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>>>While I'm at it--what's up with letting foreigners buy our land, before they become citizens? As it stands now, it looks like pretty much anyone, from every country, can pick up the phone, and buy American realestate?

This happens in London a lot too. Entire blocks of flats are marketed at and sold directly to Asia. Interestingly I read that in Singapore they do not allow you to buy real estate until you have lived there several year.

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Question: Let's say the USA and China get in a spat and things escalate to a trade war or a shooting war (unlikely, outside of Tom Clancy (RIP) novels). What happens to the huge amounts of property owned by Chinese nationals? Is there some precedent for seizing it?

I would guess that the historical examples would be WW2. Which is problematic, because we put people of Japanese descent in concentration camps, as opposed to nothing for German/Italian immigrants...

Roosevelt seized Japanese assets and most Allies did the same.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/united-states-fre...

You can't seriously compare the size of Singapore and the U.S.

Foreigners buy London/NYC/SF because the price was inflated in the first place( its really hard to build stuff in these regulated cities)

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