Texas Legislature Targets Chinese Land Ownership
By Romen Basu Borsellino | 12 May, 2025

While supporters of SB 17 claim it will make the state safer, hundreds of protesting AAPI residents say otherwise.

It may soon be illegal to buy land in the state of Texas if you’ve committed the crime of…being Chinese. 

On Friday Texas’s legislature joined their senate in passing SB 17, a bill that would prevent most residents of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea from owning land in the state. 

Who exactly that includes is still up for debate as the two chambers reconcile their respective bills’ differences. 

Earlier versions would have prevented literally any non-US citizen from those countries from owning land, even those residing here. The latest iteration of the bill would likely exempt green card holders and those with certain visas from the ban. 

Proponents of the bill argue that it will help ensure national security. But if that’s what this bill is really about, one must ask: Why single out several countries. Do adversaries of the US not exist in every corner of the world?

An amendment to the bill would also give Texas Governor Greg Abbott the ability to add countries to the ban as he sees fit. He would not be required to justify targeting additional groups of people. 

The bill is being decried as racist. 

Minority Leader Gene Wu, the top Democrat in the Texas House of Representatives, happens to be Chinese. On Thursday, he Tweeted “Senate Bill 17 will strip away property ownership rights of AAPI immigrants, based solely on national origin.” 

Wu also made the point that "What this will mean is across the board discrimination against all Asians."

Wu’s point may simply be a practical observation. But maybe it’s a strategy for fighting back: a call to all Asians in the state to join the fight, whether or not this bill directly targets them. 

Census data has shown that Asians are the fastest growing population in Texas. As of 2023 they accounted for 1.7 million of Texas’s 31.3 million residents. Asians also have the biggest buying power. Take the Houston metro area, for example, the state’s most populous. Asians have a roughly 40% greater median household income than the general population. 

A true show of force, not just by Chinese Texans but all AAPI Texans, could have an impact, be it through financial boycotts or otherwise. And if this past weekend is any indication, they will not let this bill become law without a fight. On Sunday, hundreds of protestors flooded the streets of Austin, Texas’s state capital, in protest. Signs and chants decried the bill as racist. 

In 2023, State Sen. Lois Kolkhorst failed to pass a version of this bill that was effectively the same. What does it say about Texas's cultural shift — or our country’s, for that matter — that something deemed too racist just two years ago is now fair game. 

Since president Trump’s election, laws targeting China have become commonplace. In November Governor Abbott made three executive orders targeting China in a single week. In March US Rep. Riley Moore of West Virginia was joined by several Republican co-sponsors in introducing a bill to revoke the visas of Chinese students studying in the United States.