Editorial: Overturning HIV immigration ban brings benefits

Earlier this week, President Barack Obama said the United States plans to abolish a travel and… Earlier this week, President Barack Obama said the United States plans to abolish a travel and immigration ban against those with HIV. At face value, this means more people with HIV could potentially enter the country and disseminate the disease — but let’s not be paranoid here.

More than 1 million people in the United States live with HIV or AIDS. The Center for Disease Control estimates that in 2006 there were approximately 56,300 new cases of HIV. AIDS and HIV certainly aren’t as prevalent in the United States as in parts of Southern Africa where, in some regions, more than 15 percent of the adult population is living with HIV. But we’re far from disease-free.

While the ban’s repeal theoretically allows for an increase of HIV cases in the United States, there are benefits that outweigh the detriment. The ban formerly denied entry to travelers with visas or those seeking a green card. In some scenarios, families that have been apart for years can now reunite.

Currently, there are 11 other countries that have similar bans against HIV-positive immigrants. Among the list are Armenia, Iraq, Libya, Russia and South Korea — none are Western countries. Despite the ban’s long existence in the United States, there are more reasons to overturn this policy than siding with the majority.

Some HIV researchers are living with HIV themselves. Under the ban, however, they’ve been prevented from coming to the United States. As a result, the United States has not held a major international conference on the disease since 1993, according the Associated Press. By lifting the ban and allowing entry to these activists, their subsequent contributions to battling and spreading knowledge about HIV seem an adequate repercussion.

Obama stressed that by lifting the ban, the United States is helping to assuage the stigma against those with HIV. The ban was initiated in the late ’80s — a time when HIV was still a new disease and hysteria over its spread even dictated law. Now the law seems antiquated. In 1987, HIV was placed on the U.S. Public Health Services list of “dangerous and contagious diseases,” and HIV positive individuals were consequentially banned. HIV is contagious, but it isn’t spread through casual contact like, say, active cases of tuberculosis — which remains on the list.

Not taking action to lessen the stigma against HIV helps to perpetuate the stigma and subsequently the disease itself. Because of the stigma against those with HIV, some who might be carrying the disease avoid getting tested. Perhaps they’d rather not know or assume they’re disease-free. As of 2008, more than one in five people living with HIV in the United States don’t know they have the disease. If there’s a measure that will increase the likelihood of getting tested, it’s worth passing as this is one of the best countermeasures in combating the disease.