Subject: Resident Alien Who Has AIDS Defies U. S. Ban 
Date: Published: 7/27/92 (53 lines)
Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc.

    Technology:
    Resident Alien
    Who Has AIDS
    Defies U. S. Ban
    ----
    By Marilyn Chase
    Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

    SAN FRANCISCO -- The U. S. Immigration and Naturalization Service
 allowed a Spanish citizen with AIDS to return to his adopted home
 here in what supporters called a symbolic victory in their fight
 against the Bush administration's controversial five-year-old ban on
 immigrants with the AIDS virus.
    Tomas Fabregas Boudin, flew to the U. S from the international
 AIDS conference Saturday after publicly annoucing his condition and
 daring the INS to expel him.  But local INS officers declined to
 invoke the law, whisking him through a special immigration booth.
    "Mr. Bush, I am home," he said in a speech before a crowd of
 supporters at San Francisco International Airport.  Mr. Fabregas has
 lived and worked in the U. S. since 1979, and holds a "green card" as
 a legal resident alien.
    In Washington, an INS spokesman said enforcing the ban against
 Mr. Fabregas was never in question due to his status as a legal
 alien.  The agency added that Mr. Fabregas didn't declare that he had
 acquired immune deficiency syndrome upon landing Saturday.  However,
 Mr. Fabregas had televised his challenge and wore a T-shirt with the
 slogan "No Borders."
    While medical experts have vehemently opposed the ban,
 conservative politicians support it largely out of a fear that
 foreign AIDS patients will flock to the U. S. for health care.  The
 AIDS conference was moved to Amsterdam from Boston because of the
 immigration ban.
    The 34-year-old Mr. Fabregas was diagnosed with AIDS in 1989 when
 he was studying for a business degree at the University of
 California at Berkeley.  "In the 3 1/2 years since my diagnosis, the
 fear of my deportation has been constant," he said, adding he wants
 to help the 4.5 million people a year who now must submit to testing
 for the human immunodeficiency virus in order to apply for U. S. 
 residency.
    Despite the INS denial that it sets any precedent, Mr. Fabregas'
 companion Jeffrey Brooks insisted the case symbolically removes "a
 piece of the wall."
    "If he'd represented any kind of public health threat, INS would
 have been compelled to keep Tomas out," said Mr. Brooks.  "The fact
 that they didn't do so means there is no threat."

[This article is made available here by Dow Jones Co. for the
 personal and non-commercial use of callers to this bbs, in the
 hope that it will be of some help to those who are suffering
 from the disease and others who are seeking to help them.]