Republican Senators Tom Cotton (AR) and Marsha Blackburn (TN) are planning to end communist China’s pipeline of foreign students who are filling spots at American universities and taking American STEM jobs.

Cotton and Blackburn, together with Rep. David Kustoff (R-TN), have filed legislation in the House called the SECURE CAMPUS Act that aims to end the China-to-US pipeline of Chinese citizens getting student visas for STEM fields.

As reported by Breitbart News, the United States allows the entry of nearly 500,000 Chinese students every year, more than any other country in the world. And these students are taking seats and spots in US university classrooms, especially in the STEM field, and eventually taking entry-level jobs in various white-collar professions.

In 2019 alone, it was found that China has been sending more foreign students to the United States than any other country in the world, with nearly 117,000 Chinese nationals securing F visas to arrive as students.

Blackburn explained in a statement that Beijing has been exploiting students and research visas to “steal science, technology, engineering, and manufacturing secrets from the US institutions.” She also further claimed that it’s time to secure America’s research enterprise against the communist country’s “economic espionage.” “We’ve fed China’s innovation drought with American ingenuity and taxpayer dollars for too long,” Blackburn added.

Cotton echoed Blackburn’s statements, saying that it’s time to put an end to communist China’s free espionage in the United States.

In summary, the Republican senators’ SECURE CAMPUS Act aims to ban Chinese nationals from getting student visas to the United States for STEM fields, require universities, labs, and other scientific institutions to confirms that they will “not knowingly” employ participants involved in China’s foreign talent recruitment programs, mandate the State Department to publish a list of China’s foreign talent recruitment programs, and ban Chinese nationals from working or getting involved on federal research and development in STEM fields.

The current immigration laws of the United States have been highly beneficial to Chinese nationals. In fact, as documented by Breitbart News, for ten years, from 2008-2018, over 825,000 Chinese nationals have arrived in the United States on green cards. And giving them green cards have paved the way for them to continue their “chain migration” process, where they bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the US, also hoping to get green cards and permanent residency.