State laws over foreign land are driving some Chinese-born American citizens to reconsider their politics

Diana Xue has always followed the politics of her husband, friends and neighbors in Orlando, Florida and voted Republican.

This Election Day, she will break that pattern.

Then Florida’s Republican Party-dominated legislature and Republican governor passed a law When Xue banned Chinese nationals without permanent residency in the U.S. from buying real estate or land last year, Xue, who became a U.S. citizen about a decade after coming from China to study, became “woke.” She then believed that the Sunshine State had more or less legalized discrimination against Chinese people.

Florida has proven it reliably Republican in recent years, but Xue said: “Because of this law, I will start to help and turn over every chair I can.”

At least 20 states have passed or proposed “alien land laws” that would prevent Chinese nationals and companies from purchasing real estate or land because of China’s status as a foreign adversary. Other countries are mentioned, but experts say China is constantly at the center of political discussions.

The majority of Republican lawmakers have tightened land laws amid growing fears of intelligence and economic threats from China. When the law was signed in Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis called China the “greatest geopolitical threat” to the US and said the law took a stand against the Chinese Communist Party.

Some Chinese-born people with U.S. citizenship now feel so alienated by the laws that they lean Democratic. Many fear being treated wrong because of their ethnicity.

Tensions between the US and China reached a fever pitch in February 2023 after a suspected Chinese spy balloon was seen over Montana. Shortly thereafter, Republican Party-oriented states such as Missouri, Texas, and Tennessee introduced similar land ownership measures.

The measures all include restrictions on companies or people from China and other foreign adversaries, including not buying land within a certain distance of military installations or “critical infrastructure.” Under some laws, very limited exceptions were made for non-tourist visa holders and people granted asylum.

The National Agricultural Law Center now estimates that 24 states ban or restrict foreigners without residency and allow foreign companies or governments to own private farmland. Interest in restrictions on agricultural land ownership emerged after a Chinese billionaire bought more than 130,000 acres near a U.S. air force. base in Texasand the Chinese company Fufeng Group tried that build a corn factory near an Air Force base on 300 acres in North Dakota.

Liu Pengyu, the spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, expressed concern that such laws would not only counter the principles of the market economy and international trade rules, but “further fuel hostility toward the Asian and Chinese communities in the US, intensify racial discrimination and seriously undermine human rights.” the values ​​that the US claims to cherish.”

State laws banning Chinese nationals from owning land discourage Chinese investors and scare away other foreign investors who would otherwise help the U.S. rebuild its industrial base, said John Ling, who has worked for decades to bring international, mostly Chinese, manufacturing projects to the U.S. to lure.

The laws have also banned real estate agents and brokers. Angela Hsu, a commercial real estate attorney in Atlanta, said it was confusing to navigate the Georgia governor’s law signed in April restricting land sales to some Chinese citizens.

“The brokers I’ve talked to are just trying to figure out what they can do safely,” Hsu said.

At the federal level, the House of Representatives passed a bill in September that would mark agricultural land sales as “reportable” involving citizens of China, North Korea, Russia and Iran. However, the chances of it receiving Senate approval are slim.

China “has been quietly purchasing American farmland at an alarming rate, and this bill is a critical step toward reversing that trend,” said Rep. Dan Newhouse, a Republican from Washington state.

The Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters from California joined several Asian American organizations against the billarguing that the “broad approach” of targeting people from specific countries amounted to racial profiling.

China owns less than 1% of the total foreign-owned agricultural land in the US, far behind Canada, the Netherlands, Italy, Britain, Germany or Portugal.

After Florida’s land bill was signed into law in May 2023, four Chinese nationals filed a lawsuit. In April, an attorney from the American Civil Liberties Union represented them asked a federal appeals court to block it.

The saga prompted the Chinese diaspora in Florida to mobilize. Some formed the Florida Asian American Justice Alliance. Among them was Xue. She became interested in studying the legislature and lobbying. She found that only Democrats like state Rep. Anna Eskamani, an Iranian-American, agreed that the law was xenophobic.

“She said, ‘This is discrimination. I will stand by your side and fight with you,” said Xue.

Hua Wang, board chair of another civic engagement group, United Chinese Americans, said more and more people are becoming aware that these laws “directly affect each of us.”

“There are people in both Texas and Florida who are saying for the first time that they are becoming interested and organizing,” Wang said.

Land laws passed in the name of national security reflect a pattern from World War II, when the U.S. saw the Japanese people as a threat, said Chris Suh, a professor of Asian American history at Emory University. It is difficult to argue that the laws are unconstitutional when on paper they are based on citizenship and mention other countries, Suh said.

Anti-China sentiments have shaped policy for more than 150 years. These included the Page Act of 1875, which strategically limited the entry of Chinese women into the US, and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first broad immigration law based on race.

Policies that target foreigners hurt the bottom lines of all Americans, Suh says. He notes that excluding Chinese workers from railroad work or excluding Japanese immigrants from buying homes does not benefit American railroad magnates and landowners.

“That’s also something to keep in the current context,” Suh said. “One of the key allies of the people trying to overturn Florida’s foreign land law are the people who stand to lose money if they lose the potential. buyers of their land.”

The law makes Chinese immigrants who have acquired citizenship worry about issues such as racism or accusations of being a spy in their own home, Xue said.

“You think it has nothing to do with you, but people look at you — what you look like, what your last name is,” Xue said. “They’re not going to ask you whether you’re an American citizen or not.”

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Terry Tang reported from Phoenix. Didi Tang reported from Washington.