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Gay attorneys urge swift end to ban on HIV+ travellers to US
By: John Howard

President Obama

The USA HIV travel ban may soon be lifted.

The travel and immigration ban dating from 1987 prevents people living with HIV from entering the US.

In June, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of the US Department of Health and Human Services proposed “to remove HIV from the list as a ‘communicable disease of public health significance’,” and although it is thought likely to take effect by the end of the year, a group of American attorneys that campaigns for LGBT rights has written to the CDC urging swift implementation.

Scott Schoettes, HIV Project Staff Attorney at Lambda Legal, wrote: “Lambda Legal strongly urges the CDC to move swiftly to finalize and implement the proposal regulations, thereby ending the discriminatory and disgraceful HIV travel and immigration ban and allowing the United States to more fully assume its role as a leader in the global fight against HIV/AIDS. Adoption of these rules will ensure that people living with HIV will no longer face this type of stigma and discrimination from our government.”
 
In June, Paul Thorn, a British writer and advisor on TB and HIV issues, should have spoken at the Pacific health summit in Seattle, but was refused entry to the country after admitting his HIV status on his visa-waiver application.

In a statement read out in his place, he said: “The US government gives people who have HIV one of two choices. The first is to be actually dishonest on the visa application or visa-waiver form, commit a felony by lying to US immigration, and become a criminal. The second choice is to be honest, and have a visa rejected because you are considered an undesirable person, and unfit to enter the US.” 
 
Shortly after the conference, Thorn’s case was taken up by US politicians, amongst them Democratic congressman Jim McDermott, who wrote a letter to the Obama administration citing Thorn’s case and another where people were turned back at the Canadian border.

He acknowledged that President George Bush had begun the process of repealing the law, but said the changes had never been implemented,

“Now is the time to repair our nation’s standing as the leader in the treatment of the Aids epidemic,” he wrote. Less than two weeks after Thorn’s statement, the US government announced its intention to bring the ban to an end.