Say Anything Blog

We are just plain suicidal!

After more than two decades on the books, a little-known yet strictly enforced federal law barring foreigners with HIV or AIDS from entering the country is on its way out.

Tucked in a bill pledging $48 billion to combat the disease, signed into law by President Bush last week, was language stripping the provision from federal immigration law.

But that change didn’t fully lift the entry ban on visitors with HIV or AIDS, which applies whether they’re on tourist jaunts or seeking longer stays. The secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services still needs to delete HIV from the agency’s list of “communicable diseases of public health significance,” which includes tuberculosis, gonorrhea and leprosy.

An HHS spokeswoman declined to comment, noting administrators are still reviewing the new law. An April report from the Congressional Budget Office said that, based on information from HHS’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, HIV will be dropped from the list and new regulations will be in place in two years.

Both immigrant and HIV awareness advocates, however, say the toughest hurdle has been cleared, that the lifting of the immigration provision has been a long time coming — politics finally catching up with medical knowledge.

“Today everyone knows that you can’t get AIDS from sitting next to someone on an airplane or sharing a bathroom — American policy should reflect this,” said Victoria Neilson, legal director of Immigration Equality, a New York-based advocacy group that has led a years-long campaign against the ban.

We should change the motto on the Statue of Liberty to read: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, with communicable diseases ... I lift my lamp beside the venereal disease door,” then add we don’t care about the health of our citizens, and hell we’ll pick up the damn bill for their health care, and that of the people they infect.

We are not talking about visitors just spreading the disease on visits here, but this is for all future immigrants, immigrants our health care system will have to care for! We are suicidal!

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/national/us_acts_to_open_bordersto_foreigners_with_hiv100.html