CDC Approves Lifting of the HIV Travel Ban!

Activist in August rallying at Canadian border in to support lifting HIV travel ban

Good news! The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approved the regulation to lift the HIV travel and immigration ban. Now the regulation just needs to be approved by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). If and when OMB approves the change, this will be the final regulatory step in a more-than decade long nightmare of discrimination against HIV-positive people. The CDC officially approved the change on Thursday, October 22, and OMB has 60 days to make the regulation final.

"It's an important step forward," said AMFAR Public Policy Deputy Director Jirair Ratevosian, who alerted the Update of the change, which hasn't yet been publicized by the CDC.

The reason the CDC's decision took as long as it did is because it received 20,000 comments, since the end of the comment period in August, and by law it has to read every comment. Most of the comments were in support of the policy change.

The OMB must review all regulations, no matter what cost. CDC suggest the cost of the this regulation will be $83 million over the 2010-2018 period, primarily for Medicaid, though advocates say they believe that number is on the high end, and even CDC says the cost could vary widely. Sources say that the OMB will approve the regulation before the 60 day period expires. However, there is caution among advocates, since it's still unclear what the regulation look

In the early 1990s, the CDC solicited comments, but when the ban looked like it might be lifted, Sen. Jesse Helms championed a 1993 law preventing HIV-positive people from entering the U.S. The 1993 law was repealed in July 2008 by Congress and President Bush as part of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

The ban became continued to be an embarrassment, however. A group of up to 60 HIV-positive Canadian citizens was denied entry to the United States to attend the North American Housing and HIV/AIDS Research Summit, resulting in Andrew Sullivan airing the issue on Anderson Cooper 360. This was followed by the International AIDS Society condemning the ban and stating its hope that the ban would be lifted in order to hold the 2012 International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C.

On September 15, 2009, at the urging of Immigration Equality and the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued a memo telling its staff not to deny any green card applications if the only reason for the denial is the applicant's HIV status.