The Homophobic Democrat Congress bans HIV positive visitors from US.
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By Andrew Sullivan
Wednesday, May 14, 2008; Page A19
Twelve countries ban HIV-positive visitors, nonimmigrants and immigrants from their territory: Armenia, Brunei, Iraq, Libya, Moldova, Oman, Qatar, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Sudan and . . . the United States. China recently acted to remove its ban on HIV-positive visitors because it feared embarrassment ahead of the Olympics. But America's ban remains.
It seems unthinkable that the country that has been the most generous in helping people with HIV should legally ban all non-Americans who are HIV-positive. But it's true: The leading center of public and private HIV research discriminates against those with HIV.
HIV is the only medical condition permanently designated in law -- in the Immigration and Nationality Act -- as grounds for inadmissibility to the United States. Even leprosy and tuberculosis are left to the discretion of the secretary of health and human services.
The ban can be traced to the panic that dominated discussion of the human immunodeficiency virus two decades ago. The ban was the brainchild of Sen. Jesse Helms (who came to regret his initial hostility toward people with HIV and AIDS). President George H.W. Bush sought to drop the ban,
but in 1993, after a scare about Haitian refugees, Congress wrote it into law.