Self-medication is well known risk in Latin America. This situation can partly be explain by the difficult access to doctors and poorly regulated drug sales. Illegal Latino-American immigrants import their practice of self-medication and their drugs with them. The economic advantage of this practice makes it popular and confronts medical practitioners to question the benefice/risk of such behavior. Taking the particular situation of illegal Latino-American immigrants, this review discusses the necessity of abording systematically the question of self-medication during a medical consultation.