Chinese students and researchers could be among those barred from U.S. labs working on sensitive national security topics under a new bill to be introduced later on Thursday.
North Carolina Republican Representative Pat Harrigan will formally present the bill that would block visas for students, researchers and some professionals to stop Chinese, Russian, Iranian, North Korean and Cuban nationals from working in science, technology, engineering mathematics (STEM) roles in the U.S.
Under the bill, citizens from these five countries would be prevented from working in U.S. research labs and in STEM programs propped up by the U.S. government. It is expected it would impact Chinese nationals the most out of the five nations.
“For years, adversarial regimes have exploited our visa system to place their people inside U.S. labs, harvest our research, and move America’s hard-won breakthroughs straight into the hands of foreign intelligence services,” Harrigan, a China hawk and a relative newcomer to Congress, told Newsweek on Thursday. “It should never have been allowed.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in May the U.S. would “aggressively” revoke visas for Chinese students at U.S. universities, eliciting anger from the Chinese government. A spokesperson for Beijing’s foreign ministry said at the time the move “seriously damaged the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese students and disrupted the normal cultural exchanges between the two countries.”
But months later, President Donald Trump defended plans to allow 600,000 Chinese students into the U.S. after GOP backlash. “We’re getting along very well with China and I’m getting along very well with President Xi [Jinping],” Trump said in August. “I think it’s very insulting to say students can’t come here.”
The president last month played down concerns over intellectual property theft and said the higher fees paid by international students help colleges “thrive.”
U.S. intelligence has for years framed Chinese state-sponsored “economic espionage” as a “grave threat to the economic well-being and democratic values of the United States.” The FBI said in 2020 that staring down this threat from Beijing was its “top counterintelligence priority.”
U.S. authorities in June accused two Chinese researchers of smuggling a “noxious fungus” into the U.S. which officials said was classified as a “potential agroterrorism weapon” by scientific definitions. Fusarium graminearum can wipe out essential crops like wheat and can cause vomiting and liver damage if consumed.
Yunqing Jian, 33, and Zunyong Liu, 34, were charged with conspiracy, smuggling goods, false statements and visa fraud.
“These individuals exploited their access to laboratory facilities at a local university to engage in the smuggling of biological pathogens, an act that posed an imminent threat to public safety,” U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, Jerome Gorgon, Jr., said at the time.
The alleged actions “are of the gravest national security concerns,” Gorgon said, alleging Jian was a member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Jian pleaded guilty last month to charges of smuggling a biological pathogen into the U.S. and then lying to the FBI.
A U.S. intelligence report said in August this year there are “increasing risks” from U.S. adversaries that “continue to exploit the
open nature of U.S. institutions of higher education to acquire scientific and technical information to advance their own technological and innovation goals.”
James Risch, the Republican chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a January hearing that Beijing’s reach “spans industries from government to academia, from research laboratories to farms and factory floors.”
“If you are tied to a hostile government, you do not get access to America’s innovation ecosystem. That era is over,” Harrigan said in his statement to Newsweek.
The proposal would be known as the ‘‘Securing Education and Critical U.S. Research and Employment in STEM Act” if signed into law.
The secretary of state and the secretary of Homeland Security would be able to make exceptions on a case-by-case basis. The secretaries would be required to submit reports to lawmakers twice a year, setting out how many waivers they had granted and the rationale behind the moves.
Harrigan introduced legislation in April to block companies linked to China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea from operating on U.S. military bases.
