JD Vance shocks NYT reporter with his nuanced takedown of illegal immigration

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 dole...