Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1998. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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Reuters NewMedia, Inc.; Tuesday August 4, 11:21 pm EST
Despite fears among his lawyers that he would be arrested immediately upon arrival, Christopher Arnesen, 56, was allowed to enter the country on condition that he see a physician from an approved list and appears at the local immigration office on Aug. 17.
"I was scared beyond belief. But at least its a great relief coming in," Arnesen said after arriving on a flight from Christchurch via Tokyo. "At this stage I don't know whether I'll be able to stay, but at least I'm here. I was expecting to have handcuffs put on me and then be sending postcards to my friends from San Quentin (prison)," he said.
Immigration and Naturalization Service spokesman Chuck DeMore said officers can take into account "certain discretionary factors" when deciding whether or not to detain someone.
"We believe that his physical condition is a compelling humanitarian reason not to put him custody," DeMore said.
Arnesen's case was seen as an important challenge to the U.S. policy forbidding entry to foreign visitors who are HIV positive, or who suffer from AIDS or any other "loathsome or contagious" disease.
Immigration lawyers say the U.S. law is among the strictest in the world, and denies entry to many people who constitute no real public health threat. Arnesen, who believes he contracted the AIDS virus during a 1984 blood transfusion in Rwanda following a plane crash, has fought for three years for the right to return to San Francisco to claim social security disability payments he earned while he lived and worked in the city.
After paying nearly $200,000 in social security taxes during his 28 years of legal residency, he is entitled to approximately $700 a month in benefits dating back to September 1995.
Arnesen, who had worked as a photographer and a tour guide, left the United States in 1994 after he was diagnosed with AIDS because he wanted to be near his family. A Social Security Administration representative mistakenly told him he had to apply for benefits from abroad.
Attorney Sarah Patterson said Arnesen then found himself caught in a bureaucratic maze, barred because of his illness from fulfilling the two-months-a-year residency requirement necessary for obtaining social security payments.
Patterson said that if the Immigration and Naturalization Service permits Arnesen to remain in the country at least through September, he would fulfill those requirements and she would begin the fight to regain the money owed to him.
"Once he gets in, the real work begins," Patterson said. "The appeal process is futile for him. The last appeal that we did took two years, and he doesn't have that much time."
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