DYM SUM

On Friday, new language appeared on a government regulation website, which opens the door for the HIV travel ban to be lifted. This has been a lesser issue of contention in some parts of the GLBTQ community, but – without question – is equally important to other matters that need to be addressed. Of course, it goes without saying that lifting the HIV travel ban affects not only the GLBTQ community, but the entire world as well.

Originally, it was decided that non-U.S. citizens who were HIV-positive could not travel to the United States unless they were first cleared by the Department of Homeland Security. Those who were discovered coming into the United States, even for a visit, with antiretroviral medications, or other AIDS-related prescription drugs in their luggage were detained, and sent back to their home countries. This was the result of action taken by Ronald Reagan and former Senator Jesse Helms in 1987, which was further strengthened by legislation passed by the U.S. Congress in 1993, then signed into law by President Clinton. Now, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs has ruled that HIV can be removed from the list of communicable diseases of public health significance. The website also indicates that the Department of Homeland Security no longer needs to be involved as well.

While there is no legal deadline in place for action on an official removal of the HIV travel ban, it has been marked as economically significant, with good reason, and is likely to be handled before the end of the year.

Hopefully, the International AIDS Society will hold out long enough to wait for the ban to be lifted. Earlier this month, they were considering Washington D.C. as the site for their international AIDS conference in 2012. For the record, the United States has been unable to hold any such conference for more nearly 25 years, as a result of the travel ban.

From The Advocate:

The actual regulatory change, however, will not be available until next week, and advocates are waiting to analyze the exact language.

“We won’t know all of the details until the HHS regulation is posted,” said Steve Ralls, communications director for Immigration Equality. “Congress’s intent was clear that this should be a clean lift of the ban — our hope is that will be reflected in the HHS regulation.”

Congress passed the policy change last summer but the Bush administration was unable to implement the shift before leaving office. The actual change, however, will likely not go into effect until sometime later this year.

Once HHS publishes the new regulation in the federal registry next week, a 45-day window will be opened for public comment, after which HHS may make adjustments to the proposal and send it back to OMB for budgetary approval. After OMB green-lights the final regulation, HHS will once again enter the change into the federal registry for another 30- or 60-day review period, at which point it will automatically go into effect. In theory, Congress could act to block the change during that time, but that seems highly unlikely in this case.

All of which pushes the change into mid fall at the earliest.

An interesting side note: only a dozen countries in the world, besides the United States, still have an HIV travel ban in place. They are Iraq, China, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Sudan, Qatar, Brunei, Oman, Moldova, Russia, Armenia, and South Korea. If you need to, read that list a second time, and think about what’s wrong there.

EDIT, 15h28: Joe Solomonese and the Human Rights Campaign released a statement about the HIV Travel Ban a short while ago. Here is an excerpt:

The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization, responded today to the Office of Management and Budget indicating that they have completed review of a proposed regulation which would remove the remaining barrier to HIV-positive visitors and immigrants. The proposal, which OMB indicates would remove HIV from the list of communicable diseases that bar foreign nationals from entering the United States, will now be published in the Federal Register and open for a period of public comment. After reviewing those comments, the Department of Health and Human Services will issue a final regulation.

“We are one important step closer to finally ending this discriminatory ban once and for all,” said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese. “This regulation is unnecessary, ineffective and lacks any public health justification. We are confident that this sad chapter in our nation’s treatment of people with HIV and AIDS will soon be closed.”