Proposed travel rules for people with HIV infection come under fire

[Newsjock]

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

SAN FRANCISCO -- One year after the Bush Administration promised to streamline a process to allow people with HIV infection to visit the United States despite congressionally mandated travel ban, critics are saying that the proposed new rules are more restrictive than the old ones.

... Opportunities for the public to comment on the regulations, which took 11 months to craft, expire Thursday and opponents are using the deadline to criticize the suggested changes as well as the entire notion that people infected with the AIDS virus needed special visas to visit the country.

... Critics contend, however, that the new rules are adding a requirement that travelers prove they are bringing "an adequate supply of antiretroviral medicines" on their trips to the United States.

... Volberding also fears that requiring local decisions on waiver applications could foster discrimination, because travelers will have to make their HIV status known to consular offices in their communities, not to some distant embassy.

... Because of the U.S. visa restrictions for the HIV-infected, the International AIDS Society has refused to convene its semi-annual AIDS conference in the United States since the one held in San Francisco in 1990.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/05/BAJ6TO8E0.DTL

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The public may comment online by accessing the government regulation web site, at http://links.sfgate.com/ZBSK , and searching for docket number USCBP-2007-0084.

[joeybee12]

1. Things like this remind me what an ass-backwards country we are

in so many ways.