The US State Department has for years prioritized visas for Communist China over democratic India.
On 15 May 2022, David Chou, a Las Vegas security guard, entered a Taiwanese Church in Nevada, and opened fire, killing 1 and injuring 5. Chou, now charged with first degree murder, is a member of the “Chinese Peaceful Unification” association, a branch of the CCP’s global espionage network, the United Front Work Department. Chou’s attack on Taiwanese Americans received scant coverage in US media, which has for years run cover for the CCP, but many are asking how CCP agents like Chou gain US citizenship. And why does the Biden administration condemn India at every turn whilst showing favour to Communist China, after it spread its Wuhan virus across the globe, costing the United States $50 trillion in damages and destroying civilization as we knew it?
We don’t read about Indian immigrants stealing US military or industrial secrets or murdering citizens in their hour of pray. But the US State Department has for years prioritized visas for Communist China over democratic India. Every visitor to the US must fill out a questionnaire, upon arrival, which includes: “Have you ever been or are you now affiliated with the Communist Party?” The US State Department selectively ignores this question for Chinese nationals, allowing the CCP to plant its agents at every level of the US government and institutions of finance, technology and higher education. A Senate aide in Washington told me: “Basically that’s how China stole all of its high-tech weapons and industrial programs from the US. And now they’ve got cyber spies hacking into our banks and intelligence and we don’t know how this is going to end.”
Most Chinese spies prosecuted by the US Department of Justice entered the US on student or work visas and obtained citizenship. CCP entities today own millions of acres of US farmland and real estate and operate Confucius Institutes at universities nationwide. The CCP’s propaganda department, Xinhua, established in 1931 as the Red China News Agency, has a huge media tower in New York’s Times Square and a multimillion-dollar complex in Washington, DC. Every US city is peppered with China Daily newsboxes, every cable service broadcasts CCP propaganda channels, in English and Mandarin. CCP cash dominates US foundations and think tanks, which churn out books and programs proclaiming that the 21st century belongs to the CCP, a totalitarian dictatorship that openly states in Xinhua editorials its goal of “destroying America from within.”
The Donald Trump administration sought to reverse this trend by refusing visas to CCP members and labelled the CCP’s Confucius Institutes as “entities advancing Beijing’s global propaganda and malign influence.” But Biden stripped away these sanctions, returning to the pro-CCP policies of Clinton, Bush, and Obama, who cut visas to India while increasing visas for China. On 19 January 2012, US ambassador to China, Gary Locke, said, “President Obama signed an executive order to significantly increase legitimate travel and tourism to the US, with the goal of increasing visa-processing capacity in China by up to 40 per cent in 2012. In 2011, we processed more than 1 million visa applications in China, an increase of 34 per cent over the previous year, and already we have processed 48 per cent more visas in China compared to 2011.”
Obama continued the Bush administration’s War on Terror, targeted Indian visa applicants with Muslim surnames. I know of many children and relatives of Indian officials who were accepted into US universities but had their student visas rejected due to “terror alerts.” Shahrukh Khan, India’s beloved Bollywood superstar, was interrogated at Los Angeles international airport in 2016 when his name appeared on a computer “alert” list. In 2012, Shahrukh flew to New York on a private plane with the Ambani family to receive a prestigious fellowship at Yale, but was held for 2 hours for a “terror flag.” In 2009, Shahrukh was detained in New Jersey when he arrived for a South Asian cultural festival. Shahrukh later said in an interview: “I became so sick of being mistaken for some crazed terrorist who coincidentally carries the same last name as mine that I made a film, subtly titled My Name is Khan (and I am not a terrorist) to prove a point. Ironically, I was interrogated at the airport for hours when I was going to present the film in America for the first time.”
The US State Department apologised to Shahrukh for the inconvenience—US Ambassador to India, Richard Verma posted a lame tweet stating: “Your work inspires millions, including in the US”—but if you are from India your name is Khan, you will be met with suspicion, even if you are one of the most famous people on the planet. India, a vital ally and strategic partner of the US, should not be pushed to the back of the visa queue while CCP agents are allowed free reign to “destroy America from within.” I hope India raises this matter at the next Quad Summit.
Maura Moynihan is a New York based journalist and author, specialising in the Chinese Communist occupation of Tibet. Her website is: mauramoynihan.net