Hi! Lauren Young here from Alexandra Chandler for Congress. Alexandra is running in #MA3 following a 13 year career with the Office of Naval Intelligence. Prompted by this recent story from the Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-condemns-all-types-of-racism-after-a-week-of-racially-tinged-remarks/2018/08/11/867211a6-9ce6-11e8-8d5e-c6c594024954_story.html, Alexandra issued this statement:
The President’s “racially-tinged” remarks this week included a statement about Chinese students in the United States.
The overwhelming majority of foreign students in the United States, including from China, are an asset to the United States, generating economic activity across the country during and after their time of study, including within #MA3, and they offer the US an opportunity to build relationships with future cultural, scientific, economic and political leaders of other countries that can pay dividends for decades.
As a former intelligence analyst for 13 years, whose portfolio as a Division Chief included overseeing analysts who monitored foreign technology transfers, I can state with authority that Donald Trump has it wrong when he asserts that most Chinese students are spies, and is yet again harming U.S. interests with his lack of respect for expertise or his own racial animus on this subject. The government of China is a serious counterintelligence threat, among our greatest CI threats, and it should be confronted seriously. That means we must use government resources in a targeted way to deter or disrupt high stakes Chinese espionage activity. The President does those efforts a disservice by directly or indirectly encouraging our CI personnel and the policies guiding them to consider most Chinese students as spies. If we treat most Chinese students as actual or likely spies, we will overwhelm our capacity and limit our capability to detect and disrupt the breadth of CI activity by not only China, but Russia, North Korea, Iran, and other countries of critical interests.
Furthermore, he not only discourages the societally useful influx of Chinese students but discourages foreign students from other countries from choosing the US for their studies, further harming our interests.
In Congress I will encourage attendance of foreign students in our higher educational institutions and vice versa, for the mutual benefit of our economies, for mutual understanding and our security interests. I will use my unique credibility as a former intelligence analyst to ensure law enforcement and intelligence experts guide our CI efforts based on specific threats and objective criteria, and we heed their voices, none of whom have said that “most” Chinese students are spies. And I will oppose any effort to translate such broad brush and erroneous statements characterizing Chinese or other foreign students into broad brush and counterproductive changes to our visa or immigration policy— it’s against our interests and our values.
It is so easy to resort to racial and national stereotyping. We are fortunate to have a candidate who raises the level of intelligence and civility in our politics. How often do we have that in 2018?
JFK brought the best minds into his administration and challenged all of the citizens of our nation intellectually, This is respecting the average American. This is what Alexandra Chandler is doing. Alexander Chandler is that kind of candidate. Why not elect the best and the brightest? The MA-3 is showing signs of doing just that to the consternation of the money candidates.
Alexandra Chandler is doing nothing less than raising the level of discourse in our community and in our politics.