The U. S. may so far have enjoyed good luck in escaping a direct SARS hit, but officials aren’ t leaving anything to chance. The

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问题     The U. S. may so far have enjoyed good luck in escaping a direct SARS hit, but officials aren’ t leaving anything to chance. The best hope for averting a SARS epidemic at home will be to keep SARS out at the nation’ s borders.
    Federal immigration laws authorize immigration authorities to exclude non-citizens who are determined to have a "communicable disease of public health significance". Immigration law also authorizes the President by proclamation to suspend the entry of any group of aliens whose entry he deems to be detrimental to the interests of the United States. This little-used power could be deployed to exclude all aliens from affected areas, a policy Taiwan has recently implemented.
    Under the Public Health Service Act, any individual(citizens included)may be quarantined at an international port of entry if they are reasonably believed to be carrying a designated communicable disease. As of an April 4 Executive Order by President Bush, SARS is now a designated disease.
    Thus, in tandem with airline screening, federal health authorities are carefully monitoring travelers from affected areas in Asia for SARS symptoms. With an estimated 25 ,000 individuals entering the country legally from Asia on a daily basis, that is a tall order. A single SARS-infected person getting through the net could bring down the border strategy.
    The U. S. government might also reinforce the border strategy through restrictions on travel by American citizens to affected areas. In a series of Cold War era decisions, the Supreme Court upheld international travel restrictions for national security reasons, and one can imagine the same rationale applying to a public health emergency. How practical it would be to prohibit—and police—a travel ban to countries such as China is another question.
    The initial SARS defense, then, hinges on effective border control. But U. S. borders are far from under control. There are an estimated 8~9 million undocumented aliens now in the United States, a figure growing by as many as 500,000 per year. Asia is the largest contributor to undocumented immigration outside the western hemisphere, funneling illegal aliens into the United States through elaborate smuggling networks. SARS could just as easily make serious inroads into the U. S. through this backdoor rather than the front.
The phrase " a tall order" most probably means______.

选项 A、an ambitious plan
B、a difficult task
C、a careful arrangement
D、an illegal decision

答案B

解析 根据第四段内容可知,由于每天合法进入美国的亚洲人实在太多,要想将“非典”拒于国门之外恐非易事,故B项为正确答案。
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