While no one would withhold treatment to those Haitians and others who have tested positive for the AIDS virus, since when does the United States have to grant permanent and unrestricted immigrant status to those thus infected?
As I understand it, they would not be confined in any way - not even for treatment. So what's to prevent them from infecting others indefinitely?As I recall, we have always been able to impose immigration health restrictions and have done so for diseases far less lethal than AIDS. Further, we uniformly quarantine children and others with infectious diseases so long as they can infect others.
If this were a new strain of the bubonic plague, is there any question that those carriers would be restricted from contact with others until they could no longer infect others, even if all concerned were already citizens?
Is this going to be another "humanitarian" political boondoggle as when we opened our doors to the downtrodden of Cuba and instead were swamped with Cuba's worst criminals?
It seems that President Clinton is going to honor his easy and vainglorious pledges to AIDS-infected Haitians while conveniently ignoring his absolute promise not to increase taxes on the middle class.
He is asking us to "sacrifice," which now appears to be a euphemism for the well-known "double cross." I am one of many Republicans who would have liked to see Clinton succeed because he sounds so sensible most of the time, but he looks more and more like just another politician - all promises, no progress.
Kay Duncan
Salt Lake City
Editor's note: The U.S. Senate voted 76-23 on Feb. 18 to continue to prohibit HIV-infected people from moving to the United States permanently.