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

On election day, she will break this pattern.

When the GOP-dominated Legislature and Republican Gov promulgated a law Last year, barring Chinese citizens without permanent residence in the US from buying property or land, Xue, who became a US citizen about a decade after coming from China for college, had an “awakening”. She felt then that the Sunshine State had more or less legalized discrimination against the Chinese.

Florida proved it definitely republican in recent years, but Xue said, “Because of this law, I will start helping by overthrowing every place I can.”

At least two dozen states have enacted or proposed “foreign land laws” that target Chinese citizens and companies from buying property or land because of China’s status as a foreign adversary. Other countries are also mentioned, but experts say China is at the center of political discussions.

Most Republican lawmakers pushed the land laws amid growing fears of intelligence and economic threats from China. At the time of signing the Florida law, Gov. Ron DeSantis called China the “biggest geopolitical threat” to the US and said the law takes a stand against the Chinese Communist Party.

Some Chinese-born people with American citizenship now feel alienated by the laws to the point of leaning Democratic. Many fear being mistreated because of their ethnicity.

US-China tensions peaked in February 2023 after a suspected Chinese spy balloon was observed over Montana. Soon after, GOP-leaning states like Missouri, Texas and Tennessee introduced similar land ownership measures.

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

The National Farm Law Center now estimates that 24 states prohibit or restrict nonresident aliens and foreign businesses or governments from owning private agricultural land. Interest in farmland ownership restrictions arose after a Chinese billionaire bought more than 130,000 acres (52,600 hectares) near the US Air Force Base. base in Texasand the Chinese company Fufeng Group sought to build a corn plant near a 300-acre (120-hectare) Air Force base in North Dakota.

Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, expressed concern that such laws not only contravene the principles of the market economy and international trade rules, but “further fuel hostility towards the Asian and Chinese community in the US, it intensifies racial discrimination and seriously undermines it. the values ​​that the US claims to hold.”

State laws barring Chinese citizens from owning land discourage Chinese investors and scare off other foreign investors who would otherwise help the U.S. rebuild its industrial base, said John Ling, who has worked for decades to attract international projects, especially Chinese, manufacturing in the USA.

The laws also outlawed real estate agents and brokers. Angela Hsu, a commercial real estate attorney in Atlanta, said it was confusing to navigate a law Georgia Gov. signed in April restricting land sales to some Chinese nationals.

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

At the federal level, the House approved a bill in September that would flag “reportable” farmland sales involving citizens of China, North Korea, Russia and Iran. However, the chances of it getting Senate approval are slim.

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

Rep. Democrat Maxine Waters, D-Calif., has joined several Asian-American organizations opposing the billarguing that its “broad approach” to targeting people from certain countries amounts to racial profiling.

China owns less than 1% of all foreign-owned farmland in the US, far behind Canada, the Netherlands, Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany or Portugal.

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

The saga provoked the mobilization of the Chinese diaspora in Florida. 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, who is Iranian-American, agreed that the law was xenophobic.

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

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

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

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

Anti-Chinese sentiment has shaped politics for over 150 years. These included the Page Act of 1875, which strategically limited the entry of Chinese women to the US, and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first comprehensive immigration law based on race.

Policies targeting foreigners affect the bottom line for all Americans, Suh said, noting that excluding Chinese workers from railroad jobs or Japanese immigrants from buying homes does not benefit U.S. railroad tycoons and owners.

“It’s something to keep in the current context as well,” Suh ​​said. “One of the key allies of the people trying to overturn Florida’s alien land law are the people who stand to lose money if they lose their potential. the purchasers of their land.”

The law makes Chinese immigrants who have obtained citizenship worry about things like 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 — how you look, what your last name is,” Xue said. “They’re not going to ask if you’re an American citizen or not.”

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