A two-decades-long ban on people with HIV visiting or immigrating to the United States may come to an end soon through a Senate bill on fighting AIDS and other diseases in Africa and other poor areas of the world. The United States currently is among a dozen countries, including Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Russia, that ban travel and immigration for HIV-positive people. Even China, said Democratic Sen. John Kerry, recently changed that policy and decided it was “time to move beyond an antiquated, knee-jerk reaction” to people with HIV. Kerry and Republican Sen. Gordon Smith are trying to repeal the ban, first implemented in 1987 and confirmed by Congress in 1993. The two have attached their measure to legislation providing USD 50 billion over the next five years to fight AIDS and other diseases in poor countries that the Senate may pass this week. “There’s no excuse for a law that stigmatizes a particular disease,” Kerry said on Tuesday in a speech to the Centre for Strategic & International Studies HIV/AIDS Task Force. Even people with avian flu or the Ebola virus are judged on a better standard than those with HIV when it comes to applying for visas, he said.

Foreign nationals, students and tourists can apply for a difficult-to-obtain special waiver for short-term visits, but an HIV-positive person has little chance of obtaining permanent residency. Under current law, HIV is the only medical condition explicitly listed under immigration law. The Kerry-Smith provision would make HIV equivalent to other communicable diseases where medical and public health experts at the Health and Human Services Department, not consular officials at US embassies, determine eligibility for admission.