Subject: Senate Votes to Bar Aliens With HIV From Immigrating 
Date: Published: 2/19/93 (54 lines)
Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc.

    Technology & Health:
    Senate Votes to Bar
    Aliens With HIV
    From Immigrating
    ----
    By David Rogers
    Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

    WASHINGTON -- The Senate dealt President Clinton a setback by
 voting to bar HIV-infected aliens from immigrating permanently to
 the U. S. 
    The 76-23 roll call followed a 56-42 vote in which 19 Democrats
 joined Republicans in defeating efforts by Majority Leader George
 Mitchell and the Labor Committee leadership to preserve some
 flexibility for Mr. Clinton in dealing with the sensitive issue.
    Since the last years of the Reagan administration, the U. S. has
 followed a policy of barring immigrants infected with the human
 immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, that causes AIDS.  But Mr. Clinton
 has indicated he would end the exclusion, which most dramatically
 affects Haitian refugees.
    The Senate provision would remove this discretion by codifying
 the current restrictions into law, and the amendment yesterday was
 incorporated in a National Institutes of Health bill that was later
 adopted by a 93-4 margin.
    Republicans, behind Florida Rep. Bill McCollum, vowed to seek a
 similar ban in the House, which will have a voice on the NIH bill.
 Though conservatives have tended to take the lead on the issue, they
 have been successful in winning support from moderate GOP women
 lawmakers.  Kansas Sen. Nancy Kassebaum, citing concerns about the
 public costs of treating AIDS patients, joined in support of the
 ban, and among the leading House proponents is Rep. Marge Roukema
 (R., N. J.).
    "If you look at the vote margin, Clinton doesn't have that many
 options," White House spokeswoman Dee Dee Myers said after the
 Senate vote.  "He's going to review it; I think the Senate made a
 pretty strong statement about it."
    The number of Democratic defections illustrates the sensitivity
 of any AIDS-related issue and is a harbinger of the problems Mr. 
 Clinton still faces in his efforts to lift the ban on homosexuals in
 the military.  In the sometimes bitter debate, Labor Committee
 Chairman Edward Kennedy (D., Mass.)  suggested that the Haitian
 crisis, affecting poor black people, added a racial overtone.  Among
 those who have asked Mr. Clinton to lift the ban is Jesse Jackson,
 who has begun a hunger strike in sympathy with Haitian refugees
 denied entrance to the U. S. 

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