Statement from Stop AAPI Hate: Chinese Student Expulsion Builds on Politically-Fueled Racism Against Asian Americans
Los Angeles / San Francisco, CA May 28, 2020 (LaPost) — In response to the Trump administration’s plan announced today to cancel the visas of thousands of Chinese graduate students and researchers in the United States, Stop AAPI Hate, the leading aggregator of incidents against Asian Americans during the pandemic, noted a disturbing connection between the plan and the president’s racist and xenophobic rhetoric around COVID-19.
While the Trump administration claims to be punishing China over its treatment of Hong Kong, its plans to cancel student visas were reportedly under consideration before the Hong Kong law. In fact, the president and GOP leadership have been pushing anti-Asian sentiment during the pandemic, leading to a rising wave of hate against Asian Americans. Last month, the GOP sent a memo to campaigns stating that China caused the virus by covering it up, Democrats are “soft on China,” and Republicans will push for sanctions on China for its role in spreading the virus.
With the president putting money into campaign ads about China — amid conspiracy theories about China and the virus — the plan to cancel the visas of Chinese graduate students appears not only connected to a concerted act of ongoing racial scapegoating, but an escalation of it. Just yesterday, Florida Governor Rick Scott asserted that “every citizen of Communist China by law has to spy on behalf of their country.”
This type of rhetoric is a primary driver of hate directed at Asian Americans. As Stop AAPI Hate has documented, thousands of Asian Americans have reported acts of hate and violence since the pandemic, and 75% of Asian Americans are concerned about discrimination. In March, an Asian American family of three, including two children, was stabbed inside a store in Midland, Texas.
Stop AAPI Hate leadership — Manjusha Kulkarni, Executive Director of Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council, Cynthia Choi, Co-Executive Director of Chinese for Affirmative Action, and Russell Jeung, Ph.D., Chair and Professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University — issued the following statement:
“There is a disturbing pattern emerging between the racist and xenophobic rhetoric used by Trump regarding COVID-19 and the new efforts to impose limits on Chinese students. We have seen time and again how dangerous it is when leaders scapegoat for political gain and spread racist and xenophobic language. If we do not demand government accountability now for the rising wave of discrimination against Asian Americans, it will become deeply entrenched and cause unimaginable harm and suffering.”
The Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council (A3PCON) is a coalition of more than forty community-based organizations that serve and represent the 1.5 million Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the greater Los Angeles area, with a particular focus on low-income, immigrant, refugee and other vulnerable populations.
Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA) was founded in 1969 to protect the civil and political rights of Chinese Americans and to advance multiracial democracy in the United States. Today, CAA is a progressive voice in and on behalf of the broader Asian American and Pacific Islander community. We advocate for systemic change that protects immigrant rights, promotes language diversity, and remedies racial and social injustice.
