Appearing on a right-wing New York Post columnist’s podcast, Vice President JD Vance spent part of the hour-long episode on immigration, casting aside traditional notions of the American cultural melting pot.
Vance agreed with host Miranda Divine when she said it “creates division and hatred” for people of other cultural backgrounds to move into a neighborhood after he gave an example in which “20 people” price out U.S. citizens by moving into “a three-bedroom house.”
“Their next-door neighbors are going to say, ‘Wait a second, what is going on here? I don’t know these people. They don’t speak the same language that I do,’” Vance said.
He went on to add: “It is totally reasonable and acceptable for American citizens to look at their next-door neighbors and say, ‘I want to live next to people who I have something in common with. I don’t want to live next to four families of strangers.’ And the fact that we had an immigration system that actually promoted that division is a real, real disgrace.”
Vance had been speaking earlier about Springfield, Ohio, which became a focal point of the 2024 presidential election after Trump claimed a community of Haitian immigrants living there were “eating the cats” and “eating the dogs.” There was, of course, no evidence of that happening. Haitians are one of several groups who qualify for temporary protective status — a legal immigration status — due to ongoing crises in their home nation.