14, 2005

Immigrants account for most of the increases in U.S. residents without health insurance, according to a study by the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

While the study did not distinguish between illegal and legal immigrants, estimates are that at least a quarter of all immigrants are undocumented, most from Mexico.

According to Paul Fronstin, director of health research at the Employee Benefit Research Institute, immigrants are likely to be uninsured because "they are disproportionately employed by small businesses. They are uninsured because they have service and agricultural jobs that are less likely to come with benefits."

U.S. hospitals often end up absorbing the costs of caring for uninsured immigrants, because they are required to provide emergency room care to all.

U.S. Is Linking Status of Aliens to Hospital Aid By Robert Pear, The New York Times, Dateline Washington, August 10, 2004

In a new program created under the 2003 Medicare law, the U.S. federal government is offering $1 billion to U.S. hospitals that provide emergency care for illegal immigrants. But to collect the money, the hospitals will be required to provide documentation about their patients' immigration status.

U.S. federal health officials maintain that the information is necessary to make sure the money will be used as Congress intended; that is, for "emergency health services furnished to undocumented aliens."

Some hospital officials are balking at the requirement. They say collecting the information will be difficult, administratively expensive, and may pose a public health problem if the requirements scare off illegals needing care. For example, the foreign-born population accounted for over 50 percent of the new tuberculosis cases reported in 2003, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A 1986 federal law requires hospitals to provide treatment to patients in their emergency rooms, regardless of the patients' ability to pay. But uninsured illegal immigrants have created significant financial burdens on hospitals, especially those located in border states like Texas, Arizona, California, and in states like New York, Illinois and Florida, where many illegal immigrants work and reside.

>>>>>U.S. hospitals often end up absorbing the costs of caring for uninsured immigrants, because they are required to provide emergency room care to all.

LEGAL immigrants must have a financial sponsor AND a legal “affidavit of financial support” guaranteeing that the immigrant’s bills will be paid and that he/she will not make use of government (local, state, federal) benefits. The AFS is a legal contract and can be enforced against the sponsor by any business or government agency for payment of the immigrant’s bills.

Of course the illegal alien has no such obligation.