Republican leaders say that the governor blocked a bill that would have limited foreign ownership of land in Kansas. This means that foreigners can now own land in Kansas without any restrictions.
The top Republican in the Kansas House said that Gov. Laura Kelly didn’t care about real threats to national security. The bill would have made it illegal for foreigners to own more than 10% of any non-residential land within 100 miles of a military base.
A study from Kansas University found that one acre of owned Kansas farmland was owned by Chinese people. More than 2% of the fifty million acres of private farming land in the state were owned by businesses. The bill that was supposed to pass would require the university to make yearly records of all the foreign properties that are owned by the university.
While vetoing the bill, Kelly said that Kansas does need protections but that the bill was too broad and could hurt “legitimate investment and business relationships.”
Kelly said, “I’m not going to sign a bill that could hurt the future economic growth and prosperity of the state.”
China was Kansas’s fourth-largest trade partner in 2014, after Japan, Canada, and Mexico. They sent more than $14 million worth of goods to China.
Businesses are already limited in their ability to own farm land in Kansas, and more than twenty other states do the same. In the sky over Kansas, close to Fort Leavenworth and the U.S. Army’s College for Training Commanders, a Chinese spy rocket was seen. This is what caused the worry that led to limits on foreign land ownership. Another reason for this worry was the location of a national biosecurity lab near Kansas University.
Some Kansas officials wanted the rules to be even tighter and stronger, while others thought that the rules were already very strong. House Speaker Dan Hawkins said, “Even though the governor doesn’t care, we’ll keep working to protect Kansas and its people from bad actors from other countries who want to take advantage of loopholes in land ownership.”
