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Vice President JD Vance was confronted at a Turning Point USA event Wednesday night as he called for a slowdown in legal immigration.
Speaking to students at the University of Mississippi on immigration, Vance said, “We have to get the overall numbers way, way down.”
While Vance didn’t provide an exact number of legal immigrants he thinks should be admitted into the U.S., he said it’s “far less than what we’ve been accepting.”
One woman in the audience probed Vance on his stance on legal immigration.
“And when you talk about too many immigrants here, when did you guys decide that number? Why did you sell us a dream?” the woman asked.
“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 the 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?”
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Vice President JD Vance was confronted at a Turning Point USA event Wednesday night as he called for a slowdown in legal immigration (Jonathan Ernst/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
Vance then shifted the focus to illegal immigration.
“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. 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 of people,” Vance said.
The vice president later added: “We cannot have an immigration policy where what was good for the country 50 or 60 years ago binds the country inevitably for the future. There’s too many people who wanna come to the United States America, and my job as vice president is not to look out for the interests of the whole world. It’s to look out for the people of the United States.”
The Trump administration’s hardline stance on illegal immigration has been front and center as federal agents carry out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation effort through ICE raids across the country. But the Trump administration has also curbed legal immigration.
In August, the State Department told the BBC it had revoked more than 6,000 international student visas, claiming it was due to violations of U.S. law and overstays, which is when immigrants stay in the U.S. longer than their visa permits. The “vast majority” of the alleged violations were assault, driving under the influence, burglary and “support for terrorism,” the department said.
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President Donald Trump’s mass deportation effort has been front and center these past several months through ICE raids across the country (Adam Gray/Getty Images)
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