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Maybe a little late, but it seemed a nice gesture. On December 1, 2006 (World AIDS Day), U.S. President George W. Bush declared he would instruct the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to "streamline" the entry of HIV-positive foreign travelers, who would be granted a "categorical" waiver to visit the US for up to 60 days. The DHS's proposed implementation of Bush's directive was announced November 5. The seeming gift now looks like a Trojan horse, potentially making travel to the US as an HIV-positive foreigner even dicier.

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ush's 2006 proposal for a "categorical" waiver seemed nice because in 1987, Congress imposed a wholesale ban on foreigners with HIV visiting the US -- let alone immigrating or joining family members. Would-be visitors with HIV can -- on a case-by-case basis -- apply for a waiver at their local US consulate. The process is laborious, intrusive, and uncertain. (The U.S. does not reveal many waivers are sought and how many are granted.) As well, groups in the U.S. organizing special events -- such as an AIDS conference or the 2006 Gay Games in Chicago -- could undertake the elaborate process of applying for a general HIV waiver for participants. Bush's offer had sounded like it would make every HIV-positive foreigner's visit to the US as breezy as a trip to the Gay Games.

Bush's 2006 gesture was late because today only some 13 nations in the world impose restrictions on short visits by travelers with HIV. The number was 14, but recently China, on the advice of public-health authorities, ended its exclusions. In hewing to its ban, the U.S. joins the company of such human-rights paragons as Iraq, Lybia, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan. Perhaps out of embarrassment, in 1990 the Department of Health and Human Services had proposed ending the restrictions. In response, Congress in 1993 stripped the agency of the authority to do so.

But however it was intended, Bush's proposal to ease travel has become like fresh water filtered through toxic waste -- the latter provided by the malignant and sex-hysterical Homeland Security bureaucracy.

DHS's draft rules -- which were open for public comment through December 6 -- encumber visits by persons with HIV with onerous requirements not imposed on travelers with other serious infections or medical conditions.

In the warm 'n' fuzzy language of Homeland Security, the proposed rules allow a "streamlined" approach to allow visits by people with HIV "subject to certain conditions to ensure the control and departure of such aliens."

Final regulations may be issued sometime in 2008. "If passed as written," says the New York-based campaign group Immigration Equality, they "will make travel more restrictive for HIV-positive non-immigrants, not easier."

Whereas Bush's AIDS Day pledge talked of granting automatic permission for visits of up to 60 days, the DHS proposals limit visits to 30 days no more than twice during the period the visa is valid, up to 12 months.

In addition the proposed rules impose seven requirements. Among them:

· the applicant must show that he or she "has, or will have access to, an adequate supply of antiretroviral drugs if medically appropriate."

· applicants must show "sufficient assets or insurance" to "cover any medical care that the applicant might require" while in the U.S.

· applicants must agree to forfeit any chance of changing their status from that of a short-term visitor. That means they can't subsequently petition for asylum, seek a green card, or petition to join family members in U.S.

Though the proposed rules allow U.S. consulates around the world to approve waivers on the spot without sending forms to Homeland Security in Washington, the new special requirements each open their own cans of worms, AIDS activists contend.

Take the demand for "adequate supply of antiretroviral drugs if medically appropriate." That's a judgment that will fall to consular officials with no medical expertise. "For travelers applying from poor countries countries where CD4 count testing and/or antiretroviral medication is not readily available, it will be impossible to obtain a waiver," asserts Immigration Equality.

The requirement for insurance that's valid in the U.S. is another hurdle not imposed on, say, British tourists with clogged arteries who could take stroke while visiting the Grand Ole Opry.

"All major medical and public-health assocaitions in the U.S. and internationally think any kind of travel restrictions on people who have HIV should be lifted," says Susannah Sirkin of Physicians for Human Rights.

If any would-be traveler doesn't like the new system, he or she can always use the old individual waiver system, right? So Homeland Security contends. But in practice, the new onerous "streamlined" system will supplant the old. Anyone insisting on the latter, activists point out, would mark themselves as wanting to visit the U.S. impermissibly only to seek to stay.

With the new rules likely to be worse than the old, stealth and sneakiness are likely to remain the order of the day for HIV-infected travelers to the U.S. -- especially as the requirements apply even to those merely landing at a U.S. airport to change planes for a destination in another country.

"People have found ways to circumvent the ban for 20 years," says Noel Alicia of New York's Gay Men's Health Crisis. Strategies include never carrying medicines or medical documents on your person -- sending meds separately or having prescriptions faxed.

But in an era of databases increasingly interlinked, even indicating a medical condition to an airline can flag a traveler for special scrutiny. Certainly, applying for an HIV waiver and not getting it is information sure to be entered into a traveler's permanent dossier maintained by U.S. authorities on all visitors or visa applicants -- a dossier shared internationally at the U.S.'s whim.

The haphazardness of bureaucracies can lull HIV-positive travelers into false security. On a routine shopping trip to Washington state on November 11, Martin Rooney told a border guard, querying about his work, that he received a disability pension. What for? HIV, answered Rooney, who lives in Surrey, British Columbia. He'd given the same answer before with no big problem. But this time acknowledging his infection meant three hours of detention, getting photographed, fingerprinted, and run through the U.S. crime computers before being allowed to return to Canada -- with a stern warning not to attempt a trip to the U.S. without first obtaining a waiver.

"No amount of explanation today can console me," Rooney says. "I feel dirty, ashamed, and deeply saddened that such discrimination still exists."

Author Profile:  Bill Andriette
Bill Andriette is features editor of The Guide
Email:	theguide@guidemag.com