HIV-Positive Travelers Still Banned

Last summer, Congress repealed the statutory ban that barred HIV-positive immigrants from entry into the United States. By the end of 2008, the Department of Health and Human Services had not made good on its promise to remove HIV from its list of communicable diseases during the Bush administration.

Fast-forward to the summer of 2009, and the HIV travel ban has not been lifted. Surprised? Victoria Nelson from Immigration Equality offers an explanation:

As those of us who have to deal with Immigration every day know, agencies work at their own pace, which, unfortunately, is often very slow. From the outside, it’s hard to imagine that there would be much work in writing a regulation, especially one which we all hope will simply be removing one sentence from the existing regulations. In fact, even when the text of a regulation is only a few lines long, the agency has to write a long preamble explaining what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, and how much it’s going to cost. This analysis takes time.

From Ms. Nelson's perspective, there is a light at the end of the tunnel:

Everything we’re hearing is that the proposed regulations will come out soon and that they will say what we want them to say.

This provides little comfort to HIV-positive immigrants and tourists and their families and friends who are waiting for the new regulations to take effect. Journalist and blogger, Andrew Sullivan, describes what this is like:

It is quite something to have a government stamp in your passport, as I do, that will tell any immigration or police officer with a connection to a government database that I have HIV, that I am therefore a threat and can be arrested and detained and deported at the border if necessary. I'm a big boy with money and a robust self-esteem as an HIV-positive survivor, but I think of thousands of others far less powerful and wealthy than I am who are afraid to enter or leave the US because their HIV status renders them criminals. I think of how the US is the only developed country - and one of only a handful of undeveloped countries - that still tells the world that people with HIV are dangerous pariahs, who need policing at borders and deporting if discovered. And yet this is the current policy of the Obama administration on global HIV and AIDS.

Obama has passed SCHIP and made a lot of promises, however, the HIV travel ban is still in effect and immigration reform meetings have been postponed. Are we starting to lose hope?

Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images