Document Type

Article

Disciplines

International Law

Abstract

As of June, 1991, although only 366,455 Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) cases had been reported to the World Health Organization (WHO), WHO officials estimated that as many as 1.25 million people worldwide had actually contracted AIDS.' While there is no known cure for the disease, the percentage of the population that is afflicted with AIDS or infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes the disease, is growing. The WHO predicts that there will be twenty-five to thirty million cases of HIV worldwide by the year 2000.2 Due to the complexity of AIDS/HIV as a social phenomenon, the United States and other governments have found it necessary to enact legislation relating to AIDS/HIV, including immigration laws. The changing stance of United States policy regarding immigration is an example of impulsive government reaction to escalating public pressure in the face of the worldwide epidemic.

In 1987, Congress passed the Helms Amendment to the Supplemental Appropriations Act, which added HIV to the list of diseases for which an alien could be excluded from the United States.' Three years later Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1990 which required the Department of Health and Human Services to analyze, in light of current medical knowledge, the list of diseases which served as a basis for exclusion.4 In January, 1991, acting upon this directive, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Dr. Louis Sullivan, recommended that HIV, along with all diseases except for infectious tuberculosis, be removed from the list of diseases which warrant exclusion.' In May, 1991, in the face of strong opposition, the administration backed away from Secretary Sullivan's recommendation by reinstating the exclusion and calling for a sixty-day period of "debate and discussion" on the topic.

This comment will critique the United States policy on HIV immigration exclusion. The first section of the comment will detail the various changes the government's immigration policy has undergone in arriving at its current position. The second section will argue that the United States policy is unjustified in light of the current medical knowledge about AIDS/HIV and the presently available means of testing. Finally, the comment will argue that an exclusionary policy ignores humanitarian concerns and results in discriminatory treatment of HIV-infected aliens. The comment concludes that the result of an exclusionary policy is a governmental scheme that is counter-productive to the nation's ultimate goal of identifying a solution to the AIDS pandemic. Because it tends to delay a solution to the AIDS crisis, the United States should permanently remove HIV from the list of excludable diseases.

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