Obama Ends Ban On Foreign Travelers With AIDS

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http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/10/obama-ends-travel-ban-on-foreigners-with-hivaids.html

Starting Monday, foreigners with HIV-AIDS will be able to travel or immigrate to the United States without having to get a waiver from the Department of Homeland Security.

Today President Obama eliminated a travel ban that had been in place since 1993, forbidding people with HIV-AIDS from travelling to the US. ?If we want to be the global leader in combating HIV/AIDS, we need to act like it,? the President said today.

He tipped his hat to his predecessor for starting the process. ?Congress and President Bush began this process last year, and they ought to be commended for it. We are finishing the job. It's a step that will encourage people to get tested and get treatment, it's a step that will keep families together, and it's a step that will save lives.?

The President announced the repeal of the ban in a ceremony marking the fourth re-authorization of the Ryan White CARE Act, legislation that provides treatment for low-income HIV/AIDS victims. The legislation was named after the Indiana teenager who contracted HIV from a blood transfusion in 1984. White was suspended from school because of his disease and became the national poster child for a disease that until then, had been coined a ?gay affliction.?

?It has been nearly three decades since this virus first became known,? Obama said. ?But for years, we refused to recognize it for what it was. It was coined a ?gay disease.? Those who had it were viewed with suspicion. There was a sense among some that people afflicted by AIDS somehow deserved their fate and that it was acceptable for our nation to look the other way.?

The President said the CARE Act is a crucial tool in the fight against HIV/AIDS. ?It helps communities that are most severely affected by this epidemic and often least served by our health care system, including minority communities, the LGBT community, rural communities, and the homeless. It's often the only option for the uninsured and the underinsured. And it provides life-saving medical services to more than half a million Americans every year, in every corner of the country.?

But the President cited statistics that illustrate the pernicious effect of a disease that while less devastating than in decades past, still afflicts a large portion of the US population. ?This is a battle that?s far from over and it?s a battle that all of us need to do our part to join?.AIDS may no longer be the leading killer of Americans ages 25 to 44, as it once was. But there are still 1.1 million people living with HIV/AIDS in the United States, and more than 56,000 new infections occur every single year.?

In addition, the President stated the following stats:
*Gay men make up 2 or 3 percent of the general population, but more than half of all new cases.
*African Americans make up roughly half of all new cases.
*Nearly all new cases now occur in the southern part of the U.S.
*Seven percent of Washington D.C.?s residents between the ages of 40 and 49 live with HIV/AIDS
After Ryan White died in 1990, the act named in his honor was passed later that same year. White?s mother Jeanne White Ginder was present at the signing ceremony today. ?We can't give Ryan White back to Jeanne, back to his mom,? the President said.

?But what we can do -- what the legislation that I'm about to sign has done for nearly 20 years -- is honor the courage that he and his family showed. What we can do is to take more action and educate more people. What we can do is keep fighting each and every day until we eliminate this disease from the face of the Earth.?
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That ban was a disgrace, and anyone who disagrees with the lifting of the ban are arseholes.

I'll defend your opinion 'till I die and all that.. no, not this time.
 
*Gay men make up 2 or 3 percent of the general population, but more than half of all new cases.
*African Americans make up roughly half of all new cases.
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So, only two groups make up roughly 100% of new cases?
 
I think they're trying to say gay, black men make up half of all new cases.
 
There's some overlap between gay men and black men, so those statistics could work.
 
About time.
 
Hidden_Hunter said:
AIDs was the SARS, birdflu etc of the 80s...
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no...AIDS kills people, SARS has something like a 2% death rate or something ridiculous. The thing about AIDS is that its not contagious but still deadly, rather than SARS/Birdflu which were more like contagious non-issues. AIDs was more the pink ribbon breast cancer of the 80s
 
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When ever did universal, irrational fear of something been based on facts?
 
"Does history record any case in which the majority was right?" -Robert A. Heinlein
 
We take it in turns to be a sort of executive officer for the week but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs but by a two thirds majority in the case of...
 
The socialist marxist republic of peasant village. :lol:
 
Come and see the violence inherent in the system. Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
 
NO! WE'RE THE PEOPLE'S FRONT OF JUDEA!
 
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