Texas Senate has passed a bill banning citizens from China and other “hostile nations” from buying farmland

Texas Senate has passed a bill banning citizens from China and other “hostile nations” from buying farmland.

A Texas Senate bill that would have barred citizens from China and three other countries from buying land in the state was recently overhauled after backlash.

Senate Bill 147, authored by Republican state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst of Brenham, saw major changes before it passed in the chamber Wednesday.

On March 2, 85 people testified against the bill in a hearing before a Senate committee, including Xiaoyu Wu, a software engineer from China who received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin and recently bought a house in South Austin with his wife, Cheng Xue.

“Before that I saw the bill, I feel like I was so welcomed by our society, our community. But when I saw the bill, I was shocked,” Xue said. “We really want to pursue our dream.”

Armin Salek, a lawyer and founder of the Youth Justice Alliance, said that the previous versions of the bill did not distinguish between individuals and the countries they live in.

“While I don’t think that Senator Kolkhorst was intending to create prejudicial law … it set language for incredibly damaging legislation,” Salek said. Passed in the Texas Senate in a 19-12 vote, SB 147 would ban citizens of China, Russia, North Korea and Iran without documentation from buying agricultural land, oil and gas land, timberland and mining land in Texas. 

The version of the bill that passed in the Texas Senate was a major retreat from its original goal: to bar citizens of the four countries from buying any land in the state, even if they are legal, permanent residents. The bill no longer applies to legal residents from those countries, such as green-card holders and people with dual citizenship.

Since the bill’s proposition, Kolkhorst has insisted that it serves as a national security protocol and does not target individual citizens.

“You can come and buy your company. You can have your restaurant,” she said after roughly two hours of debate on Tuesday before the Senate voted to approve the bill.

Despite this change, many say that the language of the bill fosters an uneasy relationship between Texas and immigrant communities.

“Although I am no longer targeted because I have my permanent residency … it took me 10 years,” Wu said. “I think it is still discriminatory.”