JD Vance’s Immigration Two-Step

The rapidly proliferating public conflicts within the MAGA movement present a distinct danger for the man whose political future depends on holding the coalition together. But Vice President JD Vance appears to have settled on a strategy for bridging these divides: Blame immigration.

In recent comments about fraught topics ranging from housing to healthcare to antisemitism, Vance has repeatedly taken a topic that divides the MAGA faithful and linked it back to immigration, the issue that most unifies the GOP base.

Call it “the JD Vance two-step.”

To cite a few recent examples: At an event in Allentown, Pa. this week, Vance argued that the rise in housing and rental costs — an issue that’s increasingly rankling Republican voters — is being driven primarily by illegal immigration. “It's simple economics. If you have fewer people, fewer illegal aliens trying to buy homes, that means American citizens are going to finally be able to afford a home again,” the vice president said.

He has taken the same approach to the increasingly thorny issue of healthcare, arguing during a White House press briefing in October that lengthy wait times at hospital emergency rooms are being caused by “illegal aliens” who “get healthcare benefits at hospitals paid for by American citizens.” Ditto for the decline of blue-collar wages, which Vance has recently attributed to “the Democrat model” of “import[ing] low-wage immigrants.” He’s even suggested that the rise of antisemitism — an issue that has bitterly divided the right in recent months — is being caused by the influx of foreign-born people who bring high levels of “ethnic grievance” with them.

This habit of describing complex policy problems and social changes as the direct consequence of immigration has become such a recurring feature of Vance’s rhetoric that it’s difficult to write it off as a tic or bug. Instead, it’s starting to look like part of an emerging strategy for coalitional management. Confronted with an issue that divides MAGA, Vance responds by reminding Republicans of what unites them: namely, support for immigration restriction.

Now, with the midterms fast approaching, the fate of the GOP’s congressional majority — not to mention Vance’s own presidential hopes in 2028 — could hinge on his ability to get voters to two-step along with him. (Vance’s office declined to comment.)

The most common subject of the Vancian two-step is housing costs — an issue that polling shows is frustrating Republican voters. Since hitting the campaign trail in 2024, Vance has consistently argued that the influx of illegal immigrations during the Biden administration is the primary driver of rising home prices and rents in the U.S.

But housing isn’t the only issue where Vance has deployed his signature two-step. In a social media post this week criticizing an article about rising levels of antisemitism among young Americans, Vance suggested that the uptick in antisemitism — an issue that has bitterly divided MAGA in recent months — is primary a consequence of demographic changes driven by immigration. “The most significant single thing you could do to eliminate antisemitism and any other kind of ethnic hatred is to support our efforts to lower immigration and promote assimilation,” Vance wrote.

This isn’t to say that Vance doesn’t genuinely believe that immigration is partly responsible for these problems. In fact, part of what may make Vance’s strategy effective is that his claims contain a kernel of truth —though he sometimes presents it in misleading ways. For instance, housing researchers generally agree that increased immigration is one factor pushing up housing costs and rents, even as they emphasize that broader structural conditions — like low levels of housing construction and restrictive zoning — play a much more significant role.

Similarly, some researchers have found that foreign-born Americans are slightly more likely native-born ones to express cold feelings toward Jews, though the same researchers stress that the difference is very minor and does not establish a causal link between foreign birth and antisemitic sentiment. Perhaps more significantly, Vance’s attempt to pin rising antisemitism to immigration conspicuously overlooks the role played by openly antisemitic figures on the right — people the white-nationalist commentator Nick Fuentes, who recently sat down for a friendly interview Vance’s close ally Tucker Carlson — in boosting anti-Jewish views.

But it’s fair to assume that Vance isn’t making these comments in the spirit of actually identifying the multivalent causes of these problems. Instead, they’re best understood as Vance’s attempts to manage an increasingly fractious coalition. And as windows into Vance’s own understanding of the primary fault lines dividing the Republican Party, his recent comments are actually quite illuminating.

Vance, who has readily stepped into the role of mediator between MAGA’s various competing factions, seems to have identified the cost-of-living crisis and the rise of antisemitism as two of the major issues splitting Trump’s coalition — with good reason. On the cost-of-living issue, the administration is increasingly coming under fire from populist conservatives who claim that Trump has focused on foreign policy issues at the expense of addressing the affordability crisis at home. Trump has struggled to come up with a compelling rejoinder to this line of critique, instead waffling between assuring voters that he’s taking the cost-of-living crisis seriously and dismissing “affordability” as a “Democrat scam.”

Similarly, the administration has struggled to address the growing divide on the right between stalwart supporters of Israel and “America First" critics of the U.S-Israel alliance — a group that also includes out-and-out antisemites like Fuentes. Trump’s response to this fissure has been to float ambiguously above the fray, publicly doubling down on his support for Benjamin Netanyahu’s government while also reaffirming his backing of Israel critics like Tucker Carlson — a posture has left both camps feeling unsatisfied. Vance, meanwhile, has stayed mostly quiet on the controversy.

At the same time, Vance seems to be betting that opposition to immigration remains the one stance that can unite a movement that is otherwise divided over economics, foreign policy, tech and AI policy, healthcare, the Epstein disclosures and more. Linking these more divisive issues back to immigration offers one strategy for smoothing over the fault lines. It also allows the administration to claim progress on issues where the GOP lacks consensus: If immigrants are causing the housing crisis, then what does it matter if Republicans don't have a plan for building more housing so long as Trump ramps up his mass deportation efforts?

The risk for Vance is that voters will see through this maneuver and demand more direct plans to address issues like housing costs and stagnating wages, beyond whatever benefits are provided by the administration’s immigration crackdown. But if Vance’s recent appearance in Pennsylvania offers any indication, that’s a danger he’s willing to two-step around. "Why did housing get so expensive, double in price during the Biden administration?,” he asked. “It's because Joe Biden let in 20 million illegal immigrants who took homes that ought by right go to American citizens."