President Bush signed legislation yesterday reauthorizing PEPFAR, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which includes a measure to repeal the U.S. law which bars HIV-positive visitors and immigrants from entering the country.

The PEPFAR bill passed the Senate on July 16 and the U.S. House passed the bill last week. The legislation reauthorizes PEPFAR for another five years and includes $48 billion to assist the communities hardest hit by HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.

The Human Rights campaign is now calling on the Department of Health and Human Services to update its regulations following the signing.

“We appreciate the President signing the repeal of this unjust and sweeping policy that deems HIV-positive individuals inadmissible to the United States,” said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese.  “The HIV travel and immigration ban performs no public health service, is unnecessary and ineffective. We thank our allies on the Hill who fought to end this injustice and now call on Secretary of Health and Human Services Leavitt to remove the remaining regulatory barriers to HIV-positive visitors and immigrants.”

The travel and immigration ban prohibits HIV-positive foreign nationals from entering the U.S. unless they obtain a special waiver, which is difficult to obtain and can only allow for short-term travel.  Current policy also prevents the vast majority of foreign nationals with HIV from obtaining legal permanent residency in the United States. 

The Human Rights Campaign has worked closely with the offices of Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Gordon Smith (R-OR), as well as Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), the sponsor of an effort to repeal the ban in the House of Representatives, according to an HRC release.

The ban originated in 1987 and has remained despite efforts in the public health community to remove the ban when Congress reformed U.S. immigration law in the early 1990s.  Immigration law currently bars foreigners with any “communicable disease of public health significance” from entering the U.S. but only HIV is explicitly named in the statute.