The Trump Administration is considering a policy that would prevent members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from entering the United States.
The policy, not unlike the 2017 travel ban affecting predominantly Muslim nations, would apply to members of the CCP as well as their families and could authorize the federal government to invalidate visas belonging to individuals already living in the United States.
“Unless otherwise exempt, any intending immigrant who is a member or affiliate of the CCP or any other totalitarian party…domestic or foreign, is inadmissible to the United States,” said a spokesperson for the USCIS.
The Trump Administration has also announced visa restrictions affecting:
- Officials linked to Muslim prosecution
- Students linked to Chinese military institutions
- Officials linked to repression of rights in Hong Kong
- Employees of Chinese tech companies
As of September 8th, the Administration had blocked more than 1,000 visas of Chinese nationals.
The ban on CCP members would be hard to enforce considering the fact that the Party has over 92 million members (270 million if you count family members) and the US government has no way to determine who belongs to it and who doesn’t.
“Going after the entire Party membership is like China sanctioning all Republicans because of frustration with Trump,” argues Jude Blanchette, a China scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Such a move would inflame public opinion in China, as this would target nearly 10% of the entire Chinese population and would do so based on blanket assertions of guilt.”
The ban Trump seeks will no doubt complicate a relationship that is already strained by tariffs and tech restrictions, but he is doing it for the right reasons.
Over the past decade, we have seen the CCP aggressively expand its influence throughout the world, use technology to spy on and steal from the US, alter its constitution to keep Xi Jinping in power indefinitely, detain and torture millions of Muslims, initiate a global pandemic, break its 1997 promise to preserve civil liberties in Hong Kong, and keep its own citizens in the dark with unprecedented levels of censorship and surveillance.
Author’s Note: What Trump is doing here is banning foreign nationals whose philosophy presents a threat to the United States. Critics will say he is stifling freedom of expression, but this policy does not affect US citizens. The idea here is that America belongs to Americans, and people from other countries do not have a right to be here. We will allow immigrants in at our own convenience, not there’s.
Sources:
Trump Administration Signals Tougher Action to Bar Communist Party Members From Immigrating to US
US Weighs Sweeping Travel Ban on Chinese Communist Party Members
US says revoked more than 1,000 visas of Chinese nationals over military links