Abstract
In this Comment, I examine the ways the United States has managed its borders and population through health-based exclusions that often serve as a proxy for race-based exclusions. I look specifically at how two sexually-transmitted infections (STIs)—syphilis and gonorrhea—became and remain grounds for inadmissibility. Since 1891, certain noncitizens entering the U.S. must be screened for these two STIs, yet both infections are detectable, treatable, and prevalent in the United States. Through analysis of the laws and policies that govern inadmissibility, I show how mandatory screening for STIs is a product of fear-based disease narratives and racist calculations of risk, with origins in more explicitly racist forms of health control, particularly sexual health control, at the U.S. border. I investigate how the premise of border health security relies on racial, gendered, and geographic othering, where sexual health in particular becomes a site of intervention for the U.S. government to manage threats to whiteness. Ultimately, after overviewing the impacts of mandatory STI screening, I conclude that STIs must be removed from inadmissibility grounds.
[pdf-embedder url="https://www.uclalawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/securepdfs/2024/05/04-Colao-No-Bleed.pdf" title="04 - Colao No-Bleed"]