Is the US ban on visitors with HIV ending?

You know what is like to be sick. Regardless of your symptoms, you only can wait for health. Now, can you imagine to have a sickness, and to be discriminated thanks to it? Around the world, there are twelve countries that ban HIV-positive visitors, nonimmigrants and immigrants from their territory: Armenia, Brunei, Iraq, Libya, Moldova, Oman, Qatar, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Sudan, and last but not least, the so-called land of opportunities, the United States of America.
 
Twenty years ago, the HIV ban was “adopted during a time of widespread fear and ignorance about the virus,” and today, HIV is the only medical condition permanently designated in law as grounds for inadmissibility to the United States -no matter the reason for entry- and not only discriminating and infringing on people’s civil rights, but serving to isolate individuals with HIV and stigmatizing the disease.
But there are hopes for those who have been waiting: the two-decade ban on people with HIV visiting or immigrating to the United States could end soon through a Senate bill aimed at fighting AIDS and other diseases in Africa and other poor areas of the world. 
The question that many have in mind is: would treating HIV like any other medical condition cost the United States if such visitors or immigrants at some point became public dependents? It’s possible — but all legal immigrants and their sponsors are required to prove that they can provide their own health insurance for at least 10 years after being admitted. They, as any other resident, would have to pay taxes -taxes that would be a net gain for the government.
During all these years, International conferences on HIV and AIDS have long avoided meeting in the United States because of the ban, which violates U.N. standards for member states. But not just that; think about all the exceptionally talented people that have been blocked from the country thanks to an old stigma.
It is time to change. It’s time to end the nonsense irony of the country that has been certainly the most generous in helping people with HIV, but yet somehow a country with laws that at the same time, discriminate against them. 

Filed Under Human Rights, Politics, World Health