US/Haitian Violence and Danger

In her memoir Brother, I’m Dying, Edwidge Danticat points out a number of issues prominent in the relationship between the US and Haiti.  She mentions specific historical and contemporary examples of the way in which the US has interfered in Haiti while relating these to stories about her family.  She then uses her own experiences with trying to immigrate to the US to illuminate the ways in which the US structures ideas about Haitian asylum seekers.  These issues relate to the formulations of borders and immigrants related in Wendy Brown’s book Walled States, Waning Sovereignty.  

Brown discusses how conditions of colonization and imperialism have resulted in present-day issues, pointing out in one example the fact that the Palestinian conditions that motivate violence against Israel were prompted by the founding of Israel as a nation-state.  Danticat reflects this in her discussion of her grandfather’s involvement in the guerrilla resistance to the US occupation.  He is shown as trying to protect his family and himself by shielding them from knowledge of his exact activities, but his son witnesses US violence and realizes that that is what is making certain places unsafe.  Her discussion of the violence of Haitian politics after the occupation points out the ways in which it caused the violence rather than fixing it.

Brown also discusses the ways in which immigrants to the US are framed in popular ideas.  While her examples are in a US/Mexico context, they are applicable to other contexts as well.  Specifically, she states that immigrants are framed as threats to the nation-state and its people.  This is shown in Danticat’s book when she discusses the medical examinations she and her brother had to undergo in order to be admitted to the US.  They had to show that they would not infect the people of the US with a disease and receive treatment for said disease before they were allowed to enter the country.  

How might the ideas of immigrants as bringing disease and danger influence decisions about who is examined for disease and who is not?  How might this affect native-born US citizens with contagious diseases?  What might this indicate about popular perceptions of the role of the government in public health decisions?