By Matt Simonette

Staff writer

President Barack Obama announced last week that his administration was to publish a new rule lifting HIV from the list of communicable diseases of public health significance for immigrants to the United States, effectively lifting the United States’ ban on travelers with HIV/AIDS.

The announcement came as part of Friday’s signing of the Ryan White/CARE Act.

“Twenty-two years ago, in a decision rooted in fear rather than fact, the United States instituted a travel ban on entry into the country for people living with HIV/AIDS. Now, we talk about reducing the stigma of this disease—yet we’ve treated a visitor living with it as a threat,” Obama said.

“We lead the world when it comes to helping stem the AIDS pandemic—yet we are one of only a dozen countries that still bar people from HIV from entering our own country,” he added.

The lift goes into effect after the first of the year.

Obama acknowledged that the change was approved under the previous administration. “Congress and President Bush began this process last year, and they ought to be commended for it. We are finishing the job,” he said

Kevin Cathcart, exec. dir. of Lambda Legal, said in a statement, “We applaud the Obama Administration for its leadership in ending this kind of government sponsored discrimination against people living with HIV. The 22-year ban was discriminatory, violated basic human rights, and could not be justified on public health grounds.”  

Chicago-area activists were equally pleased. Jim Pickett, dir. of Advocacy for Aids Foundation of Chicago, told CFP, “We are absolutely delighted. It’s a huge step forward in terms of human rights. I really feel like this is the beginning of a change of direction for AIDS policy in this country.”

Pickett added, “We’ll no longer be the pariahs of the world,” referring to the small number of nations that have HIV travel bans similar to this country’s. Twelve such nations remain, according to the Global Database on HIV Related Travel Restrictions—Brunei, China, Equatorial Guinea, South Korea, Papua New Guinea, Qatar, Russia, Singapore, Sudan, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

Activist Yasmin Nair, who has long agitated on issues surrounding queer immigration, said of the lifting, “It’s about time the U.S. stepped into the 21st century.”

She pointed to the number of grassroots rights activists who have spent time “fighting this (ban) from day one … right now we need to honor and remember them.”

According to Nair, “the gay nonprofit industrial complex inserted themselves into this fight a long time ago, but there are a lot of people, with no affiliation, who laid themselves—sometimes literally their bodies—on the line for this.”

Nair also said that the ban’s lifting might serve as a reminder to GLBT rights activists that their issues have long intersected with those of other groups.

“Maybe this will help us to remember those alliances and perhaps resurrect them,” she said.