Waiting Game
The U.S. has discriminated against PWAs for too long
Despite HIV-positive Canadian citizens being barred from traveling to a recent Washington, D.C. conference on AIDS and housing, the U.S. continues to drag its feet regarding the repeal of the travel and immigration ban on people living with HIV. Lifting the ban will probably take six to nine months, according to the timeline the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) shared with AIDS advocates at a meeting last Friday.
After up to 60 HIV-positive Canadians were banned from attending the North American Housing and HIV/AIDS Research Summit IV, White House Office of National AIDS Policy Director Jeffrey Crowley and representatives from the OMB and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) met with Canadian and American advocates to brief them on the status of the travel ban.
Health and Human Services submitted a rule change on April 10 to the OMB that would lift the ban. That rule change should be available for public comment by the first week of July. After a 60-day comment period, the CDC can take as much time as it wants to respond to comments and draft a final rule. This process can take several months. Then the OMB will have 90 days to review the process. If CDC has a fast turnaround (which is unlikely), December would be the earliest that a new regulation would be in place.
The Obama administration has refused to issue an executive order lifting the ban, though OMB representatives said at last week’s meeting that they view lifting the ban as one of their top priorities.
“Even recognizing the statutory requirements for review and public comment periods, OMB sees [the process] moving quickly, whereas we see it moving too slowly,” said Joe Amon, Human Rights Watch’s director of Health and Human Rights Division, who attended the OMB meeting.
While the 1993 Congressional law banning HIV-positive travelers and immigrants from entering the U.S. was repealed last year, HHS has not discontinued a separate similar policy put into place in 1987, so the ban is effectively still in place. At the OMB meeting, advocates pushed for a waiver process that doesn’t require disclosure of one’s HIV-status until the travel ban is repealed. The OMB made clear to participants that they were currently focused on lifting the ban permanently, and didn’t view the temporary fix as a solution.
“This delay is completely unexcusable,” said Housing Works President and CEO Charles King, who attended the meeting. “If the Obama administration wanted to fast-track this, they could issue an executive order today.”
AIDSApalooza 2012 in Washington, D.C.?
In the mean time, immigrations and conferences involving foreigners living with HIV must be delayed or postponed. In the wake of the Canadian disaster, the International AIDS Society issued a press release announcing its hope of holding the International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C. in 2012. In order to plan the conference, the IAS needs a commitment for the ban to be lifted by the end of 2009.
“AIDS 2012 will bring together an estimated 30,000 participants from around the world to address one of the most critical health and development challenges of our generation, highlight the latest results of HIV-related research and foster new streams of collaboration to this global effort,” said IAS President Dr Julio Montaner. “Twenty-five years after the discovery of HIV, the world is finally making progress on rolling back the terrible toll of the global AIDS pandemic. It is time for the U. S. to end the discriminatory ban on entry of foreigners living with HIV.”
On August 16, an action is planned at the Canadian border in Vancouver and Toronto denouncing the travel ban.
The U.S. is among only 14 countries in the world that still ban foreigners from visiting and migrating specifically on the basis of an HIV-positive status. The others are Brunei, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Malaysia, Oman, Qatar, Singapore, Sudan, South Korea, Tunisia, Turks & Caicos Islands and the United Arab Emirates.
Posted on June 11, 2009 at 7:20 pm
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