Letter to the President on HIV Status Rules
From Victoria Nielson of Immigration Equality:
Hi all,
We are writing to you because your organization has signed onto past letters our coalition has circulated advocating for the repeal of the HIV ban on travel and immigration.
As you probably know, last summer Congress completed the first of two steps necessary to lift the HIV ban when it removed the statutory HIV ban from the Immigration and Nationality Act. Nevertheless, until HHS issues regulations removing HIV from its list of “communicable diseases of public health significance” nothing has changed for non-citizens living with HIV. While we were optimistic that the Bush administration would issue the regulations, it didn’t happen. As a candidate, Obama publicly stated his support for lifting the ban, and we want him to know that we will keep up the pressure until the ban is lifted once and for all.
Please reply to Danny Alicea, dalicea@immigrationequality.org to sign your organization onto the letter. The deadline for sign on is next Wednesday, February 11, 2009.
Thanks,
Victoria Neilson
Legal Director
Immigration Equality
40 Exchange Place, 17th Flr.
New York, NY 10005
(212) 714-2904 x. 25
vneilson@immigrationequality.org
www.immigrationequality.org
February 11, 2009
The Honorable Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Re: Removal of HIV-related travel and immigration restrictions
Dear President Obama,
We write to urge you to order the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) to publish a proposed rule to remove HIV from the HHS list of communicable diseases of public health significance as soon as possible.
As a former co-sponsor of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (“PEPFAR”), we are sure you are aware that this landmark legislation included a provision which struck the statutory language that required HIV to be designated a communicable disease of public health significance. In response to concerns about the potential increased costs to the U.S. health care system of removing HIV from the list, PEPFAR also raised future visa fees as an offset. On July 30, 2008, President Bush signed PEPFAR into law completing the first step in a two step process to end the ban.
However, as long as HIV remains on the HHS list of “communicable diseases of public health significance,” non-citizens living with HIV are barred from visiting or immigrating to the U.S. You have publicly stated your support for lifting the ban and we ask you to take immediate action to do so and thus to end the stigma against people with HIV and treat it like all other routine, chronic diseases.
As HIV and immigration organizations, we call upon your Administration to carry out the will of Congress in lifting the ban. The ban on travel and immigration for non-citizens with HIV is anachronistic, discriminatory and undermines public health. As HHS recognized when it amended the definition of “communicable diseases” in October 2008, the American public needs protection from airborne, quarantinable diseases, not from viruses which cannot be casually transmitted such as HIV.
We applaud your commitment to moving this regulatory action forward expeditiously. The world is watching to see this ruling put into place. On August 3, 2008 at the International AIDS conference in Mexico City, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, UNAIDS executive director Peter Piot, and International AIDS Society president Pedro Cahn all welcomed the action taken by the United States government towards lifting restrictions on entry for people living with HIV. It is time for HHS to take the final step and lift the ban.
Sincerely,
AIDS Action Council
The AIDS Institute
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