Until I read about it on Andrew's blog a while back I, like most Americans, had absolutely no idea about the bizarre restrictions on travel the United States tries (obviously, key elements of the rule are impractical to enforce) to impose on HIV-positive would-be visitors or immigrants. This is a crazy rule that doesn't accomplish anything, an act of petty cruelty born in an era of hysteria whose time is long past.
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HIV Discrimination
14 May 2008 02:41 pm
Comments (18)
It's not an isolated case, either: in fact, it's a good example of how US immigration law became the current Kafkaesque mess.
Congresscritters are happy to introduce 'immigrant crackdown' legislation for electoral gain among their local xenophobes (or homophobes), with little concern of how it gets implemented in the years to come. Normally, when bad legislation gets passed for political expediency, there's a natural constituency pushing for revision or repeal made up of those affected, but that's not the case in immigration law, because non-citizens can't vote.
(And there's no domestic political capital to be gained from removing the encrusted layers of stupid from immigration law.)
http://www.acria.org/treatment/treatment_edu_fallupdate2006_immigration.html
Immigration and HIV
AIDS Community Research Initiative of America
Fall 2006
Candidate Clinton's plan for immigration reform promised to acknowledge the expertise of the medical community at PHS and allow them to lift the HIV ban. After Clinton won the election in 1992, the PHS took regulatory steps to do exactly that.
President Clinton's plan reignited the dispute, with disastrous results.
Despite opposition from some politicians who spoke out against the ban, its underlying context of hatred, and the illogic of Congressional politics trumping medical expertise, Congress acted to prevent the President from removing HIV from the PHS list of diseases. Instead, Congress formally amended the INA itself to include specific language about HIV infection in the health-related grounds of exclusion. This amendment stripped the PHS of any existing or future discretion to decide whether HIV would continue to be a "communicable disease of public health significance." For the first time, being HIV-positive was specifically identified in the Immigration and Nationality Act as a statutory bar to entry.
http://www.acria.org/treatment/treatment_edu_fallupdate2006_immigration.html
Immigration and HIV
AIDS Community Research Initiative of America
Fall 2006
Candidate Clinton's plan for immigration reform promised to acknowledge the expertise of the medical community at PHS and allow them to lift the HIV ban. After Clinton won the election in 1992, the PHS took regulatory steps to do exactly that.
President Clinton's plan reignited the dispute, with disastrous results.
Despite opposition from some politicians who spoke out against the ban, its underlying context of hatred, and the illogic of Congressional politics trumping medical expertise, Congress acted to prevent the President from removing HIV from the PHS list of diseases. Instead, Congress formally amended the INA itself to include specific language about HIV infection in the health-related grounds of exclusion. This amendment stripped the PHS of any existing or future discretion to decide whether HIV would continue to be a "communicable disease of public health significance." For the first time, being HIV-positive was specifically identified in the Immigration and Nationality Act as a statutory bar to entry.
Surely only those 'fifth columnists' sullivan use to screech about would be prepared to let diseased foreigners into the US ?
perhaps he should try and persuade his republican chums to get the us government to change the law ?
"it looks increasingly likely that I'll have to relocate at some point to Europe"
But according to sullivan us folk in europe are dhimmis about to be overrrun by muslims. Surely he doesnt want to live under the caliphate?
Sorry Sullivan, you made your choice. Live with it. Except of course you only kept your UK citizenship because the US doesn't want your sort as a citizen.
I really don't want to see you pitch up over here at an NHS hospital looking for free treatment when you're too expensive for the US medical system to treat.
Right, but let's also not discriminate against those infected with other diseases than HIV. Let's invite to immigrate to America everybody in the world with incurable infectious diseases.
After all, what is immigration policy for other than to demonstrate our moral superiority over those vicious bigot Americans who raise concerns about who we let in?
Shawn's history above is correct, but let's be clear, Clinton signed the bill. Clinton did some good things for the LGBT community, but after he got rolled on Don't Ask Don't Tell, he never really fought for us again. (See, e.g., signing DOMA, and campaigning on that fact.)
I'm afraid I am not sure why letting HIV-positive people into the United States is a good idea. Please explain.
