HIV ban lifted from law, awaiting from approval

By Jen Colletta
PGN Staff Writer
© 2008 Philadelphia Gay News

With President Bush’s July 30 signing of the reauthorization of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the 15-year ban on HIV-positive travelers was removed from the Immigration and Nationality Act. The ban is not completely lifted, however, as the disease is still listed on a federal agency’s docket of communicable diseases.

The Department of Health and Human Services has included HIV on its list of communicable diseases that prevent entry into the United States since 1987.

Congress approved legislation in 1993 that banned HIV-positive travelers from coming into the country. That law was overturned last week after a bipartisan effort to include an amendment to PEPFAR — the nearly $50-billion program to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria — that would lift the ban.

The HHS ban, as well as the now-defunct law, prevents foreign nationals from visiting the country unless they obtain a waiver from U.S. consular offices in their home countries. Waivers are issued for both tourism and business trips, but critics have argued that the waiver process — in which interested travelers must register their names, HIV status and other personal information — is a violation of the individuals’ civil rights.

HIV-positive foreigners who have an immediate family member who is a U.S. citizen or immigrant, however, can apply for immigration status — which opponents of the ban have asserted is rarely granted.

Howard Wallen, an American citizen who married a woman from Ethiopia, said his life has been permanently marred by the ban.

While touring Ethiopia, Wallen met and fell in love with an Ethiopian woman, Abeba. The couple married in 2002, and summarily submitted a petition for immigration status for Abeba so they could return to live in the United States. Shortly after the wedding, however, Abeba learned that she was HIV-positive.

“You can imagine how heavy such information was to receive, but we were unprepared for how soon and how hard this disease would impact our lives,” Wallen said. “Upon disclosing Abeba’s HIV status to the U.S. embassy in Ethiopia, the process [of seeking immigration status] immediately fell apart. ‘Inadmissible’ is what we were told. That word still lingers with me.”

Wallen fought for five years to bring his wife and their young daughter to the United States, but was met with insurmountable obstacles, such as the requirement that Abeba obtain U.S. health insurance, which she couldn’t get until she entered the country.

Abeba died last fall, and Wallen and his 4-year-old daughter now live in New York.

Victoria Neilson, legal director of Immigration Equality, said Wallen’s story is not uncommon.

“We hear people with similar horror stories every single day here,” Neilson said. “So it was with a great deal of enthusiasm that we saw President Bush sign PEPFAR, positioning us as a global leader in the fight against AIDS and taking an enormous first step in eliminating this discrimination from U.S. law. But this is the first of two steps, and the ball is back in the court of HHS.”

In order for HHS to remove HIV from its list of communicable diseases, it would need to issue the proposed changes it would plan to make to its regulations and allow time for public comments before the regulations would be put in place, which some advocates suggested could come in the fall of 2009.

Neilson noted that HHS moved to limit its communicable-disease list to just tuberculosis in the early 1990s, but that process was stonewalled by conservative Congressmembers, who urged the passing of the 1993 legislation.

She said the vast changes in the HIV/AIDS climate since that time and an increased public awareness of how the disease is transmitted and treated instill optimism that HHS will now recognize the infectiveness of the ban.

Wallen said he is hopeful that HHS will swiftly abolish the ban, preventing others from experiencing what he and his family endured.

“As a grieving husband, single father and head of a shattered household, I pray that no family has to endure the hardship of separation and the ultimate loss that we experienced. People deserve better.”

Jen Colletta can be reached at jen@epgn.com.