JD Vance is making things up about immigrants, housing. It can only hurt Republicans | Opinion
What will JD Vance blame immigrants for next?
Hurricanes?
The price of Quarter Pounders?
No more Cherry Vanilla Coke?
Cincinnati Bengals defeats?
Honestly — or to be more exact, dishonestly — Vance keeps finding a way to blame everything that goes wrong on the easy scapegoat: foreigners.
Donald Trump says the same thing, but with cartoonishly ridiculous bombast.
Vance is much more dangerous.
He delivers the same poison in a calm voice that almost makes you think he’s telling the truth.
Vance’s newest lie about immigrants is that they take Americans’ homes and making rent and mortgages more expensive.
Housing is “totally unaffordable,” he said in the Oct. 1 vice presidential debate, “because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes.”
What in the world is he talking about?
Just look around. We can see plainly that immigrants aren’t taking homes.
They’re the ones supporting the industry and building homes as fast as they can.
Not only do foreign workers do jobs most Americans won’t do. They also live places most Americans wouldn’t live, in rural colonias or rundown apartments or barns or businesses’ shoddy back rooms.
Asked for proof of this absurd claim, Vance said straight-faced that a “Federal Reserve study” connects immigration to higher home prices and housing costs.
So he didn’t really know what he was talking about.
He gave an example that wasn’t a study.
It was an aside in a personal speech by a Donald Trump appointee.
And the comment was only that immigration might fill up rental housing in some markets and drive prices up until the industry builds more.
Thar’s a non sequitur. Rent prices are high almost everywhere, not just where immigrants move.
It was a despicable foreigner-bashing attack line for Vance after years of blaming immigrants for crime, contagious diseases and lost cats.
Three years ago, he blamed 19th-century Irish, Italian and German newcomers for bringing more crime to America and causing conflict.
Two years ago, falling in line with MAGA dogma, he told podcaster Steve Bannon that fentanyl smuggling is worse than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Look, everyone is heartbroken over fentanyl abuse and deaths.
But Vance left out that smugglers are 80% Americans, and 90% are caught crossing legally at border stations, not crossing illegally.
Then, Vance went further out on a limb. He chimed in to agree when former President Donald Trump retold a social media tale from Ohio about immigrants eating pet dogs and cats.
The vile accusation came from a Facebook post where a woman accused her Haitian neighbors of being here illegally and taking her cat, Miss Sassy.
Turned out the neighbors are here legally. Like many Haitians, they’re awaiting a hearing under a 1990 law allowing “temporary protected status” for anyone fleeing disaster or civil disorder.
And the cat wasn’t missing. She was in the basement.
When did some Republicans take this sick turn against foreigners, smearing both immigrants here legally and those here illegally?
Republicans used to love immigrants, because naturalized citizens and their families want jobs, a strong economy, faith and family values.
Political strategists advised Republicans to favor immigration. As recently as 2012, Republican Party of Texas delegates passed an official party platform supporting registration, a market-driven temporary guest-worker program and provisional visas.
You never heard President George W. Bush, U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm, House Majority Leader Dick Armey or Texas Gov. Rick Perry bashing honest workers.
But 20 years ago, talk-radio showman and Christian author Dan Patrick roused populist anger in Houston by bashing foreigners as criminals infected with “tuberculosis, malaria, polio and leprosy.”
That got him elected to the Texas Senate.
Finally, in 2016, now-Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick told the truth out loud: It’s about politics.
If that happens, Patrick was implying on a Christian radio station, then evangelicals won’t be able to uphold biblical directives or outlaw abortion.
If that comes true, then Republicans can blame Patrick, Trump and JD Vance.
