HOUSTON - With his hat, big belt buckle and cowboy boots, Ly looks the part of a Texan and even speaks with a twang. He has served in the US Navy but on Saturday, he was doing battle on a different front – against a proposed law that wouldAbout 300 protesters marched through Houston’s Chinatown on Saturday, shouting “Stop Chinese hate” and “Texas is our home”. Demonstrators wearing a Chinese dragon costume marched alongside, and others pounded and clanged drums and cymbals.
The distress of people like Zhao and Ly comes as tensions mount between the US and China over a host of issues, including the status of Taiwan and the intrusion earlier this month of a Chinese balloon into US airspace. But ironclad legal protections are not written clearly into the bill as it stands now, experts say, and issues such as how it would affect dual nationals are either not addressed or ambiguous, leading immigrants to fear the worst.
Of the state’s 28.8 million inhabitants, 1.4 million self-identify as Asian and 223,500 consider themselves to be of Chinese origin, according to official data. “They do this to remind us that we shouldn’t have the same rights everyone else does,” Ms Hafizi said.