(Tribune News Service) — West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin are two of 17 Republican governors who are calling upon the Biden administration to take steps to keep foreign governments from purchasing U.S. land.
The 17 Republican governors, led by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, sent a letter to President Joe Biden on Monday calling on the administration to protect the United States from an “imminent national security threat directly related to the Communist Party of China’s efforts to amass U.S. land.”
Justice, Youngkin, Sanders and the 14 other Republican governors argue in the letter that Republican-led states have already taken extensive efforts to protect against such imminent security threats by enacting foreign ownership laws.
The same letter also is calling upon the U.S. House and U.S. Senate leadership to take similar steps to protect national security.
“For too long, we have allowed dangerous and adversarial governments to infiltrate our country,” the 17 governors wrote in the letter to Biden. “Our states will tolerate such allowances no longer. The Biden administration must reckon with the fact that such entities are plain threats to our national security, our farmers and our citizenry. This is especially true since the CCP enacted a law in 2017 requiring Chinese citizens abroad to collaborate with Chinese security officials on intelligence work — no questions asked.”
In the letter, the governors argue that that until Congress passes such legislation, Biden should use all available tools to prevent the “continued acquisition of American lands by adversarial foreign governments and entities.”
In the letter, the 17 governors said 11 states have already enacted foreign ownership laws, including the state of Virginia. The state of West Virginia also has existing foreign ownership restrictions in effect, according to the letter.
In the letter, the governors didn’t provide a lot of facts or examples of instances where U.S. land has been purchased by a foreign government, although the letter does mention a recent transaction involving land near a military facility in another state.
(c)2023 the Bluefield Daily Telegraph (Bluefield, W.Va.)
Visit bdtonline.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Wetlands at Mattawoman Creek in Charles County, Md., Sept. 24, 2019. (Sarah Lazo/U.S. Army)
