With new land laws, history repeats itself

Asians feel 'besieged', worry about hate crimes as bills are either proposed or passed in nearly 30 US states

Editor's note: Bills aimed at banning Chinese and other nationals from buying land in the United States have triggered fears of anti-Asian hate crimes. This page takes a closer look at how history is repeating itself in the form of new legislation in some states as well as the hardships faced by those who have suffered discrimination.

When Echo King's friend texted her about the passing of Florida's legislation SB 264 in the state Senate on April 11, she did not believe it.

After all, it is 2023, more than 50 years after the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed and more than 10 years after the US Congress expressed regret and issued an apology for the act, and bills such as the Alien Land Laws were a thing of the past.

To verify the text message, she went to the state government's website and read the contents of the bill. To her shock, it was all true: SB 264 would ban citizens, entities and companies from seven countries of concern, including China, from purchasing farmland and other infrastructure. In addition, Chinese citizens are singled out in the bill to be excluded from acquiring any real estate in the state.

Sharing her experience in a Zoom meeting organized by the United Chinese Americans, a nonprofit civic movement, this month, King, an immigration lawyer in Orlando, Florida, said she quickly took action and formed a group with like-minded people from the community to fight the discriminative bill. In four days, they mobilized more than 100 people to go to Florida's capital, Tallahassee, to testify against it.

Their efforts gained support from some legislators and the bill was modified to make an exception for Chinese citizens with non-tourist visas, but still limited to single parcels smaller than 2 acres (0.81 hectares) and at least 5 miles (8 kilometers) from military bases.

Their fight was not enough to stop SB 264 from passing, and on May 8, Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed it into law.

Florida is just one of more than 20 or perhaps about 30 states that have either passed similar bills, or proposed such bills but failed to pass as in Georgia and Kansas, or are still in the legislative process as in Louisiana and Texas.

Josh Yeh, a Chinese American from Kansas, said at the Zoom meeting that he felt "besieged" and is worried that Asian hate crimes will go up as a result of those bills.

"My kids, my descendants, if they want to stay in America, then I need to prepare for them. I have to speak up, hey, United States, you cannot keep doing this. This is not who you are. We believe in equality, we believe in liberty, we believe in pursuit of happiness, right?"

For Yeh, the slate of bills in so many states aiming to ban Chinese and a few other nationals from buying land feels like history is repeating itself when the Chinese Exclusion Act was enacted in 1882 and the Alien Land Laws were passed in many states in the 1910s.

"We are doing this again? In the name of national security, they can do anything. That's really scary to anyone of us. I am thinking for my kids, if we don't do anything, this will get worse," said Yeh, who has started a super PAC(political action committee) in Kansas to get actively involved in local political process.

Yeh was not alone to view the current legislative trend banning China from purchasing land in the US as a repeat of history. A February CNN report about a similar Texas bill SB 147 was titled "History repeats itself with anti-China land ownership proposals".

In the report, Madeline Hsu, a history professor and expert in Asian American studies at the University of Texas in Austin, told CNN, "It's definitely a sort of reinvocation of what people in Asian American studies would refer to as 'Yellow Peril' fearmongering.

"There are ways in which it resonates with what happened to Japanese Americans during World War II, where regardless of citizenship, regardless of nativity, they were racially categorized as enemy aliens," Hsu continued.

One netizen named Mivey, commenting on Alabama's passing of HB 379 prohibiting Chinese citizens, entities and government bodies from purchasing property in the state, succinctly summed up how many Asian Americans are facing the current wave of "land laws" across so many states: "Making American 1882 again".

Yeh was not alone to worry that such bills would drive up anti-Asian hate crimes. Gene Wu, Texas representative who has been fighting hard against Texas bills aiming to prohibit Chinese citizens from buying land in Texas, said in a recent Zoom meeting that "there's increasing evidence that the shooter in Allen, Texas, specifically targeted Asian Americans".

In the May 6 shooting at an Allen mall which, according to the Texas Tribune, largely attracts minority and especially Asian shoppers, the gunman killed eight; seven of them were minorities and four of them were Asians.

Authorities found that the gunman held white supremacy and neo-Nazi beliefs and had Nazi symbols tattooed on his body, including a swastika and the SS lightning bolt logo of Adolf Hitler's paramilitary forces. His social media account showed that he posted about his fantasies of race wars and used violent, hateful rhetoric that targeted Asian people.

Wu said the real troubling issue with bills such as SB 147 is that those bills "would basically be the government announcing to the public that you know Asian people are dangerous, and that you should do something about it".

"And we have real concerns that more targeted attacks would come if they pass bills like SB 147."

History has proved that the danger Yeh and Wu are worried about is real. Laws targeting a specific group — by race or by country — would often fan hatred and violence against that particular targeted group. Horrendous crimes were committed after the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed.