New York:
A Dutch citizen who arrived in New York on Thursday was among the first HIV-positive foreigners to enter the United States since President Barack Obama's administration repealed a 22-year-old travel ban that many criticised for unfairly stigmatising people living with the virus.
Clemens Ruland arrived at John F. Kennedy Airport on a flight from Amsterdam with his partner, Hugo Bausch, for a one-week holiday.
Ruland, a psychiatric nurse and AIDS activist who works with criminal and troubled youth, told reporters he was thrilled that HIV-positive travellers to the U.S. were now being treated equally.
"For the first time, in a legal way, without lying about my HIV status, I'm very proud to be here as myself," Ruland said.
"People with HIV are not a threat to anybody," he added.
A Canadian citizen who travelled to Buffalo on Monday was the first person to cross the US border on the day the repeal took effect, officials said.
South Korea also eliminated travel restrictions this month for people with the HIV virus. The US ban kept out thousands of people over the years it was in place.
Green card applicants were required to take an HIV test, said Steve Ralls, a spokesman for Immigration Equality, a New York-based legal advocacy group.
He said the ban also complicated the adoption of foreign children with HIV. Opponents of the ban said that it hurt public health policy and was discriminatory.
In 1987, the Department of Health and Human Services added HIV to the list of communicable diseases that disqualified a person from entering the US.
The department tried in 1991 to reverse its decision but was opposed by Congress, which two years later made HIV the only medical condition listed under immigration law as grounds for inadmissibility to the US.