GOP vice presidential candidate JD Vance speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box on September 12, 2024.
CNBC
Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance made a questionable claim on immigration Thursday as he blamed Vice President Kamala Harris for allowing undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers to enter the United States.
Vance, the Ohio senator and former President Donald Trump’s running mate, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, “has flooded the country with 25 million illegal aliens.”
But Vance’s number overstates the facts, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection and estimates from government agencies and other agencies that track border crossings and asylum applications.
Vance has floated the claim in the past. During an Aug. 28 speech in Wisconsin, Vance claimed that Harris “let in 25 million illegal aliens.” In the same speech he clarified that these alleged 25 million people are currently “here in this country illegally”.
Neither the Trump campaign nor Vance’s spokesman responded to questions from CNBC about the source of the senator’s numbers.
Putting aside the idea that Harris is personally responsible for enforcing US immigration policy, Vance’s numbers don’t jive with the available data.
The Department of Homeland Security’s Bureau of Homeland Security Statistics estimated in April that 11 million unauthorized immigrants living in the US from 1 January 2022.
That total was down from about 11.6 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. in 2010, but an increase from 10.5 million in January 2020, according to the bureau.
The non-partisan Immigration Policy Institute reached a similar figure, saying in March that it “estimates there were approximately 11.2 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States in 2021, up from 11 million in 2019.”
“The several organizations that have long issued valid data based on rigorous methodologies estimate the unauthorized population to be more than 11 million,” Michelle Mittelstadt, director of communications for the Immigration Policy Institute, told the journalism nonprofit Poynter Institute in June after Sen. Marco RubioR-Fla., made a claim similar to Vance’s.
THE Pew Research Center Similarly, it estimated in July that, “The population of unauthorized immigrants in the United States will increase to 11.0 million in 2022.”
Neither the US Census nor any similar national survey collects data on the legal status of foreign-born residents living in the United States.
CBP said nearly 10.2 million total meetings nationwide from February 2021 to July 2024;
But millions of those people were removed during that time: CBP data records nearly 2.5 million deportations just under Title 42, the pandemic-era immigration restrictions that expire in May 2023.
A meeting also does not necessarily equal a person. Many of CBP’s reported border encounters involve individuals who previously had try to enter USA within the previous year.
Vance’s remarks on Thursday came as he intended contradict recent findings from investment firms such as Goldman Sachs that immigration has had a positive effect on the US economy and labor market.
“What it’s really driven is communities like Springfield, Ohio, where you have 20,000 Haitians who have come,” Vance told CNBC.
“Housing costs are prohibitive … people can’t afford to live a good life in this small Ohio town,” he said.
“If the road to prosperity flooded your nation with low-wage immigrants, then Springfield, Ohio would be … the most prosperous city in the world,” Vance said. “America would be the most prosperous country in the world because Kamala Harris has flooded the country with 25 million illegal aliens.”
Vance’s decision to invoke Springfield is notable: The city has been in the national spotlight since Trump and Vance peddled a baseless far-right conspiracy theory about Haitian immigrants stealing and eating Springfield residents’ pets.
Trump repeated the claim during his presidential debate against Harris on Tuesday night.
