Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), the national populist chosen to be former President Donald Trump’s vice presidential running mate, is known as “one of the best” lawmakers on Capitol Hill on the issue of immigration — defending working-class American communities against the party’s old-guard donors.
“Trump picks [J.D. Vance] for Vice President, one of THE BEST lawmakers on the immigration issue. The largest deportation effort in American history is going to have one hell of a co-pilot!” the National Immigration Center for Enforcement (NICE) wrote in a statement following the news on Monday.
Vance, in particular, has been at the forefront of how mass immigration to the United States drains the nation’s working- and lower-middle-class.
In a forward-looking approach, Vance is co-sponsoring the Reshape Alternatives to Detention (ATD) Act to streamline enforcement tools already in place at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to make it easier for a future administration to find, detain, and deport illegal aliens living throughout the U.S.
Supporters have said the bill is key to making Trump’s promise of carrying out “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history” a reality.
“Promising to secure our border and enforce our immigration laws is what first propelled President Trump into office — and he delivered,” NICE President RJ Hauman told Breitbart News.
“Picking a fellow true immigration reformer, like Sen. Vance, reaffirms that securing our border and ramping up interior enforcement is Trump’s top priority and that he’ll deliver again,” Hauman said. “The largest deportation effort in American history now has one hell of a co-pilot.”
Beyond illegal immigration, Vance has criticized the federal government’s policy of importing more than one million legal immigrants annually as well as hundreds of thousands of foreign workers to take white-collar and blue-collar American jobs.
Theo Wold, a former Trump official who worked on immigration issues, told Breitbart News that Trump and Vance “are the two most battle-tested advocates for blue-collar American workers in modern history.”
“Under a Trump-Vance administration, Americans will be physically safe from illegal alien criminals, and will have their jobs protected from companies that want to outsource them or undercut their wages with cheap foreign labor,” Wold said.
James Massa — CEO of NumbersUSA, which lobbies to reduce legal immigration levels — said in a statement to the press that Trump’s decision to choose Vance as his running mate delivers “a strong message” that “stopping illegal immigration and reforming legal immigration are key to the nation’s future prosperity.”
“Vance has emerged as a leading voice in the Senate in favor of genuine immigration reform,” Massa said:
He dependably backs effective border security and interior enforcement policies, from parole and asylum reform to national E-Verify. Vance is an original cosponsor of S. 2824, the Senate companion bill to H.R. 2, the Secure the Border Act, which passed the House in May 2023 and would have ended the border crisis. He voted against the Senate immigration deal endorsed by President Biden, which would have mandated illegal immigration and raised legal immigration. [Emphasis added]
Vance has distinguished himself in his ability to clearly articulate the dysfunction inherent in our legal immigration system, especially the harm caused to American workers through lowered wages and lost jobs, as well as understanding how high levels of immigration lead to higher housing costs. Senator Vance understands that immigration policy must no longer be determined by special interests in Washington, D.C. or big business seeking cheap labor at the expense of American workers, but instead designed in the interest of the American people at large. Vance has earned an A rating from NumbersUSA. [Emphasis added]
Heritage Action — which grades lawmakers on their voting records, much like NumbersUSA — noted that Vance has a 93 percent score, indicating a strong conservative record.
Vance, in particular, has been the leading voice in the Senate in tying mass immigration to the nation’s skyrocketing housing prices.
On Tuesday, for example, Vance grilled Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on the impact that mass immigration has on driving up housing prices while, at the same time, reducing wages for working- and middle-class Americans.
Vance plucked an example from his home state of Ohio, noting how Springfield residents have dealt with rising housing prices and rents with limited space, as tens of thousands of newly arrived immigrants have put pressure on the market.
While increasing housing prices, Vance said mass immigration lowers wages for those most likely to compete against illegal aliens for jobs: working-class Americans.
Vance said:
I wonder, when you hear your colleagues and other economists outside of the Fed talk about the influx of immigration and the fact that it admittedly has put downward pressure on wages, obviously that has put some downward pressure on inflation, but it also puts downward pressure on the wages that people earn to pay for their families.
Trump has made similar remarks, trying mass immigration to Americans’ cost of living.
“Housing costs are skyrocketing … because we have 15 million new migrants. We have no place to put them,” Trump said at a June rally in Arizona. “We have no place to put them, and that number is growing so that we have absolutely no place.”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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