Republican vice presidential hopeful JD Vance calmly fended off questions from a reporter who suggested a crackdown on illegal immigration could exacerbate the housing crisis.
Vance, 40, who has long contended that illegal immigration reduces the housing supply and therefore sends prices soaring, brushed aside any notion that illegal immigrants are paramount toward building more houses.
“About a third of the construction workforce in this country is Hispanic. Of those, a large proportion are undocumented. So how do you propose to build all the housing necessary that we need in this country by removing all the people who are working in construction?” New York Times reporter Lulu Garcia-Navarro pressed him.
She stressed that she was “not arguing in favor of illegal immigration,” but merely wanted to gauge how Vance would solve the potential blow to the housing construction sector of his immigration policies.
Vance noted he agrees with the litany of economists who’ve said that the US has produced far fewer houses than it should’ve over recent decades.
But he took issue with the notion that illegal immigrants are needed to bolster that supply and hearkened back to the 1960s when he said the country managed to build housing despite a low level of illegal immigration at the time.
“I think that what you would do is you would take, let’s say for example, the 7 million prime-age men who have dropped out of the labor force, and you have a smaller number of women…you absolutely could reengage folks into the American labor market,” Vance countered.
“People say, ‘Well, Americans won’t do those jobs,’” Vance acknowledged, before refuting that common argument. “Americans won’t do those jobs for below-the-table wages. They won’t do those jobs for non-living wages, but people will do those jobs.”
A Harvard study published earlier this year found that some 22.4 million households spent over 30% of their income on rent and that some 12.1 million doled out over 50% of their earnings on rent.
Former President Donald Trump has vowed to deport the millions of illegal immigrants residing within the US, which some estimates peg around at least 11 million, though other projections have the figure much higher.
Vance has long argued that removing illegal immigrants will free up the housing supply, and therefore, push prices downward.
The Buckeye State senator also dubbed illegal immigration “one of the biggest drivers of inequality.”
“It’s one of the biggest reasons why we have millions of people dropped out of the labor force. Why try to reengage an American citizen in a good job if you can just import somebody from Central America who’s going to work under the table for poverty wages?” Vance asked.
“It is a disgrace, and it has led to the evisceration of the American middle class.”
The exchange quickly gained traction on social media and won Vance acclaim among the MAGA faithful.
“JD Vance puts on an absolute masterclass in a NYT interview where the host tries to gaslight him on America’s housing crisis and illegal immigration problem,” the CartierFamily X account wrote.
“JD Vance … appreciation post! Watch how he counters this NYT journalist with facts, wit, and charisma. It’s amazing to watch a political powerhouse come into his own right before our eyes,” Spectre Strategies CEO Javon Price posted on X.
“Again, great answers from J.D. Vance. But this “I am not well read outside of my political echo chamber but I’m shockingly arrogant about it” posture embodied by NYT’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro, is one of the many things that makes our propaganda press so repulsive to most people,” Federalist editor-in-chief Mollie Hemingway wrote on X.
Vance sat down with Garcia-Navarro for the most recent episode of her podcast, “The Interview,” which dropped Saturday.
The freshman senator has been doing a blitz of media interviews, including with less-than-friendly hosts, during the 2024 election crunch time.
