Campaign To End Hiv Travel Ban

I urge you to support S. 2486 introduced by Sen. John Kerry and Sen. Gordon Smith in December 2007 to the Senate “to remove from the Immigration and Nationality Act the provision rendering individuals having HIV inadmissible to the United States.” This provision was enacted by Congress in 1993 fueled mainly by fear of an “imported epidemic” that might sweep the country and paralyze the health care system.

S. 2486 correctly states that “there is no scientific evidence to support the claim that the HIV travel and immigration ban is an effective way to prevent the spread of HIV or that it provides any economic benefit by reducing costs to the public health care system.” This conclusion has been endorsed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies Task Force on HIV/AIDS, which is co-chaired by former senator and majority leader Bill Frist and Senator Russell Feingold among others ("Moving Beyond the U.S. Government Policy of Inadmissibility of HIV-Infected Noncitizens," March 2007, http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/movingbeyondinadmissibility.pdf) and many advocacy groups and professional organizations including the International AIDS Society (http://www.iasociety.org/Web/WebContent/File/ias_policy%20paper_08.pdf).

Retaining the current travel and immigration ban runs counter to public health best practices and jeopardizes the United States’ critical leadership position in controlling the global HIV/AIDS epidemic. It also unduly stigmatizes and discriminates HIV-infected tourists, foreign students, prospective immigrants, and refugees from entry into the United States.

The United States is one of only 13 countries now (including Armenia, Brunei, China, Iraq, Qatar, South Korea, Libya, Moldova, Oman, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan) that maintain by law both a travel and immigration ban for persons with HIV. In a positive move, China has most recently announced that it will repeal its immigration laws that restrict people with HIV traveling to the country.

It is time for the United States to repeal the travel and immigration ban against HIV-infected non-citizens. I respectfully ask for your support and assistance in moving S. 2486 forward by your colleagues in the Senate Committee of the Judiciary. Please help get us one step closer to making this repeal a reality. It is the right thing to do and it is long overdue.

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