Friday, 04 July 2025

“TOUGHEST BAN In America” – Republican Governor Signs Legislation Prohibiting “Foreign Adversaries” From Buying Land

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Texas has become the latest state to prohibit individuals or companies from adversarial countries to purchase land and real estate.

Gov. Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 17, which bans property purchases in Texas by individuals or groups from China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

The legislation applies to agricultural, commercial, residential, and other properties.

“I signed into law the TOUGHEST BAN in America to keep foreign adversaries off Texas soil,” Abbott said.

“Hostile foreign nations like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are prohibited from buying or owning land in Texas,” he added.

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Fox News provided further details:

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 17 into law over the weekend, prohibiting countries identified as security threats in the intelligence community’s 2025 Annual Threat Assessment, from acquiring “real property” in the state. The countries include China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, and the bill identified “real property” as agricultural land, commercial or industrial properties, residential properties and land used for mining or water use.

Amid heightened global tensions, there has been an increased appetite for protecting foreign asset acquisitions in the United States. However, these efforts have been criticized by some for being overly broad, arbitrary and potentially discriminatory.

In response to Abbott’s signing of S.B. 17, the nonprofit Asian Americans Advancing Justice said it was “outraged” at the legislation that the group said “creates an overly broad net that places innocent foreign nationals at risk of racial profiling.”

A similar defense was made by Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs after she vetoed a bill seeking to stop Chinese land and property purchases in the state, noting the bill lacked “clear implementation criteria,” which opened the door for “arbitrary enforcement.” Hobbs, following backlash over her veto, subsequently described the bill as “a watered-down, weak-on-China bill,” noting it allowed the communist country to purchase land near military bases for up to three years at a time, and followed up this month with her own version of the bill.

Chinese-owned land and real estate in the United States has become a hotly-debated issue in recent years, with some politicians citing potential national security threats.

In particular, national security analysts have said Chinese-owned land near military bases poses an ‘alarming’ threat.

“Texas is the state with the largest Chinese holdings, totaling 123,708 acres, according to Department of Agriculture,” The Epoch Times noted.

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With the new law, Texas is joining a growing number of states that regulate foreign ownership of their land. From January 2023 to July 2024, a total of 22 states have enacted similar laws limiting or banning foreign ownership of land, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service released in August 2024.

State Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, who reintroduced SB 17 earlier in 2024, hailed the Texas measures as “the strongest national security bill that this nation has ever seen from any state.”

“I believe that, from the very bottom of my heart, we are protecting our land and our minerals,” the Republican senator said at a press conference on May 31 following the bill’s passage in the Texas Legislature.

“All of these are our resources that should never fall into the hands of adversarial nations.”

In November 2022, Kolkhorst first introduced the bill, which was killed in the state’s lower chamber at the time.

Under the soon-to-be-enacted law, people from the designated nations living in the United States legally are allowed to purchase residential property but only if those properties serve as their primary residences.

It restricts members of “the ruling political party or any subdivision of the ruling political party” in these nations from purchasing the state’s property. That means CCP members, for example, would not be able to buy land in Texas.

Individuals who act “as an agent or on behalf of a designated country” are also subject to the land purchase ban.


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