A brand new Florida property legislation concentrating on residents of China, Syria, Venezuela and different nations is a part of nationwide wave.
Days after a gaggle of Chinese language residents sued Florida’s authorities over its new legislation limiting Chinese language residents from buying property within the state, U.S. Rep. Al Inexperienced this week warned of a “proliferation” of such bans and unveiled federal legislation to ban them.
The proposal would affirm that federal legislation, such because the Honest Housing Act, takes priority over state bans limiting who can and can’t legally buy actual property or farmland. It could additionally permit folks to sue in federal courtroom and have a proper to court-ordered aid together with an injunction in the event that they’ve been harmed by bans just like the one accepted by Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The Honest Housing Act explicitly prohibits discrimination in housing based mostly on nationwide origin, race, intercourse, gender id, faith, and incapacity.
Regardless of the long-standing legislation, Florida this month grew to become the most recent state to pass restrictions on property possession, concentrating on Chinese language, Russian, Iranian, Syrian, Cuban, Venezuelan, and North Korean residents. DeSantis claimed Chinese language folks have been “gobbling up” land within the state and stated the legislation is meant to cease the Chinese language Communist Celebration from gaining affect and spying within the state.
“That isn’t in the very best pursuits of Florida to have the Chinese language Communist Celebration proudly owning farmland, proudly owning land near navy bases,” said the governor, who introduced his 2024 presidential marketing campaign this week.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, additionally a Republican, signed a ban on Chinese language corporations shopping for property in March, and the Texas Legislature had superior an analogous invoice concentrating on corporations and authorities entities headquartered in China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran.
In accordance with the Nationwide Agricultural Regulation Middle, 21 states have legal guidelines limiting international possession of farmland. Greater than 30 states have drafted or superior laws to both tighten these restrictions or introduce new ones.
“I don’t suppose we ought to permit 50 states to have the chance to cross legal guidelines that may impression international affairs, which actually is the province of the chief department of the federal authorities,” Inexperienced told HuffPost on Thursday. “I don’t suppose we must always wait till we get 30, 50, no matter variety of completely different legal guidelines to behave.”
The measures have drawn comparisons to the so-called “alien land legal guidelines” that have been in place within the early twentieth century earlier than being struck down by courts and state legislatures. The legal guidelines prohibited Chinese language and Japanese immigrants from proudly owning land and “severely exacerbated violence and discrimination in opposition to Asian communities,” according to the ACLU, which is representing the plaintiffs within the lawsuit filed in Florida this week.
“Banning shopping for houses based mostly on citizenship and registering your property didn’t bode nicely in historical past… That is the Republicans rewriting the Chinese language Exclusion Act,” said Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.) this week, referring to the 1882 legislation that banned Chinese language staff from immigrating to america.
…while you ask me why we fear about anti-China rhetoric… many individuals can’t differentiate between somebody who works for the CCP from a median Chinese language American. These legal guidelines will enhance anti Asian suspicion & hate. https://t.co/z7j9TuyfA3
— Grace Meng (@Grace4NY) May 17, 2023
Opposite to DeSantis’ declare that Chinese language residents are shopping for giant quantities of property throughout Florida, in keeping with the U.S. Division of Agriculture’s Farm Service Company, foreigners owned solely 3.1% of farmland on the finish of 2021, and a couple of third of that land was owned by Canadians. Lower than 1% of the land — 0.03% of all farmland in the U.S. — was owned by Chinese language residents or entities.
