under the health-related grounds of inadmissibility. Supreme Court interpreted to include gays and lesbians as well.īetween 19, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) designated HIV as a “communicable diseases of public health significance” that made a person inadmissible to the U.S. Public Health Service a definition for “homosexual.”2 The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of 1952 continued this exclusion by denying admission to “aliens afflicted with a psychopathic personality, epilepsy, or a mental defect,” which the U.S. by denying admission to individuals who were found to be “mentally defective” or who had a “constitutional psychopathic inferiority,” which the then Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) interpreted to include gays and lesbians, in accordance to a U.S.
The Immigration Act of 1917 excluded gay and lesbian individuals from immigrating into the U.S. immigration law has discriminated against gays and lesbians, who have only been able to lawfully immigrate to the United States for the last 25 years.
