In 2006, 57% of all tuberculosis cases in the United State were among foreign-born individuals

Needless to say, experts are anxious to find ways to control and eliminate the disease. Testing the more than 37 million foreign-born individuals currently living in the United States isn't feasible, so officials are focusing their efforts on people before they immigrate. In the study, the team reviewed 46,970 cases of TB among foreign-born individuals in the United States. They discovered that an immigrant's risk for TB was highest during the early years after first arriving in the United States, varied with age (older people had a higher risk), and also varied by country of birth. "We found that over 50 percent of all cases of TB among foreign-born persons occurred among 20 percent of the overall foreign-born populations, especially persons born mainly in Southeast Asia [particularly the Philippines and Vietnam] and sub-Saharan Africa," said Cain, a medical epidemiologist with the division of tuberculosis elimination at the CDC.