In an interview with Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, New York Times journalist Lulu Garcia-Navarro claimed the U.S. is experiencing a housing shortage because “not enough houses have been built,” refuting Vance’s assertion that the shortage results in part from the influx of 25 million people into the country.

Vance’s retort that America never built houses before the country saw significant illegal immigration cuts through the noise of the 2024 election’s top issues with pure sarcasm. 

BREAKING: JD Vance critiques New York Times reporter Lulu Garcia-Navarro’s excuses for allowing “25 million” illegals to steal Americans jobs. pic.twitter.com/qeJt2NgblJ

— Leading Report (@LeadingReport) October 12, 2024

Not only did Americans house themselves before the mass-immigration era but the United States had greater labor force participation among native-born men, and, significantly, a more affordable housing supply. 

Add to that generations of steady decline in real wages, and the portrait of America today crystallizes: Younger Americans are priced out of the housing market, working age male labor force participation is in decline, family formation is in freefall, and birth rates are plummeting. 

How could it be? 

Go Ad-Free, Get Content, Go Premium Today - $1 Trial

Vance’s ability to separate out and relate complex policy matters has made him a force of nature on the campaign trail, especially on the dynamic of immigration’s effects on employment and housing. In other words, the transformation of everyday American life.

What Vance said next untangled the election’s flashpoints and the country’s central issues: immigration, and the economy, vis-a-vis the United States’ disappearing middle class. 

Vance proposed re-engaging the 7 million prime-aged males out of the labor force to build needed houses when the price of homes in short supply have priced out younger people from the market. Garcia-Navarro incredulously asks, “in construction?”

Jobs in the building industry, logging, oil and gas extraction, and skilled trades are consistently filled by men, so his idea is far from extraordinary. But behind the key policy factors of wages and competition in the labor market is the question of whether America is to be a nation, or simply an economic zone. 

Go Ad-Free, Get Content, Go Premium Today - $1 Trial

In other words, should the share of working aged Americans in the workforce in the United States compete with immigrant labor in order to make a living? 

And should the remaining share not in the workforce, including a staggering 7 million working-age males not in school or training and unemployed (NEETs, or “not in employment, education or training”) have to compete with immigrant labor to find employment and housing and form families?

“Americans won’t do those jobs for under the table wages,” Vance said. “I want [American companies] to be searching in their own country for their own citizens.” 

Vance continued: “We can’t have an entire American business community that is giving up on American workers and then importing millions of illegal laborers, Why try to reengage an American citizen in a good job if you can just import somebody from Central America who is going to work under the table for poverty wages?” 

Vance called the hiring of immigrants over recruitment of U.S. citizens a “disgrace”  that has led to the evisceration of the American middle class. America’s historically large middle class has been the bedrock of American dynamism.

Is America’s future destined to be an economic zone where the middle class continues to decline or will it be a nation decidedly protectionist of its citizens and their livelihoods?

We took a look at several facets of the issue: labor force participation, wages, and housing supply, and how the Biden-Harris open border and U.S. mass immigration policies have put downward pressures on each.  

In any case, with housing affordability tanking, the rise of the NEET, and family formation and the birth rate under threat, much is at stake.