“Quarantine,” as Dr. David F. Musto, a Yale University drug policy historian, noted in his 1986 article “Quarantine and the Problem of AIDS,” comes from the Italian word for “forty days.” That’s the arbitrary length of time ships coming from supposedly contagious areas used to be held at a distance from port to prevent disease from spreading to the city’s population. It’s an old idea, used back then to evoke a feeling of safety from diseases like leprosy, yellow fever, and cholera. On Friday, Australian Prime Minister John Howard declared it a fit idea for AIDS.

More specifically, he said on Friday that Australia should bar HIV-positive immigrants from entering the country, according to an AP report. Howard said Health Minister Tony Abbott was looking into means of tightening Australia’s HIV-exclusive immigration policy, the report adds. Currently, Australia’s health screening program unconditionally bars immigrants with active or untreated tuberculosis but evaluates HIV-positive applicants on a case-by-case basis.

While an Australian move towards a more HIV-exclusive immigration policy would hardly make it the first nation to bar all HIV-positive people entry — Russia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates all unconditionally ban HIV-positive people from entering their borders — the decision would put them among a small and dwindling group of nations maintaining absolute bans. France and Britain have admitted non-citizens infected with HIV, and Costa Rica, South Africa, and Thailand have all lifted HIV-exclusion policies, according to one 1998 report.

Current U.S. immigration policy, signed into law by President Clinton in 1993, excludes HIV-positive people from entering the country. The U.S. first categorized HIV as a “dangerous contagious disease,” added it to its exclusion list, and began requiring mandatory testing of all applicants for the virus in 1987 under President Reagan.

Unlike President Reagan, AIDS isn’t a subject I would normally discuss. Outside of a few debate rounds in high school when the other side chose to debate U.S. HIV-exclusion policy, I knew little about the topic before I set out writing this post. I’m not an activist on the issue and certainly not an expert. I don’t even know anyone who is HIV positive. Still, I think the issue prompts a more thoughtful, hard look at how we react to incurable, mysterious diseases like leprosy and cholera. Australians are (at least somewhat understandably) scared of AIDS, but in this case, perceived security should not trump the individual value of immigrants in Australia or elsewhere. Australians, give out condoms and research cures. Don’t throw up a wall and pretend the black-plague-at-the-gates will disappear if you hide in your own quarantine.

In The Fray Contributor