Today, Congresswoman Lizzie Fletcher (TX-07) voted against the overly broad Protecting American Agriculture from Foreign Adversaries Act of 2024, H.R. 9456, which, if enacted, would require indiscriminate disclosure of land transactions involving “foreign persons” from China, Iran, Russia, and North Korea in the United States.  The effort to pass this federal legislation follows the introduction of laws in a number of states, including Texas, aimed at banning foreign nationals, including visa holders, lawful permanent residents, and refugees, from buying property in the United States.

“It is important that the United States maintain and fortify it efforts to review foreign investments in the United States to determine the impact on U.S. national security, but the bill presented in the House is overly broad and is inconsistent with previous bipartisan legislation tailored to transactions of concern,” said Congresswoman Lizzie Fletcher.  “Instead, this overly broad bill has the potential to discriminate against lawful residents in Texas’ Seventh Congressional District and across the country.  People across our district led the opposition to similarly overbroad legislation in the Texas legislature last year.  For these reasons, I voted no.”

If enacted, H.R. 9456 would make harmful changes to existing law and significantly expand the kind of transactions that the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture is required to report to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS), making it harder for CFIUS to identify and address real threats to our national security.

Congresswoman Fletcher is a member of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, which opposes this bill.