Housing Works: Housing Prevents AIDS. Housing Improves Health.

The North American Housing and HIV/AIDS Research Summit’s cross-border collaboration hit an outrageous bureaucratic snag this week when 60 Canadian participants were effectively barred from attending the conference. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) failed to grant a waiver exempting attendees from the U.S.’s embarrassing HIV travel and immigration ban.

Most members of the delegation chose to ignore the ban and came to the Summit anyway. Some did skip the conference over worries of getting detained at the border.

While the 1993 Congressional law banning HIV-positive travelers and immigrants from entering the U.S. was repealed last year, HHS has not discontinued a separate policy put into place in 1987 that effectively renders the Congressional repeal meaningless. Advocates are hopeful the policy will be repealed in the coming months.

Speaking at the Summit on Thursday, Office of National AIDS Policy Director Jeffrey Crowley said that President Obama had asked HHS to get rid of the travel ban and that the Office of Management and Budget was currently evaluating an HHS proposal to do so.

“I am truly sorry for how the issue was resolved,” Crowley said during his keynote at the Summit Thursday.

One Vancouver resident who chose to attend the meeting despite the ban felt that the U.S. needed to move with more urgency. “I respect this administration but someone has dropped the ball and that pisses me off. We have to solve problems in the Middle East,” said the man, in reference to Obama’s trip to Egypt this week. “But we have problems here, too.” The man, who works at a Vancouver AIDS group, said that he travels with 11 medications and could easily have been turned back at the border should a customs official have decided to open his bags.

The research summit was somewhat diminished by the loss of a number of members of the Canadian delegation.“Some of these people are on the front lines and wanted to learn best practices, and other conference participants are missing learning about their experiences,” said Ontario HIV Treatment Network Executive Director Sean Rourke.

Don’t blame Canada, blame the U.S.

In March, HHS officials indicated that granting a “designated event HIV waiver” for the Housing Summit was underway. Such waivers are designed to allow people living with HIV to attend conferences in the U.S. and other conference participants received such waivers, including a participant from Haiti. Most of the 60 participants were part of the delegation from the Ontario HIV Treatment Network (OHTN), a cosponsor of the conference.

But on Friday, May 22, 11 days before the summit start date, the Ottawa Embassy informed the OHTN that each of the people in its delegation to the Washington, D.C. AIDS Housing Summit would have to comply with a humiliating, expensive and time-consuming visa process.

Last Sunday, the White House told conference organizers that the Department of Homeland Security issued a blanket waiver authorization allowing travelers to avoid a consular visit and obtain waivers at the point of entry. They still needed to disclose their HIV positive status on a form, and pay a fee of about $545.

Individuals could also opt to visit the consulate and pay a $131 fee; sign an agreement not to extend the visit for any reason; complete an intrusive and humiliating health form, and pledge to possessing adequate health coverage—something many U.S. citizens living with HIV/AIDS are still denied.

Crowley told conference organizers that “as much as I’d like to” waive the fees, federal law specifically prohibits it.

For Jay Koornstra, a HIV-positive man who lives in Ottawa, this was not an option. “I’d just as soon go to the U.S. government and share my HIV-status. Then I would put a tattoo reading ‘HIV-positive’ on my forehead,” Koornstra said.

American shame

The Housing conference incident served as a powerful remidner that the travel and immigration ban is still very much on the books and enforced despite the Bush administration’s anemic attempts to address it.

While the Bush administration indicated to advocates that it wanted to lift the ban, it didn’t get its act together before leaving office.

“The timing in the change of administrations was unfortunate,” said Immigration Equality Legal Director Victoria Neillson.

And the Obama administration got a slow start with HHS, with Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ confirmation just last month. At the hearing Sen. John Kerry, who introduced the legislation that lifted the Congressional ban, asked about the regulation, saying “When you are confirmed would you make this issue a priority and follow-up on the delay in promulgating a regulation? I hope that we can work together to finally end this discriminatory ban and I look forward to the response from the Administration.”

Sebelius responded, “If I am confirmed as Secretary, I will work to repeal this ban as quickly as possible to comply with the law.”

The proposed regulation was brought to the Office of Management and Budget, and advocates working on the issue expect a regulation to be issued for public comment shortly.

“We’re all hopeful it will be coming in the next month,” said Neillson. “We continue to be hopeful that the regulation will come out imminently. There are people who are suffering to be with their families.”

After the regulation is issued, people will have 60 days to comment, and AIDS advocates will come out in full force in support of the new regulation.

Canadian Martin Rooney is leading a campaign to denounce the ban. After traveling back and forth across the border for years, in 2007, Rooney was denied entry because he was HIV-positive. “I felt violated that day,” Rooney said. He is working to fight the ban, starting a facebook group calling on Obama to lift the ban that now has more than 1,100 members. He is organizing a rally in Vancouver on August 16—without the help of the AIDS organizations in the area. “They have HIV-positive board members who go across the border without problems and don’t want to be called out,” Rooney said. “But I think if there’s injustice for one HIV-positive person, we all suffer.”

In the mean time…

The exclusion of the Canadians from the conference proved an unfortunate, but teachable, moment for the rest of the conference participants. The conference room was filled with signs reading “President Obama Must Live the Travel Ban!” On Wednesday Johns Hopkins professor Chris Beyrer spoke about the travel ban, and other immigration and refugee issues that affect people living with HIV/AIDS.

A group of Canadian and American summit participants will be meeting with Crowley and officials from OMB later today to discuss the travel ban.