OBAMA LIFTS BAN ON US ENTRY FOR THOSE WITH HIV
By Darlene Superville
AP
30 Oct 09
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama said Friday the U.S. will overturn
a 22-year-old travel and immigration ban against people with HIV
early next year.
The order will be finalized on Monday, Obama said, completing a
process begun during the Bush administration.
The U.S. has been among a dozen countries that bar entry to travelers
with visas or anyone seeking a green card based on their HIV status.
"If we want to be the global leader in combatting HIV/AIDS, we need
to act like it," Obama said at the White House before signing a bill
to extend the Ryan White HIV/AIDS program. Begun in 1990, the program
provides medical care, medication and support services to about half
a million people, most of them low-income.
The bill is named for an Indiana teenager who contracted AIDS through
a blood transfusion at age 13. White went on to fight AIDS-related
discrimination against him and others like him and help educate the
country about the disease. He died in April 1990 at the age of 18.
His mother, Jeanne White-Ginder, attended the signing ceremony,
as did several members of Congress and HIV/AIDS activists.
In 1987, at a time of widespread fear and ignorance about HIV, the
Department of Health and Human Services added the disease to the list
of communicable diseases that disqualified a person from entering
the U.S.
The department tried in 1991 to reverse its decision but was opposed
by Congress, which went the other way two years later and made
HIV infection the only medical condition explicitly listed under
immigration law as grounds for inadmissibility to the U.S.
The law effectively has kept out thousands of students, tourists and
refugees and has complicated the adoption of children with HIV. No
major international AIDS conference has been held in the U.S. since
1993, because HIV-positive activists and researchers cannot enter
the country.
Obama said that by lifting the ban, the U.S. will take a step toward
ending the stigma against people with HIV/AIDS, something he said has
stopped people from getting tested and has helped spread the disease.
More than 1 million people live with HIV/AIDS in the U.S., and more
than 56,000 new infections are reported every year.
Obama noted his own effort several years ago to help combat the
stigma. During a 2006 visit to Kenya, his father’s native country,
then-Sen. Obama and his wife, Michelle, publicly took an HIV/AIDS test.
The 11 other countries that ban HIV-positive travelers and immigrants
are: Armenia, Brunei, Iraq, Libya, Moldova, Oman, Qatar, Russia,
Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Sudan, according to the advocacy group
Immigration Equality.
Several such groups welcomed Obama’s announcement.
Rachel B. Tiven, executive director of Immigration Equality, said
the ban pointlessly has barred people from the U.S. and separated
families with no benefit to public health.
"Now, those families can be reunited, and the United States can put
its mouth where its money is: ending the stigma that perpetuates
HIV transmission, supporting science and welcoming those who seek to
build a life in this country," said Tiven, whose organization works
for fairness in immigration for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender
and HIV-positive people.