JD Vance spars with heckler as he blames immigrants for prime housing costs | EUROtoday

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Vice President JD Vance skirmished with a heckler throughout a speech Monday wherein he claimed that expelling undocumented immigrants would deliver down housing costs.

Vance was addressing the National League of Cities in Washington, D.C. when a lady within the viewers started shouting her objections.

“I see one of our nice representatives out here wants to actually, I guess, continue to flood the country with illegal immigrants, making your communities and citizens unaffordable,” Vance snapped again, to a combination of boos and claps.

“But ma’am, with all respect, one of the reasons why we’re doing what we’re doing is because we want to make it more affordable for Americans to live.”

The conflict erupted because the Trump administration is stepping up its plans to deport “millions” of people, roughly doubling daily immigration arrests from their level under Joe Biden.

The round-ups have caught not only undocumented immigrants with no criminal charges but also U.S. citizens, native Americans, and a Palestinian student who protested against Israel, with detainees warehoused in foreign hotels and even, briefly, Guantanamo Bay.

Reports suggest that the administration may also revoke the immigration status of so-called DREAMers — people brought to the country by their parents as babies or children who essentially grew up in America — and roughly 875,000 people from troubled countries such as Ukraine, Afghanistan, and Haiti who are here on humanitarian status.

Though Vance claimed that deportation efforts were partly motivated by a desire to bring down housing prices for American citizens, the link between immigration and housing costs is disputed by experts.

“Local zoning rules, the price of vitality. These issues are concerning the provide of housing: how will we get extra provide of homes on the market to be constructed?” said Vance, according to footage from the pro-Trump Right Side Broadcasting Network (the heckler’s remarks were inaudible).

“But once we speak about housing and why prices are so excessive, we do not discuss sufficient about demand. And one of many drivers of elevated housing demand, we all know, is that we have lots of people during the last 4 years who’ve come into the nation illegally …”

He added: “Just think about this: If you allow 20 million people to compete with American citizens for the costs of homes, you are going to have a large and frankly completely preventable spike in the demand for housing. And that is what we of course have seen.”

Most estimates put the variety of unlawful immigrants within the U.S. at round 11 million to 14 million, though one report has claimed it might be as excessive as 17 million.