HIV Travel and Immigration Ban Nears History
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approved the
regulation to lift the HIV travel and immigration ban. Now the
regulation just needs to be approved by the White House Office of
Management and Budget (OMB). If and when OMB approves the change, this
will be the final regulatory step in a more-than decade long nightmare. Original story here:
of discrimination against HIV-positive people. The CDC officially
approved the change on Thursday, October 22, and OMB has 60 days to make
the regulation final.
“It’s an important step forward,” said AMFAR Public Policy Deputy
Director Jirair Ratevosian, who alerted the Update of the change, which
hasn’t yet been publicized by the CDC.
The reason the CDC’s decision took as long as it did is because it
received 20,000 comments, since the end of the comment period in August,
and by law it has to read every comment. Most of the comments were in
support of the policy change.
The OMB gets involved in this process because of the proposed cost. CDC
suggest the cost will be $83 million over the 2010-2018 period,
primarily for Medicaid, though advocates say they believe that number is
on the high end, and even CDC says the cost could vary widely.
In the early 1990s, the CDC solicited comments, but when the ban looked
like it might be lifted, Sen. Jesse Helms championed a 1993 law
preventing HIV-positive people from entering the U.S. The 1993 law was
repealed in July 2008 by Congress and President Bush as part of the
President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
The ban became continued to be an embarrassment, however. A group of up
to 60 HIV-positive Canadian citizens was denied entry to the United
States to attend the North American Housing and HIV/AIDS Research
Summit, resulting in Andrew Sullivan airing the issue on Anderson Cooper
360. This was followed by the International AIDS Society condemning the
ban and stating its hope that the ban would be lifted in order to hold
the 2012 International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C.
On September 15, 2009, at the urging of Immigration Equality and the
American Immigration Lawyers Association, the United States Citizenship
and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued a memo telling its staff not to
deny any green card applications if the only reason for the denial is
the applicant’s HIV status.
Posted: October 27th, 2009 under Uncategorized.
Tags: CDC, HIV travel Ban