Not a US citizen? Florida law would restrict home sales, jobs, based on race and origin.

It's one thing to stir up a non-issue to rile the base. It's quite another when you're just stirring base instincts. Yet, that's what our Gov. Ron DeSantis and state lawmakers have done repeatedly, most recently in establishing a Florida foreign policy aimed at feeding American fear of foreigners.

Sadly, fostering this fear of the "other" is part of a heartless pattern. It seems like only yesterday the Florida Legislature's "Don't Say Gay" bill set out to equate compassion with grooming, while other laws sought to bar trans kids from teams and bathrooms, to yank offending books from school shelves, to wipe lefty lessons about slavery from classroom whiteboards, and to delete programs to promote diversity, equity and inclusion from university curricula.

Florida divisiveness: 'Parental rights' orjust more bigotry?

Now we've found a new enemy, spelled out in three new laws as those of Chinese extraction, Cubans, Venezuelans, or just plain commies. To those who style their politics after the internment camps of Japanese Americans in the 1940s or the Red Scare hearings of Sen. Joseph McCarthy of the '50s, these new Florida initiatives must feel like a homecoming.

New law would prohibit Chinese people who aren't full US Citizens from buying Florida homes

One of the laws, known as SB 264, bans Chinese people who don't have full U.S. citizenship from buying homes in Florida. Another, SB 1264, requires that students as early as kindergarten age receive instruction in "the evils and dangers of communism," to quote the Governor, and not be "indoctrinated by communist apologists." SB 846, meanwhile, restricts Florida universities from hiring student researchers from China, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Russia or North Korea.

DeSantis signed SB 264 in May 2023, calling it, "the strongest legislation in the nation to fight back against foreign malign influence." The American Civil Liberties Union calls it something else: unconstitutional. In Shen v. Simpson, the ACLU has been representing an Orlando real estate firm and four Chinese citizens who are living, working and raising families in Florida. Under the new law, they'd be prevented from buying homes, based purely on race and national origin.

More on divisiveness: 'Parental rights' orjust more bigotry?

"Protecting Floridians and Florida's infrastructure from agents like the Chinese Communist Party and other foreign adversaries is important to our state's security," the governor says. While he's at it, international students from China, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Russia and North Korea will be restricted from employment as grad assistants to conduct academic research.

Ashley Gorski, senior staff attorney for the ACLU's National Security Project, is trying the case against the housing law. She makes clear: "There is no evidence that Chinese home ownership poses any harm to national or state security." It begs the question, she adds, why home ownership would be considered more dangerous than renting.

Of course, none of this legislation could have been expected to have any practical impact, anyway. As Gorski puts it, "We’re in a period of increased geopolitical tension between us and China and there are many examples of politicians seeking to foment and capitalize on geopolitical tension."

University of Florida ends DEI; alumni call for its return and boost in representation.

It's the same old politics of xenophobia

We'll be less diplomatic: It's just the same old politics of xenophobia. Rather than use the scalpel of the intelligence community and hammer of the military, alongside the experience of our statesmen and diplomats to protect from national security threats, Florida is sending a grotesque message that anyone who looks Asian had better have their paperwork in order if they want to buy a home. Some members of our electorate might like that kind of talk but most of our parents taught us better.

As for teaching the dangers of communism, well, judging from the reluctance of Republican members of Congress to support Ukraine's defense from Russia, we might need to send teachers from our kindergarten classrooms to the U.S. Capitol instead.

Gov. DeSantis has tinkered with foreign policy before, sending Florida guardsmen to Texas' border with Mexico, tricking border-crossers into flights to northern states, and warning off imagined hoards of Haitian rafters crossing the Straits of Florida.

There's always room for debate over national security, but enforcing it through discrimination based on race or national origin is a nonstarter. The Governor and Florida lawmakers in this case should leave foreign policy in the hands of those to whom the Founding Fathers assigned it.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Florida’s xenophobic foreign policy is unconstitutional and heartless