Wednesday, January 06, 2010

The HIV Travel Ban Is History

The ban on HIV-positive people immigrating or traveling to the United States has ended, effective Monday January 4th.

According to the BBC
The new rules come into force on Monday and the US plans to host a bi-annual global HIV/Aids summit for the first time in 2012.

The ban was imposed at the height of a global panic about the disease at the end of the 1980s.

[...]

Rachel Tiven, head of the campaign group Immigration Equality, told the BBC that the step was long overdue.

"The 2012 World Aids Conference, due to be held in the United States, was in jeopardy as a result of the restrictions. It's now likely to go ahead as planned," she said.

In October, President Obama said the entry ban had been "rooted in fear rather than fact".

Now, that's change I can believe in.

1 comment:

Bryan J Blumberg said...

This is a law that was changed during the Bush Administration. I don't understand why it took Obama an entire year to put it into effect.

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