US under pressure to modify travel ban on HIV-positive foreign visitors

Did you know that US officials can ban HIV positive foreign visitors from entering the country?

19 April, 2007: There is growing criticism against the United States law that imposes travel ban on HIV-positive foreign visitors.

A forum organised in Washington, DC, on April 12, 2007, strongly demanded that the travel ban should be drastically modified or even lifted completely.

Officials in the United States hold the powers to bar foreigners, who they believe pose a threat to public health, from entering the country. That authority was used to bar an HIV-positive Dutch visitor who wanted to travel to speak in the US in 1989.

The incident had set off protests at the International AIDS Conference in San Francisco in 1990 and the conference had vowed not to return until the United States changed its policy. The World Health Organisation has called the US policy a violation of human rights.

However, US Congress codified the policy into law in 1993, notwithstanding objections from the-then Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis Sullivan. The law specifically prohibited foreigners from becoming immigrants or even obtaining a visa to visit the United States if they are HIV-positive.

However, the provision may be waived on an individual basis if it is deemed to be in the best interest of the US to do so. Blanket waivers have been issued for specific events such as the Gay Games in Chicago.

According to J Stephen Morrison, executive director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the US policy “is misaligned with current realities and evolving US interests” and that it is time to consider a change.

Phillip Nieburg, co-author of a report that lays out the history of the policy on HIV-positive foreign visitors and how it might be changed, says that the knowledge base around HIV has grown since 1993 and it is clear that HIV is not a contagious disease that is easily spread. He believes that there is no justification for the law on the grounds of public health.

Helene Gayle, a leading expert on HIV prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Gates Foundation and also president of CARE, a large international charity working in the developing world, too opposes the law. According to her, the law is not consistent with the international leadership role on HIV that the United States has demonstrated with the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

Critics of the waiver process for short-term visitors say that many persons do not know that they are HIV-positive when they apply for a visa. For those who do know, disclosing that to a US State Department official may lead to that official or local support staff disclosing the medically confidential information.

In many countries, that kind of disclosure can lead to stigma and discrimination within society. Moreover, the application fee for the waiver can be too much for those with low incomes.

The Bush Administration does acknowledge the privacy concerns. President George had, on December 1, 2006 (World AIDS Day), surprised AIDS advocates by quietly announcing that he would issue an executive order addressing those concerns.

At the forum held on April 12, 2007, Tom Walsh, an official with the Office of the US Global AIDS Coordinator at the Department of State, said: “The process is under way, it is complex, and I wish there was more that I could say.”

Supporters of the current law fear that people who are HIV-positive who enter the United States either as immigrants or on short-term visas will stay and add to the burden of the already stressed AIDS services. They can easily point to what happened after the International AIDS Conference in Toronto in the summer of 2006 when over 150 HIV-positive attendees chose to stay in Canada and seek asylum.