US Vice President JD Vance has triggered another firestorm on social media after declaring “mass migration is theft of the American Dream”.
He argued that immigrants were taking opportunities from American workers, adding that studies challenging his view were funded by “people getting rich off the old system.”
“Mass migration is the theft of the American Dream,” he wrote on X.
“It has always been this way, and every position paper, think tank piece, and econometric study suggesting otherwise is paid for by the people getting rich off of the old system.”
His post was a response to a video of a Louisiana construction company owner who claimed he had seen a dramatic change since US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began operations in the state. “No immigrants want to go to work … and it is so amazing. I've gotten more calls in the last week than I've gotten in the last 3 months,” he said.
Vance's comment led to backlash online, with many pointing to his own family.
Vance is married to Usha Vance, the American-born daughter of Indian immigrants. They have three children: two sons, Ewan and Vivek, and a daughter, Mirabel.
A user wrote, “Wait, isn't your wife Indian from an immigrant family?”
Another said, “That means you have to send Usha, her Indian family, and your biracial kids back to India. Let us know when you buy the plane tickets. You must lead by example.”
Others added, “Your wife and children are stealing the American dream.”
Another user wrote, “There's probably a path to the Republican nomination that doesn't involve throwing your wife, her family, and your children under the bus.”
Someone else commented, “I understand hating your in-laws, but isn't this an extreme response?”
The uproar followed another controversy when Vance earlier said it was “totally reasonable and acceptable” for Americans to prefer neighbours who share their “race, language or skin colour.”
“It is totally reasonable and acceptable for American citizens to look at their next door neighbours and say, I want to live next to people who I have something in common with,” he said at The New York Post podcast.
He described a hypothetical case involving landlords housing multiple immigrant families for profit, “And then what happens is 20 people move into a three-bedroom house. Twenty people from a totally different culture, totally different ways of interacting.”
Princeton historian Kevin Kruse responded to his comments, saying, “This is exactly the same argument and, in parts, even the same language that segregationists advanced to argue that white people had a ‘right' not to live next to people who were different from them.”
This also came after Vance's criticism of Canada, where he blamed “stagnating” living standards on the country's large “foreign-born” population and accused Canadian leaders of embracing “immigration insanity.”
