Bush signs sweeping AIDS bill

Landmark measure repeals longtime ban on HIV-positive immigrants, visitors

LOU CHIBBARO JR
Friday, August 01, 2008

President Bush signed a sweeping global AIDS relief bill at a White House ceremony Wednesday afternoon that includes language repealing the U.S. ban on HIV-positive foreign visitors and immigrants.

The bill-signing ceremony took place less than a week after the House of Representatives voted 303 to 115 to approve a Senate-passed version of the legislation, which reauthorizes the highly popular U.S. foreign aid program known as the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

The Senate passed the bill one week earlier by a vote of 80 to 16.

First Lady Laura Bush and Mark Dybul, director of the U.S. global AIDS office, accompanied the president at the bill signing ceremony.

The president, along with a large, bipartisan majority in the House and Senate, agreed to include a provision in the PEPFAR bill that repeals a 1993 U.S. immigration law prohibiting HIV-positive visitors from entering the country. The 1993 law to be repealed by the PEPFAR bill also bars most foreign nationals with HIV from being eligible for legal immigrant status.

However, as the president prepared for Wednesday’s bill signing ceremony, the White House had yet to disclose whether he and his Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Mike Leavitt, would approve one more administrative action needed to end the U.S. ban on HIV-positive visitors and immigrants.

In 1987, HHS used its existing legal authority to add HIV to a list of communicable diseases that disqualifies HIV-positive visitors from entering the country as well as foreigners with HIV from being eligible for immigrant status.

The PEPFAR bill that Bush signed allows the 1987 administrative policy to remain in place unless HHS or one of its component agencies, such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, reverses the policy.

An HHS spokesperson last week agreed to make inquiries into Leavitt’s position on the issue of repealing the HIV ban, but the spokesperson did not get back with additional information by press time.

A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for the president’s position on the HHS administrative ban.

“The legislation Congress has passed will move us from the emergency phase to the sustainability phase in fighting AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria,” said Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), after the House voted to approve the PEPFAR bill.

“It will authorize $48 billion over five years to provide life-saving HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention for men, women and children in the poorest countries of the world,” she said.

Pelosi also noted that the bill would eliminate the HIV travel and immigrant ban, a policy that Pelosi and Democratic leaders, along with many Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate, have long opposed.

“Congressional backing for the repeal of this unjust and sweeping policy that deems HIV-positive individuals inadmissible to the United States is a huge step forward for equality,” said Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign. “The HIV travel and immigration ban performs no public health service, is unnecessary and ineffective.”

The 1993 immigration law and the HHS policy directive putting the HIV visitor and immigrant ban into place allow for some exceptions. But groups like Immigration Equality, which advocates for immigrants who are gay or who have HIV, have said the exceptions are limited and have helped only a small number of HIV-positive foreign nationals seeking access to the U.S.

Under the 1993 law and the HHS policy, foreign nationals seeking to visit the U.S. can obtain a temporary waiver from the ban, which allows short-term visits for tourism or business purposes. Foreign nationals seeking a waiver must register their names and HIV status with U.S. consular offices in their home countries in a process that immigration activists say could violate privacy rights. Waivers also place certain limitations on HIV-positive visitors.

The law and policy allows foreigners with HIV to be eligible for immigrant status if they can demonstrate that an immediate family member, such as a spouse, parent or child, who already has legal U.S. immigrant status or citizenship, is dependent upon them for care and support. Activists say U.S. immigration officials rarely grant this exemption and that it is off limits to same-sex partners whose relationships are not recognized under U.S. law.

Some Capitol Hill insiders have speculated that the Bush administration might decide to leave the HHS policy in place, preferring to let the next president decide whether to repeal it. That would leave the ban in place until at least late January.

A spokesperson for Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said Obama opposes the ban and would take action to end it if he’s elected president.

A spokesperson for the campaign of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, did not return a call seeking McCain’s position on the issue.