Under everyone’s noses on December 3, 2019, the U.S. House passed a bill that would open up a backdoor for wealthy Chinese nationals to buy their way into U.S. citizenship by lending money to the U.S. real estate industry.
Democratic Congressman David Cicilline depicted the bill as a trade boost between the United States and Portugal. However, the bill allows Chinese oligarchs to enter America after first buying Portuguese citizenship.
“Congress is getting duped. … [The bill is] creating a new path for Chinese people,” a Capitol Hill source told Breitbart News.
Wealthy Chinese nationals have the ability to buy “golden visa” citizenship from Portugal’s government after just residing in Portugal for 35 days. If House bill H.R. 565 gets the Senate’s approval and becomes law, then new Chinese citizens of Portugal will be able to move into America by acquiring E-1 Treaty Trader or E-2 Treaty Investor renewable visas.
The EB-5 program allows wealthy foreigners to buy green cards by lending money to American businesses, primarily to real estate investors.
Neil Munro of Breitbart notes the implications of visa expansion:
The EB-5 bill is just one small part of Washington’s immigration policies which widen the wealth gap between coastal and heartland states.
For roughly 30 years, immigration has supercharged the economic growth in the coastal states. The vast supply of visa workers and legal immigrants arriving at Los Angeles International Airport, for example, means that California investors can ignore the pool of American labor in heartland states. The coastal investors can fund new job creation centers close to their neighborhoods, and fill those jobs with the legal immigrants who arrive daily from India, Africa, South America, and Asia.
The flow of government-supplied labor denies jobs, investments, opportunities, and wealth to many Americans in slower-growing, lower-priced, interior towns.
States, communities, and families expend a massive effort to birth, rear, and educate millions of young Americans — but coastal investors can ignore them and simply hire workers imported from around the world.
Indeed, these visa programs cause economic disruption in the U.S.
In addition, they serve as an entry point for corrupt international oligarchs from predatory states such as China who wage corporate espionage and use their own companies and economic actors to advance their interests at the expense of American interests.
Migration waves that are seen in the U.S. at the moment can be potentially disruptive to the U.S.’s functionality as a nation state.
This, among many other reasons, demonstrates why policymakers must put a pause to overall migration to the U.S.