House of Representatives Rams Through TPS Amnesty for Hong Kong Residents, Chinese Citizens

Dec 7, 2020
Chinese President Xi Jinping stands by national flags at the Schloss Bellevue presidential residency in Berlin on March 28, 2014. Chinese President Xi Jinping begins a landmark visit to fellow export powerhouse Germany Friday, the third leg of his European tour, expected to cement flourishing trade ties and focus on the Crimea crisis. AFP PHOTO / JOHANNES EISELE (Photo credit should read JOHANNES EISELE/AFP/Getty Images)

The House of Representatives passed the Hong Kong People’s Freedom and Choice Act of 2020 through a unanimous voice vote in the chamber on Monday. The law enables residents of China’s special territory to claim temporary protected status in the United States, thus making them immune to most forms of American immigration law enforcement.

While Hong Kong’s status in the People’s Republic of China remains tenuous, with the island possessing an active anti-Communist movement, the TPS amnesty provided to Hong Kongers represents a serious national security threat to the United States. Hong Kong’s population of 7.5 million people are almost entirely regarded as Chinese citizens, and many Hong Kongers are staunchly loyal to the Communist Party of Mainland China.

FBI agents arrested Alexander Yuk Ching Ma in August, a Hong Kong-born naturalized US citizen. Ching Ma allegedly engaged in espionage on behalf of the People’s Republic of China while working as a CIA agent. Ma allegedly provided classified national security information to Chinese Communist Party officials over the course of a decade, working with an unindicted co-conspirator.

Dan Cadman of the Center for Immigration Studies describes the Hong Kong amnesty as “a potential national security disaster in the making for our country, and if it passes, the intelligence organs of the PRC and its People’s Liberation Army will be delighted at the opportunities it spawns.”

A TPS amnesty will provide a free path to Chinese subterfuge, corporate espionage, and counterintelligence, with dutiful agents of the Chinese Communist Party outfitted with a easy workaround of US immigration laws through claimed or actual affiliation with Hong Kong. The Hong Kong amnesty act will proceed to the Senate, and it’s possible it will fall upon President Trump to veto the act in the name of American national security.