Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) says the United States should place limits on visas for Chinese students.
In an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” Cotton said that Chinese students should not be able to receive visas to earn science-related degrees at colleges in the United States.
“If Chinese students want to come here and study Shakespeare and the Federalist Papers, that’s what they need to learn from America,” he said. “They don’t need to learn quantum computing.”
He added, “It is a scandal to me that we have trained so many of the Chinese Communist Party’s brightest minds.”
Watch the video below:
Several Republican lawmakers have called for legislation to punish China for its handling of the coronavirus outbreak.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said he believes the U.S. should “sanction the hell out of China for spreading pandemics.” He also echoed calls to “cancel some of the debt that we owe to China.”
Sens. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) introduced legislation that would do just that.
And Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called for the U.S. to “rethink its approach to China.”
Republicans have blasted China’s government for reportedly hiding information about the virus in the early days of the outbreak. They have argued that if China reacted sooner, it could have stopped the spread of the virus.
Some Republican lawmakers have even proposed sending a bill to China to cover the costs of the pandemic. They noted that Congress has allocated several trillion dollars aimed at fighting the coronavirus and mitigating the economic fallout.
Meanwhile, Missouri and Missippi sued China for billions of dollars in damages from the pandemic. In a statement, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt blasted China for engaging in an “appalling campaign of deceit, concealment, misfeasance, and inaction.”
“Defendants are responsible for the enormous death, suffering, and economic losses they inflicted on the world, including Missourians, and they should be held accountable,” Schmitt added.
However, experts have noted that it is unlikely those lawsuits will make it very far due to the 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) which is designed to protect foreign governments from lawsuits from within the U.S.
