On May 21, 2009, Francisco Ibáñez-Carrasco was asked by the United States Customs and Immigration agent, at the pre-clearance at the Vancouver International Airport, if he was HIV positive.
With antiretroviral-induced chiseled cheeks, Francisco is the envy of all with dreams of stardom on America's Next Top Model, and is easily recognizable as possibly HIV positive to those in the know. But who really knows why he was asked, "Are you HIV-positive?" It could be because he was flying to San Francisco, or that his name is frequently mangled by non-Latinos, or on account of his fabulously flamey tattoos. Maybe, like the sixtysomething Canadian scholar and psychologist Andrew Feldmar who was denied entry at the U.S. border in 2007, the officer Googled him and read incriminating text—an article written by Feldmar about hallucinogenics as therapeutic treatment that suggested Feldmar's first-hand experience with this method 40 years ago. As a Canadian activist, scholar and porn writer, perhaps Francisco's creative queer work popped up. Yo soy la malinche...
This ban, explicitly restated in 1993, has remained in place despite organizing and resistance from many—health professionals, queers, and/or immigrant rights activists. Ironically, with the President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief in 2008, George Bush did repeal the immigration ban, yet HIV remains on the list of communicable diseases that are grounds for inadmissibility under the Department of Health and Human Services ( HHS ) . The U.S. is a member of an exclusive club, as Russia, Saudi Arabia and a small number of other nations also prohibit those with HIV from entering.
A Canadian citizen and resident, Francisco works part-time in the U.S., and will apply for a waiver. These have been, and continue to be, difficult to get and cost money he, and the many others that have applied, often do not have. For example, according to the New York-based Community HIV AIDS Mobilization Project ( CHAMP ) , between 1987 and 1992—while HHS controlled the waiver process—only three such waivers were granted. Today, in order to get the waiver, applicants must meet 12 requirements including buying very expensive private health insurance for the duration of their stay in the U.S.
Our Obama administration, which cannot quite say "equal rights for queers" and is just starting to say "universal healthcare," ideally will, under Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, repeal the HHS ban on HIV as a category of inadmissibility. But will Obama direct Immigration and Customs Enforcement ( ICE ) to identify and release everyone prohibited entry or detained because of their HIV-positive status?
Three days after he was refused entry—and coerced to sign an affidavit and banned from entering the nation where he often works and has had lovers die—I shifted from foot to foot in the U.S. Immigration and Customs pre-clearance queue at the Ottawa International Airport, angry about returning to Chicago, which after 10 years is now home.
I am clutching my green card—with "May Be Revoked by the Department of Homeland Security" written on the back—waiting to have my fingerprints taken and my iris scanned. ( Focus! ) All of my interactions with the border have taught me well: Never talk back. Never ask questions. Try to look less freaky. Never say you are a professor, say "teacher" as it less threatening to men.
The list of acts, associations, bodily states or professed beliefs that are grounds for being detained, and potentially rejected, for admission into the U.S. is long. In addition to being HIV-positive, grounds for inadmissibility include being a member of the Communist Party or other totalitarian group; having a criminal background, a physical or mental disorder, and associated harmful behavior; being a prostitute or practicing another commercialized vice; the ever popular engaging in acts of moral turpitude; endangering U.S. foreign policy—and on and on.
The border agent asks me none of these questions, and simply hands me my documents and says, "Welcome home." I am returning to Chicago—a city overflowing with too many relegated to less-than-full citizenship. My friend Juan, in the U.S. almost 14 years, worked at the suburban factory and got "fired" in 2008 after the federal government sent out an "Employer Correction Request" or, as more popularly known, "no-match" letters. There are many undocumented youth I know at my own university—and those I don't—who pay cash on the table for tuition and often work at physically demanding sub-wage jobs for more than 40 hours a week. There's Detra Welch, whose parental rights were terminated solely because of her prior history of repeated incarceration. And there are the thousands in Chicago with felony convictions who are prohibited from acquiring licensure in specific professions, from barber to social worker.
Queers, aliens, ex-cons, diseased bodies—the list is long and, in my world, there are more of us than of them. What if we wrote the policy on admissibility? What we staffed the borders? Adjudicated who was permitted to work and to get an education? Decided who was fit to parent ( and then made it possible to do so ) ? What kind of a brave new world order could we imagine? It'd be one where the smarts, beauty, labor and fierceness of people like Francisco get the key to the city—not the boot.
Erica Meiners is an associate professor of education and women's studies at Northeastern Illinois University and a social-justice activist.
