All it will take is Bush's signature, but the Hyde-Lantos Bill has now passed the House and the Senate by overwhelming margins and not only does it provide AIDS funding in Africa and elsewhere, but it also lifts the hated Immigration and Travel ban. The US, thanks to sadly bigoted, ignorant homophobes like Jesse Helms (who Liddy Dole had the GALL to want to rename this bill after) had long been the only Western country that prevented people with HIV from entering this country.
This meant that all the International AIDS meetings got held in other countries, and that people who had friends or who had relationships with PWAs were not allowed to bring them here.
It's about time.
1 comment:
It's not quite so simple, my love. Congress and Bush have now removed the statutory ban that was placed in the Immigration law in 1993 Don Nickel of Oklahoma.
But...
Reagan's Department of Health and Human Services instituted the same ban back in the 1980's, as a regulatory measure calling HIV/AIDS an illness of public health significance. That ban still exists.
So, at least we're back to where we were in 1992!
Mwah!
Jeffrey
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