HOUSTON (The New York Times News Service) -- Despite contributing billions to the international battle against AIDS, the United States remains one of only 13 nations -- including Iraq, Qatar and Armenia -- to ban HIV-positive foreign visitors and immigrants.

Public health officials and advocates are calling on the U.S.

government to lift the long-standing travel ban for foreigners with HIV, calling it draconian and politically motivated.

Congress appears to be listening. The U.S. Senate is expected to debate the ban this month as part of President Bush's popular, global AIDS relief package.

The U.S. has faced harsh criticism internationally for having one of the most restrictive immigration policies for HIV-positive foreigners, particularly in comparison to other Western nations. Under U.S.

law, foreigners with HIV are not permitted to immigrate to the United States -- or even visit temporarily -- unless they qualify for narrowly defined waivers.

The Senate Foreign Relations committee passed an amendment this month to the $50 billion AIDS funding bill that would mark the first step toward lifting the ban, which dates to 1987. U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., has sponsored a House version of the amendment.

Some public health and human rights advocates said the ban's repeal is overdue.

"There is no scientific basis whatsoever for the travel ban, and there never has been," said Dr. Mark W. Kline, head of retrovirology at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and director of the school's AIDS International Training and Research Program. "It was a political decision."

The ban has damaged the country's reputation, critics say. It prompted a boycott of the U.S. by prominent AIDS advocacy and research groups, which have not held a major international conference in the U.S. since the early 1990s.

"It's kind of embarrassing when we're one of only 13 countries in the world that doesn't allow visitors to come who are HIV-positive," said John A. Nechman, a Houston immigration lawyer who specializes in immigration cases involving HIV-positive clients. "And we're talking about Sudan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia -- some pretty despotic areas of the world."

The U.S. government's first medical immigration ban dates back to the late 1800s, when "persons suffering from a loathsome or dangerous disease" were prohibited from entering the country.

Under federal law, the U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services has the discretion to determine what constitutes a "communicable diseases of public health significance" that would bar a non-citizen from entering the U.S. HHS now lists eight diseases -- including HIV, tuberculosis, leprosy and gonorrhea -- as basis for denying admission to the U.S. as a tourist or immigrant.

The federal health agency added HIV/AIDS to the list in 1987, prompting backlash from the international AIDS community. In 1991, HHS officials proposed lifting the ban on people with HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, which led to protests by conservatives. In 1993, Congress took discretion over AIDS admissions away from HHS officials, passing legislation that specifically banned people with HIV under the Immigration and Nationality Act.

HHS officials did not return phone calls last week for comment on the travel ban.

According to U.S. State Department statistics, 938 immigration applicants were denied admission to the U.S. in 2007 because they had a communicable disease. However, of those applicants, 478 were later allowed entry after receiving waivers from the federal government.

State Department spokesman Steven Royster said there was no breakdown of applicants' diseases available.

The U.S. does not require HIV tests for all foreign visitors -- only for people planning to immigrate permanently. However, short-term visitors are asked in the visa application process if they have a communicable disease.

Martin Rooney, a 47-year-old HIV-positive activist from Surrey, British Columbia, was turned away Nov. 17 at the Peace Arch port of entry on the northern border with Washington. At the port, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection inspector saw Rooney's Canadian medical disability card, he said, leading to questions about his HIV status.

Rooney said he was detained, fingerprinted and checked against an FBI database before being told to return to Canada and apply for an HIV waiver. He has not been back to the U.S. since, despite traveling freely back and forth for more than 16 years, he said.

"This has been a major, major inconvenience," he said. "I absolutely cannot do a damn thing in the U.S. now."

Helen Kennedy, executive director of Egale Canada, which advocates for gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans-identified Canadians, said the HIV travel ban is harmful.

"I know of a lot of people who have been turned away because they are HIV-positive," she said."It encourages us to go further in the closet.

It makes people lie on their forms, and that is not something we want to do. I think it's time -- beyond time, actually, to have the ban lifted.

Though the travel ban amendment is attached to the widely supported AIDS bill, supporters were still cautiously optimistic.

Even if Congress removes the anti-HIV language from the immigration law, it would fall to HHS to decide whether HIV should remain on the list of diseases that bar entry to the U.S.

In 2006, the United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS stated that there is "no public health rationale for restricting liberty of movement or choice of residence on the grounds of HIV status."

Kline, the Baylor HIV/AIDS specialist, said the ban may indirectly help spread HIV by stigmatizing the disease and deterring people from seeking treatment.

"We know that treatment can suppress the virus in the body and actually contribute to prevention by making people with HIV less likely to transmit the virus. It's sort of a self-defeating thing," Kline said.

"If you have policies or laws that cause people from testing, from acknowledgment of their infection and treatment, you actually help to perpetuate and promote the spread of the disease." The United States is one of 13 countries with a law that bans travel and immigration for people with HIV. The other countries:

-- Armenia

-- Brunei

-- China

-- Iraq

-- Qatar

-- South Korea

-- Libya

-- Moldova

-- Oman

-- Russian Federation

-- Saudi Arabia

-- Sudan (China has proposed lifting its ban.)

Copyright 2008 The New York Times News Service. All rights reserved.