Then why not write it that way in the first place as several other similar bills have in the past?
These bills limiting foreign ownership (primarily from China) have been passed around for a few years. Why the change now? Performative politics?
If it’s performative politics, it is certainly taking advantage of racist elements among Republican voters and motivated by racial animus. Because there was no reason not to limit this to commercial and government interests in the first place if it was purely about national interests.
ETA: Also, it was very deliberate - Kolkhorst is on record that this is also to prevent individuals from acting as agents for those nations. But she appears ready to back down in the face of significant opposition.
Iran and NK is just window dressing sure, but Russian ownership of US real estate is not insignificant. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s in the billions.
I also remember reading recently that in AZ there is an issue with aggressive groundwater withdrawals by a Russian company that is irrigating land to grow cattle feed to ship back to Russia.
The Texas bill it pertains to vacant land or is actually prohibiting homeownership?
I gave one above - for agricultural land, which is still a concern passed around right wing circles, Russian, Iranian, and NK ownership combined amounts to less than 3000 acres in the US. Compared to over 300,000 for China.
As written, any property ownership by citizens of those countries. The stated intent of the bill’s author is, as I cited, to prevent individuals from acting as covert agents to purchase property on behalf of those nations.
ETA: Note that this is not ex post facto. If they already own the property, it won’t be seized or anything like that. There are limits, even for the Lege.
First, I see no evidence that “the majority of Chinese citizens in the US are probably international students.” I suspect the majority are tourists; but if we exclude tourists, we have a huge number of folks with work visas. I’m having trouble finding the statistics; can anyone else?
Second, folks who have work visas (or other forms of permanent residency) may very well want to buy houses or small businesses. If they’re allowed to do so by their visa, but not allowed to do so by the state of Texas, that’s outrageous and possibly unconstitutional.
Third, you say you’re not sure how the bill covers cases of permanent residents owning property, but I’m not sure why you’re not clear on it. You quoted the bill:
It’s probably mostly oligarchs, but money is money, and Russia was added to the list. And the US Govt has been trying to go after it:
Again, political reasons, but that can be extended to China as well. The big difference of course is that there are many more Chinese citizens in the US and more Chinese foreign investors, and thus more well-meaning Chinese citizens living in the US will be negatively affected by such a broad brush as the bill is presently written. I get that.
I think the issue is that based on the way our laws work, banning Chinese companies wouldn’t really make any difference; they’d just get a person to own it in their name. So if the goal is to prevent Chinese land ownership, you kind of have to have all that called out like they do.
I suspect the impact on immigrants and homeownership is collateral damage that the Texas GOP isn’t particularly concerned with. It’s certainly not the goal of the bill.
That was part of my point; this Texas GOP bill isn’t in a vacuum or anything like that. In fact, my upthread link about the California bill is one that is introduced by a Democrat.
I just feel like jumping to conclusions and always backing the woke horse even when it’s wrong does the party more harm than good when trying to get moderates into the fold.
And that worries me, because when Trump isn’t the nominee, a whole bunch of people are going to reconsider voting Democrat. They’ve voted against Trump, but don’t mistake that for some kind of tacit endorsement of the Democratic party’s ideals and views. It just means that there’s someone even more odious as the other party’s candidate. And this sort of knee-jerk attribution of everything to racism, sexism, etc… doesn’t help at all.