Vance Calls Mass Migration ‘Theft of the American Dream,’ Drawing Backlash Over Wife’s Immigrant Roots

Overview

• Posting on X, Vice President JD Vance argued that large-scale immigration deprives American workers of opportunities and dismissed research to the contrary as benefiting entrenched interests.
• Critics labeled the remark xenophobic and hypocritical, noting that his wife, Usha Vance, is the daughter of Indian immigrants, with some social media users mockingly urging him to "send her back."
• Author Wajahat Ali amplified the criticism by invoking Vance’s own logic to target his wife and children, underscoring the personal dimension of the public reaction.
• The uproar revived attention to Vance’s recent comments that it is reasonable to prefer neighbors who share one’s race or language, and to his statement that a future Trump administration would try to remove as many undocumented migrants as possible.
• Context from policy actions looms large after USCIS on December 3 suspended many applications from 19 designated high-risk countries and paused asylum decisions for more than 2.2 million pending cases, citing security concerns after a fatal shooting.