Barbara Lee Introduces Bill to Lift HIV Travel Ban
(Washington, DC) – Today, Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) introduced legislation that would lift the ban that prevents people living with HIV/AIDS from traveling or immigrating to the United States.
“It defies reason that, because of this misguided law, we cannot host an international HIV/AIDS conference in this country,” said Lee, who has attended every International AIDS Conference since she was elected to Congress in 1998. “This law is unjust and unnecessary and it is time to change it.”
Under current U.S. immigration law and policy, HIV infection is grounds for barring prospective immigrants, foreign students, refugees, and tourists from entry to the United States. Currently, the United States is one of only thirteen countries in the entire world, including China, Iraq, Libya, Oman, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan, that maintains a formal ban on travel and immigration for HIV positive individuals.
Applicants for temporary admission as non-immigrants such as tourists and foreign students are required to disclose their HIV status when applying for a visa and if questioned may be required to undergo an HIV test. Applicants for permanent residence as immigrants or refugees must be tested for HIV infection. Waivers may be issued by the Attorney General on a case by case basis, but if such a waiver is requested, a person’s HIV status becomes a permanent part of his or her passport.
Under the governing statute, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) is officially charged with the responsibility of determining which communicable diseases are of public health significance and are therefore grounds for excluding non-citizens from entering or immigrating to the United States. The original HIV travel and immigration ban was enacted through such a determination in 1987. However, Congress enacted a formal ban in 1993 in reaction to proposals to de-list HIV/AIDS by both President Bush’s HHS Secretary, Louis Sullivan, in 1991 and President Clinton’s HHS Secretary, Donna Shalala, in 1993 after they each conducted a public health analysis of the ban.
Lee’s legislation would repeal the formal ban and return the authority to the Secretary of Health and Human Services to make a determination regarding HIV status as a communicable disease of public health significance. The bill would then require the Secretary to undertake a review of all existing travel and immigration policies regarding HIV, which would be open to public comment for 30 days, and report to Congress on whether to maintain the ban by regulation or remove it based on a public health analysis.
On World AIDS Day, December 1st, 2006, the President proposed streamlining the current waiver process for HIV-positive individuals seeking to enter the United States on short-term business or tourist visas for up to 60 days by granting them a “categorical waiver”. However, seven months after this announcement the administration has failed to reach an internal consensus on how the new waiver process for short term visas should work and there are significant doubts that it will ever be implemented.
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