President Bush's decision to override the law by opening a crackin the immigration wall against AIDS sufferers is a political movedemanded by, but not satisfying, the homosexual lobby and the medicalprofession.
After months of battling inside the administration, Secretaryof Health and Human Services Louis Sullivan convinced the presidentto ease requirements for a U.S. visa. That will permit people whoare infected with the HIV virus to attend the international AIDSconference in San Francisco June 20-24, averting disturbances therethat Bush aides said would be politically embarrassing.
But in attempting to keep San Francisco cool, they may havebought worse political trouble. The tightly held decision wasreleased by an unhappy Justice Department bowing to the White Houseon Friday afternoon of Easter weekend with Congress in recess, thepresident in Bermuda and Washington half empty. Senior officialsconfided that Bush may suffer for once again taking the unpopularside in the culture war. Worse yet, the gays won't even give himcredit for it.
Popular opinion was reflected in August, 1987, when the Senatevoted 96 to 0 for Sen. Jesse Helms' amendment to exclude HIV carriersfrom entering the country by listing AIDS as an excluded contagiousdisease. The international campaign against this exclusionthreatened to boycott the San Francisco conference, which otherwisewould attract more than 12,000 people. But no effort was made to getCongress to change the law.
That's what bothers even administration officials who thinkthe Helms amendment too Draconian. Public Health Service officers,furious that laymen from Congress should exercise theirconstitutional responsibility, were determined to get their way - butto do it out of public view.
That resulted in a secret meeting Dec. 12, 1989, in Atlanta.The HHS Centers of Disease Control hosted officials of HHS, State,the Justice Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service(INS). They reached a compact for relaxing the AIDS restrictionsthat involved a prearranged exchange of letters.
On Feb. 15, Assistant Secretary of State Frederick Bernthalwrote HHS asking whether "it would constitute a threat to publichealth" if the HIV carriers were permitted to get specialnon-immigrant visas - for the San Francisco conference, for example.
The prearranged response came Feb. 23 from Assistant HHSSecretary James O. Mason, who said it would not and "will ease theinternational embarrassment being generated by our current policy" (apolicy which in fact is set by law). To maintain confidentiality,the special HIV carriers' visa would be separate from the passport.
That decision was soon leaked to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy'shealth staffers, and the word soon came back from gay leaders: notgood enough. Their cause was taken up by the Public Health Service,which applied tremendous pressure on Sullivan, a physician himself.
Citing "experts" who say entry into the country should beprohibited only for infectious tuberculosis, Sullivan pleaded withBush to "ease the international tension caused by the currentsituation."
After a meeting with Sullivan, the president signed on. ByWednesday of last week, an administrative directive was draftedcalling for 10-day visas for anybody attending internationalconferences designated by HHS without having to say they were HIVcarriers.
To many of the president's subordinates, he had offendedcultural conservatives without beginning to satisfy the homosexuallobby and its allies.
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