U.S. Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.) has introduced a new bill to prevent members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from obtaining green cards.
“The CCP continues to engage in aggressive and reckless behavior on the global stage, including stealing American intellectual property, violating international trade laws, committing heinous human rights abuses, and more recently, failing to act and responsibly share information that could have contained the deadly COVID-19 pandemic,” said Reschenthaler, in a June 15 press release from his office.
Reschenthaler added: “It is clear members of the CCP do not share our American ideals and values. We should not permit them to enjoy all of the privileges that come with being an American citizen.”
Currently, the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) bans immigrants who have been “a member of or affiliated with the Communist or other totalitarian party” from receiving a green card. The INA also has inadmissibility provisions that bans those with such party membership from being granted immigrant visas.
But the language of such rules do not clearly define which Communist party.
The new bill, named the End Chinese Communist Citizenship Act, would amend the INA’s inadmissibility provisions to include specific language to ban individuals with membership in the “Chinese Communist Party or its successor.”
Reschenthaler’s bill would also do away with two current exceptions to the Communist party ban: if immigrants terminate their party membership within 2 or 5 years prior to filing their U.S. visa applications, and if they are relatives of U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents.
It should be noted that according to U.S. naturalization rules, applicants for citizenship cannot naturalize if they have been a member of the Communist party or advocated for communism within the past 10 years.
In June 2019, China’s state-run media Xinhua reported that the CCP had more than 90 million members as of the end of 2018, based on a report by the regime’s organization department. China currently has a population of about 1.4 billion.
Among the more than 90 million, 35.3 percent were workers and peasants, 15.5 percent were professional and technical personnel, and 10.8 percent were business and management personnel.
The CCP is not the only party organization in China. Hundreds of millions of people have joined the Party’s youth organizations in primary and secondary school—the Young Pioneers and the Communist Youth League. All who join these three organizations declare an oath of faith to the Party.
Chinese individuals with Party membership have had brushes with the law in the United States.
Ye Yanqing, a former exchange student at Boston University, was charged with visa fraud for failing to disclose her Chinese military background on her application. She is a Party member and a lieutenant in China’s People’s Liberation Army. Federal prosecutors alleged that she retrieved U.S. military intelligence and sent U.S. documents to China while in the United States.
Recently, a Chinese military officer named Wang Xin was charged with visa fraud after being arrested in Los Angeles on June 7. The officer hid his military background to get a visa to work as a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, and allegedly passed on research information back to his lab in China.
The Chinese military is under the direct command of a Party organ called the Central Military Commission; thus, Wang would have been under orders from the Party.
From The Epoch Times
