Obama is lifting the US ban on visitors and immigrants with HIV.
President Barack Obama said Friday the U.S. will overturn a 22-year-old travel and immigration ban against people with HIV early next year. The order will be finalized on Monday, Obama said, completing a process begun during the Bush administration.
Which diseases should be a basis to bar entry to America, either as a visitor or an immigrant? The major ailments on the current list are HIV, tuberculosis, gonorrhea, syphilis, and leprosy. The recent movement has been to remove HIV from the list, on the logic that it’s treatable (although not curable) and not easily transmitted.
On the other hand, there’s certainly a real cost to taxpayers and a real risk to citizens.
Immigration critics say they’re leery of the proposal that could allow an average of 4,275 HIV-infected people into the country annually, with a lifetime medical cost of about $94 million for those admitted during the first year, according to CDC estimates published this month in the Federal Register.
“It becomes a matter of collective responsibility because of the cost,” said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a nonprofit group based in Washington, D.C. “The American people shouldn’t be in a position where they have to pay for it.”
Others are concerned that HIV-positive visitors and immigrants will spread the disease.
Is it inhuman of me to say that America shouldn’t welcome immigrants who have costly health issues unless they have the means to personally pay for their treatment? This concern has traditionally been one of the principles of our immigration laws, so it’s not as if HIV is being singled out.
With respect to the spread of disease…In theory, we should be able to stop HIV dead in its tracks by simply being careful. The sad reality is it keeps on spreading.
…the annual rate of AIDS diagnoses for boys aged 15 to 19 years has nearly doubled in the past 10 years.
What are we supposed to do about that?
The numbers show that U.S. youth need better sex education, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
The mantra is that “better education” will solve all our ills. That’s another soothing statement that doesn’t mesh with reality. Is there anyone out there that doesn’t know how you get HIV? How much “education” do you need?
It’s all well and good to say that, in theory, HIV carriers do not constitute a risk to the population at large. However the numbers tell us that simply isn’t true.
I’m conflicted on how to weigh in on this particular issue. Steering clear of AIDS is largely a matter of personal responsibility. But advocates of lifting the restriction must acknowledge the reality that more carriers result in more infections. It’s fair to question the extent to which public policy should be guided by awareness that people are not responsible and will make poor choices. I usually weigh in on the side of the individual choice. But to the extent that private mistakes become a public burden, I’m entitled to voice my concerns.
A friend of mine is a nurse. I have to regard this an anecdotal, but she told me that the politicization of HIV added a frightening burden to a nurse’s job. When you service patients, you want to know what diseases they’re carrying, so you can be appropriately cautious. My friend told me she wasn’t allowed to know who had HIV, and the doctors were prevented by law from ordering an HIV test without a patient’s consent (although a doctor could order just about any other test). You may wonder why this should be of concern, since HIV isn’t spread unless body fluids are exchanged. But a nurse is constantly dealing with needles, so getting stuck with a needle is a periodic occupational hazard. Therefore, you want to know whether an accidental needle stab is potentially life-threatening. My friend said that when nurses raised the question, they were just told to “always be careful”. This is the sort of rule made by ignoramuses. My friend noted that nowadays, needle accidents left a nurse sick with fear that he or she was a goner.
It’s good politics but bad medicine. My friend got out of that line of nursing. Now there’s one less nurse.
I’m not sure what our national policy should be. But I do know we’ll never get it right when we’re guided by political rather than medical considerations.
