Vacation/Travel
Proposed Regulations Could Place Unfair Restrictions on HIV Positive Visitors to the U.S.
By Chrys Hudson

Dec 13, 2007

New York City-based Lambda Legal has come out against regulations proposed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Issuance of a Visa and Authorization for Temporary Admission into the United States for Certain Nonimmigrant Aliens Infected with HIV. 

Officials at the advocacy group say the regulations continue the stigmatizing discrimination against people living with HIV, create greater barriers to their entry into the U.S. and significantly curtail their legal rights once here. 

"There have been extraordinary advances in the understanding and treatment of HIV/AIDS and how it's transmitted," Bebe Anderson, Lambda Legal's HIV project director, said in a release. "There is no medical justification to continue to treat people living with HIV as creating, by their very presence, a danger to public health." 

Currently, there is a statutory bar on the admission of individuals living with HIV, but President George W. Bush last year called for a categorical waiver that would streamline the process to obtain a waiver of the bar for short-term visitors. 

The proposed regulations, however, do not create a categorical waiver enabling more people living with HIV to enter the U.S on short-term visas. Instead, the Department of Homeland Security would require an individualized, detailed, case-by-case assessment of the applicant's medical condition, treatment regimen, HIV counseling and financial assets.

To be eligible for the slightly streamlined visa processing proposed by the draft regulations, waiver applicants would be forced to give up any right to change, extend or adjust their status while in the United States.

As a result, certain individuals, in particular those qualifying for political asylum, might be placed in immigration limbo and forever prevented from becoming United States citizens.