J.D. Vance: Unchecked Migration Is Killing The American Dream

For anyone dreaming of home ownership or a nicer place to rent, the speech Vice President J.D. Vance gave on Monday resonated with hope. It also angered a few people.

“I’m hard pressed to think of a time in my 40 years of life where it’s been so hard for normal American citizens to afford a home,” Vance said in Washington, D.C., at the National League of Cities Conference. “Even renting a home has become a challenge, or worse yet, fallen completely out of reach for so many of our families.”

He recounted a conversation with a relative who said that “when her parents were growing up, they could afford a nice home on a single middle-class income,” and that is no longer the case. Today, he said, in most cases it takes two times the combined income of a husband and wife to buy a new house.

“That’s just not acceptable or sustainable in the United States of America. We want Americans to be able to afford the American dream of home ownership, because we know that when people own their homes, it makes them a stakeholder … in their neighborhoods, in their cities, and ultimately, of course, in this country that all of us love so much.”

He offered reasons for the lack of affordable housing, including inflation, stagnant income, “needless regulations,” and local zoning that makes it harder to build new homes.  

But after noting issues on the supply side, Vance turned his attention to the demand side.

“One of the drivers of increased housing demand, we know, is that we’ve got a lot of people over the last four years who have come into the country illegally. And that’s something we have to work on if we want to meaningfully reduce the cost of housing too,” Vance noted.

“If you allow 20 million people to compete with American citizens for the cost of homes, you are going to have a large and, frankly, completely preventable spike in the demand for housing. And that is what we, of course, have seen. Because while we’ve made it a little bit hard to build homes in this country over the last four years, we’ve also, unfortunately, made it way too easy for people to compete against American citizens for the precious homes that are in our country to begin with.”

These remarks apparently ruffled the feathers of officials from sanctuary cities in the audience. Someone started yelling in protest to his comments.

“I see one of our nice representatives out here wants to actually, I guess, continue to flood the country with illegal immigrants, making your communities … unaffordable,” Vance said.

The room roared with a mix of groans and applause.

“Ma’am, with all respect, one of the reasons why we’re doing what we’re doing is because we want to make it more affordable for Americans to live,” Vance replied to the heckler, referencing the Trump administration’s border enforcement initiatives. Vance mentioned that he was recently in Eagle Pass, Texas, where local border control said they have gone from “1,500 daily encounters to less than 30. And again, that’s in a matter of weeks. That’s just a simple matter of common sense border enforcement. That matters.”

These comments prompted strong applause.

Further responding to his detractors, Vance stated that the “reason why we care about border security is because we want your communities to be safer. We want them to be more affordable. We want there to be less drugs in our country, and we want your citizens to be able to live the American dream. It is the birthright of every single one of our citizens, and we’re going to fight for it every single day.”

Many attendees stood up, whooped, and applauded, overpowering those who disagreed with President Donald Trump’s immigration reforms.

“You can disagree with some of the laws that are in place,” Vance added. “You can disagree with the enforcement of those laws. You can even vote for people who want to change those laws. But while we have immigration laws on the books, we will enforce them, and we expect our local municipalities to help us,” Vance continued. “It is not up to local cities to choose which federal laws that they’re going to enforce.”

Vance went on to add that many urban and rural blue collar Americans have struggled for decades to “afford a home,” “raise their kids in safe communities,” and “look to the future with hope and optimism.” He concluded by encouraging city officials to work together to restore the American dream for American families.

“So with all respect for policy disagreements, I think that one thing that unites us in this room is that we want to give our blue collar people in the United States of America a shot at the American dream again. We may disagree about how exactly to do it, but let’s do it together, let’s fight for our people together, and let’s reinvigorate the American dream for the American citizen once again.”

Beth Brelje is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. She is an award-winning investigative journalist with decades of media experience.