Letter to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt Calling for Elimination of Regulatory Exclusion of Non-Citizens with HIV, Immigration Equality (2008)

The 2008 reauthorization of PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), the legislation which channels millions of dollars in AIDS treatment and prevention support to countries devastated by AIDS, brought an historic end to the provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act that made all non-citizens with HIV inadmissible to the United States. Following this repeal of the law mandating the exlusion of those with HIV, Immigration Equality's letter to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt calls for reform of the agency regulations that continue to include HIV as a basis for exclusion from the United States. The Center for HIV Law and Policy is one of 156 organizations that endorsed the letter to Secretary Leavitt.

Regulations were subsequently issued removing HIV as a basis of exclusion from the United States, ending the HIV ban as of January 4, 2010. For more information, please see CHLP's Know Your Rights fact sheet on the removal of the HIV ban and immigration.