Some Houstonians have a message: They disagree with a state Senate bill that would ban companies, people and investors in or associated with China from buying property in Texas — and they’re saying it loudly.
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More than 100 people gathered at Houston City Hall Monday to protest the bill introduced in November by state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, a Republican who represents Brenham, the Houston Chronicle reported.
Texas Senate Bill 147 would ban people, companies and governments from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea from buying Texas property. This comes in response to what Kolkhorst and other Republican politicians, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former President Donald Trump, call an alarming trend of China buying large amounts of U.S. land, especially near military bases.
“It’s just not a good bill,” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said.
Turner spoke at the event alongside state Rep. Gene Wu, who organized the rally, and U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat whose district includes most of central Houston.
“It discriminates against majority stockholders in those countries, it discriminates against individuals, and quite frankly, where does it stop?” Turner said in a video he tweeted. “This country may have problems with the governments of those countries, but we shouldn’t extend our problems with the government to individuals or to companies doing business or coming from those respective countries. And so, it’s discriminatory in its practice.”
While the bill hasn't advanced to any committees, it has until May 29, the end of the 88th legislative session, to pass. Gov. Greg Abbott has expressed his intention to sign it.
Real estate developer and investor Kenneth Li told ABC13 that some of his clients have reached out to him after learning about the bill, scared that they won't be able to buy real estate in Texas.
"They are scared the state of Texas is not friendly to foreign people," Li told KTRK.
Kolkhorst issued a statement saying many Texans find the instances of Chinese companies buying land — like 130,000 acres near Laughlin Air Force Base in Del Rio that was to be used for a wind farm — “highly disturbing and a major red flag.”
"Everyone wants to back down, because they are in fear of being called racist," Fort Bend County resident Jules Knouldon told ABC13. "That's not the case here. [Kolkhorst] is trying to protect people's property and businesses without foreign countries coming in and buying up everything."
Houston mayoral candidate Chris Hollins called the bill part of Abbott’s “hateful agenda” and said it must be defeated.
“The right to own property is one of the most fundamental tenets of the American Dream, and heartlessly undermining this principle disregards who we are,” Hollins said in a statement. “SB 147 is offensive, especially for our Asian neighbors who encountered a sharp rise in violence due to harmful rhetoric the last few years.”
Wu, a Democrat based in Houston, said at Monday's rally that his parents wouldn't have been able to buy his childhood home in Sharpstown after emigrating from China if this bill were passed, echoing the sentiments of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the Houston Chronicle reported.
"This type of legislation is what we're facing all over again, that we're unable to separate the people who fled countries from those countries themselves, and we cannot stand for this," Wu said.
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