Rep. Riley Moore in March introduced a bill in the House of Representatives that would halt the issuance of student visas to Chinese nationals.
The West Virginia Republican’s bill has taken on new relevance in recent weeks as the Trump administration has sought to revoke the student visas for international students attending Harvard University. Chinese students represent the largest share of international students at Harvard.
Called the Stop CCP VISAs Act of 2025, Moore’s legislation would prohibit any individual who is a national of China from being issued a visa “for the purpose of conducting research or pursuing a course of study.” The CCP is an acronym for the Chinese Communist Party.
In an op-ed published in February, Moore sounded the alarm on Chinese spying on American and allied countries’ assets. He cited the case of five Chinese nationals who were charged by the federal government with making false statements, conspiracy, and destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations.
The Chinese nationals, who were students at the University of Michigan at the time of their alleged crimes, were caught near Camp Grayling, a military base in Michigan. The U.S. military, together with its Taiwanese allies, had been conducting live-fire exercises at the military base. The students were permitted to graduate from the University of Michigan in May 2024 and return to China.
“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.
In recent years, there have been several instances of documented spying by Chinese nationals in the U.S.
Fengyun Shi, a Chinese national who was in America on a student visa at the University of Minnesota, pleaded guilty in 2024 of using an aircraft “for the unlawful photographing of [a designated military] installation without authorization on Oct. 2, 2024.” Shi was deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on May 7.
An investigation published in May by students at Stanford University uncovered an alleged Chinese state security operative pretending to be a Stanford student in an effort to recruit sympathetic Americans to spy for the CCP.
Republican Reps. Brandon Gill and Troy Nehls of Texas, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Andy Ogles, of Tennessee, and Addison McDowell of North Carolina are co-sponsoring the legislation in the House. Sen. Ashley Moody, R-Fla., has introduced a companion bill in the Senate.
“For decades, the failed post-Cold War consensus assumed China would democratize and liberalize if we welcomed them into our markets, media, and universities. Instead, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took advantage of Americans’ goodwill and subversively exported agents to our shores to spy, oppress dissidents and enemies of the state, and steal publicly funded research and intellectual property to the tune of billions of dollars,” Moody said.
“Now, by law, nationals of [China] are forced to engage in intelligence-gathering and espionage, and those who refuse face retaliation and persecution against themselves and family members. It is unfortunate that the CCP’s draconian national security law requires us to take such drastic measures, but the risk of allowing this to continue unabated is too great to ignore,” the Florida senator said.
Jacob Adams is a journalism fellow at The Daily Signal
Reproduced with permission. Original here: End Student Visas for Chinese Nationals, W.Va. Lawmaker Urges
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