Re: Sorry Sullivan, you made your choice. Live with it. Except of course you only kept your UK citizenship because the US doesn't want your sort as a citizen.
The "choice' Sullivan made was apparently to engage repeatedly in anonymous, unprotected homosexual intercourse with partners that he met over the internet. The man himself claims that he had 'too many [partners] to count.'
Leaving his morality out of it it, Sullivan's stupendous lack of judgment makes me wonder why people seem so concerned to listen to someone who has only himself to blame.
Wow, it's a bona fide festival of evil fucking bastardry in this thread. If Sailer Boy wants to celebrate both his genetic makeup and the GPS co-ordinates of his mother's vagina, he's got plenty of friendly media outlets.
The most annoying thing to me is that, according to Sully, we're violating a U.N. order. Oh, heavens no.
Meanwhile, back at the blog, has anyone noticed that MattY frequently fails to provide anything approaching a valid argument? In fact, when it comes to subjects like this about the only argument he can muster consists of lies, misleading statements, and LogicalFallacies such as GuiltByAssociation.
MattY might want to consider that the "arguments" he offers now will be dredged up years down the road, should he still be in this business and not have simply been given a sinecure somewhere.
Not only was it a stupid law, it was a bit unenforceable. Part of the reason Kerry et al introduced the bill to end this practice was that China of all places stopped doing this around December of last year. Unless we start doing blood tests at every airport on all foreign arrivals, we kind of just have to take people's words for it. On the Chinese form, there was no real way for anyone to know if you were lying when you checked off "no" on the question "Are you HIV positive?". The only thing one could do to enforce it is not allow long-time residents like Sullivan (who likely caught HIV in the US) to become citizens, which is just cruel.
HIV positive immigrants can get in with a medical waiver; I am not sure of the eligibility, but I believe it requires the immigrant petition to be based on an immediate relative standing and the success of the waiver depends in part on the immigrant's ability to ensure their treatment will be paid for.
The rest of the diseases which are screened for by immigration are highly contagious. As a general rule, though, they're not screened for until someone is coming here on an immigrant visa. The ban on mere visitation seems a throwback to a time when we weren't sure how HIV was transmitted.
Unless we start doing blood tests at every airport on all foreign arrivals, we kind of just have to take people's words for it. On the Chinese form, there was no real way for anyone to know if you were lying when you checked off "no" on the question "Are you HIV positive?".
Usual policy if you lie on an immigration form is to charge one with some kind of material misrepresentation, which usually ends in the removal of all benefits.
And incidentally, undoing the law wouldn't mean there would be no regulations on whether HIV-positive people were permitted in the country. It just wouldn't be an automatic bar for entry. (For example, tuberculosis is not an automatic bar in the same way that HIV is, but if the chest X-ray for the immigrant visa medical shows that you have TB, you won't be allowed in.)
And here comes the Allstar team of MY trolls to show off their nasty homophobia. Of course, nothing TLB says can surprise anyone, and Sailer's bigotry is well-known. Somebody like Hector, however, pretends to be a lefty expressing dislike for Sullivan--but shows his true colors--the only real reason he dislikes Sullivan is that Sullivan is a sexually active gay man.
The only thing one could do to enforce it is not allow long-time residents like Sullivan (who likely caught HIV in the US) to become citizens, which is just cruel.
Step that back further: Sullivan isn't a permanent resident, and by the terms of the INS (and now USCIS), he's not even an 'immigrant', since his visa requires him to leave the US every six months.
Cala: yep, it's a throwback to the days when bigots thought you 'got AIDS' by sharing a toilet seat.
As for Wacko Kelly, he phoned that one in -- or perhaps copied it from his wiki. It must be sad, though, to look at his stats and see that most visitors to his piece-o'shit sites come for a smuttily suggestive photo of Chelsea Clinton that he stole from the wires. All that work, and people just think he's a creepy bigot xenophobe. Who'da thunk it?
"Usual policy if you lie on an immigration form is to charge one with some kind of material misrepresentation, which usually ends in the removal of all benefits.
Posted by Cala | May 15, 2008 12:47 AM"
True, but you need to get caught first.
Comments closed May 28, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
This is depressing.
Posted by Brent | May 14, 2008 3:37 PM