A ‘For Sale’ sign is posted in front of a single family home on October 27, 2022 in Hollywood, Florida.
Joe Raedle | Getty Images
A gaggle of Chinese residents living and dealing in Florida sued the state Monday over a latest law that bans Chinese nationals from purchasing property in large swaths of the state.
The law applies to properties inside 10 miles (16 kilometers) of military installations and other “critical infrastructure” and likewise affects residents of Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Russia, and North Korea. But Chinese residents and people selling property to them face the harshest penalties. The prohibition also applies to agricultural land.
The American Civil Liberties Union says the law may have a considerable chilling effect on sales to Chinese and Asian individuals who can legally buy property. The suit says the law unfairly equates Chinese individuals with the actions of their government and there isn’t any evidence of national security risk from Chinese residents buying Florida property.
The law “will codify and expand housing discrimination against people of Asian descent in violation of the Structure and the Fair Housing Act,” the ACLU said in a news release announcing the suit. “It’s going to also solid an undue burden of suspicion on anyone looking for to purchase property whose name sounds remotely Asian, Russian, Iranian, Cuban, Venezuelan, or Syrian.”
U.S.-China ties are strained amid growing tensions over security and trade. In nearly a dozen statehouses and Congress, a decades-old worry about foreign land ownership has spiked since a Chinese spy balloon traversed the skies from Alaska to South Carolina last month.
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is predicted to launch a presidential campaign this week, signed the bill May 8. His office didn’t immediately reply to an email looking for comment.
The law is ready to take affect July 1. It’s going to be a felony for Chinese people to purchase property in restricted areas or for any person or real estate company to knowingly sell to restricted people. For the opposite targeted nations, the penalty is a misdemeanor for buyers and sellers.
It applies to military instillations in addition to infrastructure like airports and seaports, water and wastewater treatment plants, natural gas and oil processing facilities, power plants, spaceports, and telecommunications central switching offices.
The ACLU says the law “may have the web effect of making ‘Chinese exclusion zones’ that may cover immense portions of Florida, including most of the state’s most densely populated and developed areas.”
“This impact is precisely what laws just like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the California Alien Land Law of 1913 did greater than 100 years ago,” the lawsuit says.
Those on the restricted list that already own property near critical infrastructure must register with the state or face fines of as much as $1,000 a day. They’re also prohibited from acquiring additional property. The law has provisions to permit the state to seize property from violators.
The variety of states restricting foreign ownership of agricultural land has risen by 50% this yr.
Heading into 2023, 14 states had laws restricting foreign ownership or investments in private agricultural land. Thus far this yr, restrictive laws even have been enacted in Arkansas, Idaho, Montana, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia.
Foreign land ownership has change into “a political flashpoint,” said Micah Brown, a staff attorney for the National Agricultural Law Center on the University of Arkansas.
Brown said the recent surge in state laws targeting land ownership by foreign entities stems from some highly publicized cases of Chinese-connected corporations purchasing land near military bases. Earlier this yr, the U.S. Air Force said that the Fufeng Group’s planned $700 million wet corn milling plant near a base in Grand Forks, North Dakota, poses a “significant threat to national security.”
After a Chinese army veteran and real estate tycoon bought a wind farm near an Air Force base in Texas, that state responded in 2021 by banning infrastructure deals with individuals tied to hostile governments, including China.
