Vance Says Illegal Immigration, Low Construction Pushed Housing Out Of Reach

Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that the combination of President Joe Biden’s mass-immigration policies and a decade of sluggish home construction created the affordability crisis young Americans are now facing. Speaking with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Vance said the Trump administration’s ongoing crackdown on illegal immigration is already helping ease pressure on the market.

“A lot of young people are saying housing is way too expensive,” Vance said. “Why is that? Because we flooded the country with 30 million illegal immigrants. They’re taking houses that ought to go to American citizens.”

Vance argued that even before Biden’s border collapse, the U.S. wasn’t building enough homes to meet baseline demand. The Biden-era influx, he said, strained an already stressed supply.

“At the same time, we weren’t building enough new houses to begin with. What we’re doing is trying to make it easier to build houses, trying to make it easier to build factories so that people have good jobs,” Vance continued.

The vice president said the Trump administration’s aggressive removal of illegal aliens is already boosting wages for working-class Americans.

“You’re already seeing it start to pay dividends,” Vance told Hannity. “Working people’s wages are going up, and that’s how we ultimately chip away at the Biden affordability crisis. We make an economy where people can afford to buy the things that they need. The best way to do that is good jobs and good wages.”

Vance highlighted the stark contrast between Biden-era housing inflation and the stability returning under President Donald J. Trump.

“Under the Biden administration, the price of a new home literally doubled in four years. It went up 100 percent,” Vance argued. “Under the Trump administration, housing and rent prices are up about 1 to 2 percent — actually in line with what you would like to see.”

The vice president said the administration believes the country needs to build roughly five million new homes to bring prices back in line with middle-class incomes.

He added that Republican-led states are far outperforming their Democratic counterparts, which continue to resist new housing construction through regulation, permitting red tape, and progressive “not in my backyard” activism.

“One of the biggest challenges we have in the housing market — aside from too many illegal aliens taking the houses of American citizens — is that in the blue states, you’re not building enough houses,” Vance said.

Vance also dismissed the claim that automation threatens construction jobs, saying new technology can empower skilled tradesmen rather than replace them.

“No robot can replace a great blue-collar construction worker,” Vance said. “But can a robot maybe make it easier for a construction worker to put more nails in more walls over a shorter period of time? You’re going to see robotics help the construction workers.”

The vice president said the administration’s focus on boosting wages, expanding home construction, and enforcing the border will help more young Americans build families and achieve the stability denied to them under Biden’s stagnant economy.

“We will do a lot over the next three years and three months to make sure more people can buy homes,” he told Hannity. “Young people can start families, and we’ve got good jobs putting people on a career trajectory.”

Vance also blasted the previous administration for trapping workers in dead-end, low-wage positions.

“The biggest problem in the Biden economy was that people couldn’t build a career out of a job,” Vance said. “You had fourteen or fifteen dollars an hour with no promise to make more. That’s not how you build a middle-class American dream. That’s how you build debt servants.”