Republican lawmakers have introduced a new bill to prevent Chinese nationals from getting US student visas, claiming the visas are an invitation to the Chinese Communist Party to spy on the American military and steal intellectual property.
Leading the introduction of the “Stop CCP Visas Act of 2025” is Rep. Riley Moore, who sits on the Appropriations Committee.
“Every year we allow nearly 300,000 Chinese nationals to come to the U.S. on student visas. We’ve literally invited the CCP to spy on our military, steal our intellectual property, and threaten national security,” Moore said in a statement to The Epoch Times.
“Congress needs to end China’s exploitation of our student visa program. It’s time we turn off the spigot and immediately ban all student visas going to Chinese nationals.”
In his statement, Moore gave as an example the case of five Chinese nationals who were indicted in October 2024 for taking photographs of a remote military site in Michigan. All five defendants were study at the University of Michigan as part of its exchange program with China’s Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
The new bill would change the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) to “prohibit the admission of Chinese nationals as nonimmigrant students, and for other purposes.”
Cosponsors of the bill include Reps. Brandon Gill, Scott Perry and Addison McDowell.
“The Chinese Communist Party is fundamentally opposed to our American values, and yet we have handed out hundreds of thousands of student visas to Chinese nationals, many of whom are state-sponsored spies,” Gill said in a statement, also to The Epoch Times.
The FBI has described China as the “world’s principal infringer of intellectual property” and an historical sponsor of “economic espionage,” which includes using students as “non-traditional collectors of intellectual property.”
The annual cost to the US economy of intellectual-property theft, pirated software and the theft of trade secrets is estimated to be between $225 billion and $600 billion.