Nov 22, 2007  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO J  | COMMENTS     

Proposed new rules aimed at speeding up the process for allowing HIV-positive foreign visitors to enter the United States are more restrictive than the existing rules and could prevent visitors from obtaining permanent resident status, according to two gay advocacy groups.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) last month issued a 15-page Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that calls for  “streamlining” the process for foreigners applying for a temporary waiver from a federal law that bans foreign nationals infected with HIV from entering the country.

The proposed rules would make it less time consuming and less complicated for HIV positive individuals to apply for a U.S. visit as tourists or for business purposes. But they would also impose new conditions, including a requirement that an HIV positive visitor give up the right to seek permanent U.S. residence status associated with political asylum.

The more time-consuming application process under the existing rules would remain in place, and persons with HIV seeking to visit the U.S. could opt for that process rather than agree to the more restrictive conditions under the new rules.

However, officials with the gay advocacy groups Immigration Equality and Gay Men’s Health Crisis said potential visitors might choose the newer application process without fully understanding the problems they could encounter and without knowing another option is available to them.

“As written, the [new] rule could leave individuals with HIV who obtain asylum in the U.S. in a permanent limbo, forever barred from obtaining legal permanent residence, and therefore cut off from services, benefits, and employment opportunities,” said Nancy Ordover, an official with Gay Men’s Health Crisis, a New York group that assistants people with HIV.

Ordover was referring to a longstanding U.S. policy of allowing foreigners suffering from persecution in their home countries, including anti-gay or AIDS related persecution, to apply for U.S. political asylum if they can prove their lives could be in danger if forced to return to their homeland.

“It seems very disingenuous that the government is claiming to make things easier for people with HIV, but it’s really compelling them to forfeit their rights,” she said.

A spokesperson for the DHS did not return a call seeking comment by press time.

Victoria Nelson, legal director of Immigration Equality, another New York based group that assists gays and people with HIV on immigration matters, said that despite their claim to “streamline” the application process, the proposed new rules leave unchanged most of the requirements of the existing rules.

HIV-positive visitors still must show that their medical insurance would cover any doctor or hospital visits in the U.S. and require them to “prove” that they won’t engage in behavior that would put the American public at risk, Nelson said.

“More than two decades into this epidemic, the United States continues to stigmatize people with HIV and treat this illness unlike any other virus,” Nelson said. “Creating insurmountable hurdles to travel does nothing to protect the American public from HIV,” she said.

The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking issued by the DHS says President George W. Bush initiated the new rules in a speech at the White House last December commemorating World AIDS Day.

The document says the president directed the State Department and the DHS to “establish a more streamlined process for issuance of a nonimmigrant visa and temporary admission to the United States of aliens who are inadmissible to the United States due to HIV infection.”

The rulemaking proposal notes that the inadmissibility of people with HIV stems from a 1993 law passed by Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton amending the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act. The changes brought about by the 1993 law prohibit any foreigner from entering the U.S. “who is determined (in accordance with regulations prescribed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services) to have a communicable disease of public health significance, which shall include infection with the etiologic agent for acquired immune deficiency syndrome.”

Critics of the law note that it makes the U.S. one of only 13 countries in the world, including Saudi Arabia and Sudan, that ban travel for people who are HIV-positive.

The law surfaced in the news last year when organizers of the Gay Games, the international gay athletic competition held in Chicago, grappled over how to help visitors from Europe and other continents apply for HIV waivers to enable them to enter the U.S. to attend the event.