GOP pushes to ban Chinese students from studying in U.S.

(This story is updated with new comments from Asian Americans Advancing Justice-AAJC)

Republicans in Congress are expected to introduce a bill this week to end student visas for Chinese from China, despite concerns of racial profiling.

Rep Riley Moore (R-W VA) says some 300,000 Chinese students come to the U.S. each year to study, reports Voz.

“We have literally invited the CCP to spy on our military, steal our intellectual property and threaten national security,” the lawmaker warned.

He points to the arrest of five Chinese students here on visas in Michigan. Authorities accused them of photographing joint U.S.-Taiwan live-fire military exercises at a national guard base in 2023.

“We strongly reject this move to paint all Chinese students as a threat and caution against racial profiling based on geography and not fact,” said John Yang of Asian Americans Advancing Justice, AAJC in a statement sent to AsAmNews. “While national security is of utmost importance to Americans, resorting to racism and xenophobia is never the answer.”

“It’s time we turn off the spigot and immediately ban all student visas going to Chinese nationals,” he said to Fox News.

A similar measure introduced in 2020 failed to make it through Congress, according to Fox News.

“From the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Japanese American incarceration during World War II, and continued overblown fearmongering ‘invasion’ rhetoric-history has shown us time and again that exclusionary policies based on stereotyping rarely address actual national security concerns. Instead they fuel prejudice, division and unfair targeting of Asian immigrants and the Asian American community more broadly,” Yang said.