A look into the mind of Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance, the current immigration crisis, and what it means to be an American to begin with.
On July 17th, 2024, J.D. Vance took center stage at the Republican National Convention. He was present to formally accept nomination as Donald Trump’s running mate, and to introduce himself to the vast majority of Americans who knew little of the Ohio senator. Vance’s speech, the night's keynote, echoed populist themes of economic nationalism, social conservatism, and immigration restriction. While populism is on par for a candidate tied to Donald Trump, Vance’s doubling down on this right-wing ideology indicates a seismic shift in the greater politics of the Republican Party. The neoconservative party of Bush, Cheney, etc. has been supplanted by the national populism of Trump and Vance. This not only has great implications for American immigration policy moving forward, but the populistic shift in the GOP signifies a possible change in the dominant ethos surrounding immigration in America. We are once again questioning what it means to be an American.
Vance’s populism is spurred on by his own life story. From his rough childhood in forgotten Appalachia to his life among the elites of Yale, Vance sees himself as a voice for the downtrodden American in Washington. Though vocal support of the working class is nothing new from a politician, Vance’s novelty is his focus on Americanism itself. In a particularly eye-opening moment from his speech, Vance stated, “America is not just an idea. It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation.” While some may not immediately grasp the implication of this line, it represents a thought process that has the power to unravel a century of ideological precedent.
Since America became a global superpower after the Second World War, it has taken on the responsibility of being the democratic paragon of the world. This idea was not exactly new in the American zeitgeist, however, as President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed America to have the “international police power” in the early 20th century. But while Roosevelt was a strong supporter of the American empire overseas, he was an even stronger assimilationist. In 1907, Roosevelt famously spoke on immigrant assimilation, stating, “We have room for but one flag, the American flag ... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language." At the time, America struggled to assimilate the millions of Italian and Irish immigrants from Europe following the American Civil War. Roosevelt approved of immigration, but realized the importance of America asserting its culture as a young nation. The president understood that vast amounts of immigration to the same American neighborhoods could produce ethnic enclaves, pockets of Old World resistance to the American way of life. Roosevelt’s assimilationist outlook would influence Republican politicians for decades to come.
In 1965, the Hart-Celler Immigration Act changed the entire landscape of American immigration. It ended the old National Origins system, which directed 70% of immigration slots to Northern Europeans. The new bill gave preference to family migration, and for the first time in American history, a large share of immigrants were from non-European nations. In the 1960s, critics argued that unrestricted immigration from Latin America would change the demographic makeup of the United States, and that millions of new immigrants would arrive every year. Hart-Cellar advocates assured critics that immigration to the United States would remain constant. During debate on the Senate floor, Senator Ted Kennedy claimed, "Our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually. Secondly, the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset."
These claims turned out to be false. By 1989, immigration had soared to new heights, with the vast majority coming from Latin America, Africa, and Asia. President Ronald Reagan built off of Roosevelt’s fondness by granting amnesty to 3 million illegal immigrants. Reagan, in his farewell address to the nation, called America a “shining city on a hill” with doors “open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.” Reagan thus believed in America the idea, not America the nation. A nation, by definition, is a large body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular country or territory. Reagan’s neoliberalism may have been great for the pockets of immigrants and global magnates; however, his “magic soil” philosophy of attainable American culture has resulted in a country far more fragmented than ever.
Since Reagan, immigration has continued to increase at a rapid pace while real wages for Americans have stagnated. Americans have lost manufacturing jobs while immigrants have been afforded opportunities in technology through H1B visa programs. In Vance's mind, The American heartland has been hollowed out while immigrants receive welfare at a higher rate than Americans. J.D. Vance grew up in the center of this decline, and continues to reel against the idea of magic soil today. Vance believes in America the homeland, the country of his ancestors. He believes that being an American by lineage matters, and that the American government should prioritize Americans over all other peoples. This is true regarding the people of Springfield, Illinois, who have been subjected to chaos through the influx of 20,000 Haitian migrants at a rapid pace. This is true for the people of western North Carolina, who received little assistance from the federal government after the devastation brought by Hurricane Helene. In contrast, illegal immigrants have received over $1.4 billion in aid since 2022. Vance’s new-right rhetoric in support of the American homeland is seen by many as a necessary statement to a government that does not seem to care about Americans anymore. If they do, they surely are not doing enough to show it.
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