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Vice President JD Vance was pressed on a core piece of President Donald Trump’s agenda as he took questions from college students at the University of Mississippi. During the Turning Point USA event, an attendee went on to ask Vance about the administration’s increased crackdown on immigration. The vice president had earlier advocated for a slowdown in legal immigration — telling the crowd, “We have to get the overall numbers way, way down.” The participant first pointed to Vance’s wife, Usha, who identifies as Hindu when he is Christian, and asked how he is “balancing” teaching his three children about his “inter–cultural, racial, religious household.” "And when you talk about too many immigrants here, when did you guys decide that number? Why did you sell us a dream?" the participant asked. The person continued: “You made us spend our youth, our wealth in this country and gave us a dream. You don’t owe us anything. We have worked hard for it. Then how can you as a vice president stand there and say that we have too many of them now, and we are going to take them out, to people who are here rightfully so by paying them money that you guys asked us? You gave us the path, and now how can you stop it and tell us we don’t belong here anymore?” As Vance was about to respond, the participant continued to ask another question, noting it was being said “with due respect." "Why are we making Christianity one of the major thing that you have to have in common to be one of you guys, to show that I love America just as you do. Why is that still a question? Why do I have to be a Christian?" the attendee asked. Vance, who acknowledged “there was a lot there” to answer, attempted to respond. “First of all, I can believe that we should have lower immigration levels, but if the United States passed a law and made a promise to somebody, the United States, of course, has to honor that promise,“ Vance said. ”Nobody’s talking about that. I’m talking about people who came in, in violation of the laws of the United States of America. And I’m talking about in the future, reducing the number, reducing the number of people." The attendee interjected: "May I continue on that? Because when you just said you are not stopping with the people who came here legally, right, but you are pushing out policies that hurt us, and these policies are not even solving the problems. These policies are just creating chaos." “No, no, ma’am. OK, so again, I’m going to finish answering the question, and then if, you know, if I’ve answered all nine of your questions in less than 15 minutes, then we can keep on going,” Vance replied, receiving applause from the audience. “We gotta have a little fun, right?” He added: “So here’s the thing. I can believe that the United States should lower its levels of immigration in the future, while also respecting that there are people who have come here through lawful immigration pathways that have contributed to the country. But just because one person or 10 people or 100 people came in legally and contributed to the United States of America, does that mean that we’re thereby committed to let in a million or 10 million or 100 million people a year in the future? No, that’s not right.” Vance did not offer a solid number on how many legal immigrants the country should be admitted, but emphasized that it is “far less than what we’ve been accepting.” He also criticized former President Joe Biden’s administration for its immigration policies, which he described as threatening to the identity of the United States. “When something like that happens, you’ve got to allow your own society to cohere a little bit, to build a sense of common identity, for all the newcomers — the ones who are going to stay — to assimilate into American culture,” Vance said. “Until you do that, you’ve got to be careful about any additional immigration, in my view.”
