Should Immigrants With Hiv Be Allowed to Come to the States for Treatment?

Question by : Should immigrants with hiv be allowed to come to the states for treatment?
Should illegal aliens with HIV also be deported? Will taxpayers be paying for their treatment?
How do you feel about this decision to allow people with diseases into the U.S. knowing the taxpayers will foot the bill for these people?

I am all for Legal immigrants, but do not believe if they have health issues they should be allowed to enter unless they can pay for their own medical treatment and not a burden on taxpayers, do you agree?
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Doctors see hope for treatment with the end of a federal ban on immigrants who are HIV-positive
By Jennifer Brown
The Denver Post
Posted: 01/31/2010 01:00:00 AM MST

Colorado doctors who care for patients with the virus that causes AIDS hope a new federal law will help destigmatize the disease and push immigrants to seek treatment.

Until this month, the United States banned people with HIV from traveling into the country. Testing positive for the virus also was grounds for denying a green card to live here permanently.

Widespread fear of deportation among Colorado’s immigrant community — mostly people from Mexico but also those from African countries — has kept immigrants from getting treatment and even getting tested for the virus, doctors said.

“This will improve the outcomes for immigrants with HIV here,” said Dr. Tom Campbell, head of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. “They’re not going to be afraid to come in and get treated.”

Campbell cared for a young undocumented immigrant last summer who had never had treatment for HIV and was admitted to the hospital with AIDS-related pneumonia.

“He was not surprised when we told him he had HIV,” said Campbell, who suspects the man had known for a while.

Avoiding detection

Immigrants with HIV who would have remained healthy on drug treatment often avoid seeing a doctor and end up with AIDS — mainly because they don’t want any record of having the virus, worrying it could affect their immigration status now or in the future.

AIDS activists have argued for years that including HIV on the list of infectious diseases — among tuberculosis and syphilis — that can preclude entry into the country was illogical. Unlike tuberculosis, the only way to transmit HIV is through intimate contact.

“There was no medical basis for having HIV on this list in the first place,” Campbell said. “It was a political decision . . . based on irrational fear and stigma.”

International health officials have not held an AIDS conference in the United States in two decades, since a Dutch AIDS educator with HIV was held for several days trying to enter the United States. The last international AIDS conference held in this country was in San Francisco in 1990.

The lifting of the HIV ban through a change in immigration law was pushed by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass, and signed into law by President Barack Obama last fall. It took effect this month.

Clinic gathering clients

About 10 percent of the 1,400 patients at the university’s infectious diseases division and Colorado Center for AIDS Research are immigrants, and the university recently opened a new HIV clinic just for immigrants. It has 14 patients so far — two-thirds are from Mexico and came to the U.S. for work, while the rest are from Africa, said Dr. Jose Castillo, a university physician who runs the clinic.

A 60-year-old woman from Ethiopia who believes she contracted the virus at a dental clinic back home is among Castillo’s patients. Martha, who doesn’t want her full name used because of the stigma associated with HIV, came to Denver in 2007 to help care for her grandchildren.

She said she didn’t know she was HIV positive when she filled out her visa paperwork to visit the U.S. After about four months in Colorado, Martha applied for a green card and had to take a blood test. When she found out she had HIV, she and her daughter feared immigration officials would ship the whole family back to Ethiopia.

“I said, ‘Oh, my God!’ ” recalled her daughter, Lydia, who also did not want her full name published. “Where were they going to send us? I was worried too much.”

After two years, including home visits by immigration officials, Martha was granted a waiver and received a green card despite her HIV status. She takes one pill each day and feels healthy, she said.

Jennifer Brown: 303-954-1593 or [email protected]

Read more: http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_14303362?source=rss#ixzz0eDK8WnWX

Best answer:

Answer by hothotheat
YES.
Either that or, US doctors come to their country and help them

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!

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