For over a century, a foreign national seeking permission to immigrate to the U.S. could have her application for immigration denied on the ground that she suffers from a serious contagious disease. For just under two decades, a foreign national seeking permission to immigrate could also have her application denied on the ground that she has not been vaccinated against each of a list of vaccination-preventable diseases. Two recently developed moral justifications for the use of such “vaccination-related exclusion criteria” have focused on (a) the right and need of a society to prevent the spread of disease to others and (b) the public good of developing and protecting herd immunity. Herein I accept these two general justifications—especially as they are developed by Mark Navin—and explore their limits. In particular, with a focus on the recently developed vaccine against several strains of HPV, as well the short-lived requirement by the CDC that it, too, be required of prospective immigrants, I argue that neither of the two main justifications for the use of vaccination-related exclusion criteria support their use for diseases such as HPV (or even HIV), the transmission of which, unlike airborne diseases such as measles, pertussis and polio, is subject to a considerable degree of individual control. © 2015 by The Johns Hopkins University Press.

[No Keywords available]

Papillomavirus Vaccines Papillomavirus Infections Wart virus vaccine social justice Emigrants and Immigrants Emigration and Immigration vaccination public health service Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (U.S.) legislation and jurisprudence United States ethics human Humans migrant migration trends