USA HIV Travel Ban Consultation
posted: 27/07/2009
The notorious ban on people living with HIV from entering the USA is under official review. There is a public consultation by the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.
Have your say - opposition to removing the HIV ban is loud
So far many comments are opposed to the removal of the ban, so if removing this ban is important to you please consider posting your support message.
Official information on the proposals and email them your comments - click the Submit Comments link on that page (this starts a blank email) or email your comments direct
You may like to say something like the statement by Paul Thorn, the Brighton-based HIV treatments access campaigner, who should have spoken at the Pacific health summit in Seattle in June, but was refused entry to the USA after stating his HIV status on his visa-waiver application. This statement was read out to that conference and was the immediate cause of the policy review that is now underway:
"The US government gives people who have HIV one of two choices. The first is to actually be 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. To my mind either being a criminal or an undesirable isn't much of a choice. I don't want to be either."
He points out that the question asking whether he was HIV positive on the visa-waiver form was alongside questions asking if he was a terrorist or Nazi.
You might add that the USA is rightly acting as a global leader in fighting HIV but this HIV travel ban is incompatible with world leadership on HIV. The ban contradicts the international UNAIDS policy.
Our report on the conference.
There is information on the current USA HIV entry rules here.
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