Clashing views on immigration in Virginia’s US Senate race

Republican challenger Hung Cao is peddling conspiracy theories, while incumbent Democratic Senator Tim Kaine is working to fix America’s broken immigration system.

Given his ties to the far-right wing of Donald Trump’s Republican Party, it’s no surprise that Hung Cao, the Republican candidate for Senate in Virginia, has been guilty of harsh rhetoric and conspiracy theories about immigration.

Rather than provide any evidence for his false claims that Chinese spies are crossing the U.S.-Mexico border and that hundreds of thousands of Chinese students in the U.S. are stealing university secrets, Cao’s campaign suggested that The Dogwood do some more Googling.

“All of those things are obvious and easy to find,” Cao’s campaigner said in a statement to The Dogwood.

Such conspiracies may be obvious on the fringes of right-wing media where Cao likes to stoke fears about immigrants, but they don’t hold up to scrutiny. For example, there is no proof that Chinese immigrants coming to the US are military agents of the Chinese government.

Facing Cao in this year’s race to represent Virginia in the U.S. Senate is incumbent Democratic Senator Tim Kaine, who has a more tangible record of trying to reform America’s broken immigration system.

Since Kaine began his Senate career in 2013, he has voted for billions in border security funding. Kaine has worked to pass legislation to disrupt the fentanyl trade, and in 2018, Kaine sponsored bipartisan legislation to stop the shipment of illegal drugs across U.S. borders, which then-President Trump signed.

Kaine has led the fight to protect displaced Salvadorans and Hondurans from being forcibly returned to their countries, where human rights issues and political violence make it dangerous to return. Kaine also supports a program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which protects undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children from deportation.

“Senator Kaine has consistently supported bipartisan immigration reform, in 2013, 2018, and 2024, that was blocked by Republicans,” Michael Beyer, Kaine’s Communications Director, told The Dogwood in an email. “Meanwhile, his opponent chose to play politics and opposed the strongest border security bill in decades that was supported by the Border Patrol union.”

At the top of the ticket

Because the border and immigration are important issues for many Americans, Kamala Harris directly addressed the topic in her presidential campaign.

Speaking at a meeting earlier this month in NevadaHarris touted her experience with the nation’s immigration system from her time as California’s attorney general, when she prosecuted transnational gangs, drug cartels and human traffickers. Harris called for comprehensive immigration reform and attacked Trump for his role in blocking a bipartisan border security bill.

“We know our immigration system is broken, and we know what it will take to fix it. Comprehensive reform that includes, yes, strong border security and an earned path to citizenship,” Harris said, according to The Washington Post.

READ MORE: Everything You Need to Know About Virginia’s U.S. Senate Race