title: Policies of containment: immigration in the era of AIDS.
abstract: The US Public Health Service began the medical examination of immigrants at US ports in 1891. By 1924, national origin had become a means to justify broad-based exclusion of immigrants after Congress passed legislation restricting immigration from southern and eastern European countries. This legislation was passed based on the alleged genetic inferiority of southern and eastern Europeans. Since 1987, the United States has prohibited the entrance of immigrants infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). On the surface, a policy of excluding individuals with an inevitably fatal "communicable disease of public health significance" rests solidly in the tradition of protecting public health. But excluding immigrants with HIV is also a policy that, in practice, resembles the 1924 tradition of selective racial restriction of immigrants from "dangerous nations." Since the early 1980s, the United States has erected barriers against immigrants from particular Caribbean and African nations, whose citizens were thought to pose a threat of infecting the US blood supply with HIV.
authors.affiliation: New York State Department of Health, AIDS Institute, New York 10001.
authors.forename: A L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Fairchild
authors.forename: E A
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Tynan
mesh_terms: D000163:Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome / Q000517:prevention & control* / Q000635:transmission; D000349:Africa; D017691:Caribbean Region; D004641:Emigration and Immigration / Q000266:history; D035082:Federal Government; D006291:Health Policy / Q000266:history; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D038622:Internationality; D011640:Public Policy; D014481:United States