You know a political project is a bust when it relies on the elimination of millions of people for it to pan out.
In a recent interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Vice President JD Vance said, “A lot of young people are saying housing is way too expensive. Why is that? Because we flooded the country with 30 million illegal immigrants who were taking houses that ought by right go to American citizens and at the same time we weren’t building enough new housing to begin with even for the population that we had.”
He went on to assert, “We’re also getting all of those illegal aliens out of our country and you’re already seeing it start to pay some dividends.”
In a perfectly normal time, Vance would be spot on if he said, “A lot of young people are saying housing is way too expensive. Why is that? Because we weren’t building enough new housing to begin with even for the population that we had.”
Instead of focusing on the need to build more housing, which hasn’t kept up with population growth for decades, he indulges the right-wing fantasy that illegal immigrants are to blame for everything. He asserts the presence of 30 million illegal immigrants in the country, which is an invented number designed to inflame the populist MAGA base.
Here are the facts.
The American Immigration Council put the population at 11 million in 2022. Pew Research Center put it at 14 million in 2023. The Center for Migration Studies put it at 12.2 million in 2023.
If you don’t believe them, even consider the more conservative groups.
The Center for Immigration Studies, which specifically advocates for low immigration, just said in March of this year that they estimated that there were 15.4 million illegal immigrants in the country.
The highest number comes from the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which is likewise dedicated to reducing immigration, which topped out with an 18.6 million estimate in March.
No matter how you spin it, Vance has hallucinated the existence of well over 10 million people, even if you use the estimates of organizations sympathetic to him.
The point of exaggerating the number is obvious, to make Americans so angry and fearful they stop using their critical thinking and accept the Trump administration’s demagoguery.
The connection between illegal immigration and the housing market is certainly more complicated than Vance makes it seem.
Of course, more people means greater demand for housing. And if it were true that 30 million people suddenly entered a market, the impact would be significant. But that’s not the case.
First, the population of illegal immigrants is probably closer to half of what Vance said.
Second, many of the illegal immigrant population have been here for decades. Pew Research estimated that of the 14 million in the country at the end of 2023, about nine million of them had been in the country for more than five years, with 4.3 million having been in the U.S. for 18 years or longer. Many of them are married to American citizens and legal permanent residents.
Third, illegal immigrants also make up a significant percentage of the construction workforce. Deporting a large chunk of the people who actually build homes is self-defeating if the goal is to build more homes.
It would seem a rational government would prioritize making it easier to build more housing, target immigration enforcement against actual criminals and legalize the others so they can keep building and investing in our communities.
Let markets work, in other words. Instead of scapegoating immigrants, how about focusing on actually making America great again? You know, a place where people can live, work and build without government always being on their backs?
Alas, MAGA is more concerned at nativist grievance-mongering than actually solving problems. Hence they’re peddling the false “solution” of removing millions of people from the country as their solution.
Sal Rodriguez can be reached at salrodriguez@scng.com