In Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate, Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. J.D. Vance frequently blamed illegal immigration for a variety of problems, including gun violence in schools, lack of jobs and lack of affordable housing.
UCLA sociologist Cecilia Menjivar, an expert on the effects of immigration law and enforcement practices on immigrants’ lives, points to the “us vs. them” framing by the Republican ticket that mirrors autocratic rhetoric, as they place blame on immigrants for many of the country’s woes — in particular, the lack of affordable housing.
“It’s wild to conceive of immigrants as the reason for the country’s lack of affordable housing when it is immigrant labor that builds homes. The construction sector would come to a halt without immigrant labor. Immigrants build homes, they do not take them from people. These fabrications are simply part of an autocrat’s playbook of dividing people, creating an ‘us vs. them’ narrative so the autocrat is the only one who can save the people.
“It’s easier to vilify immigrants than to provide real solutions for the lack of affordable housing, better paying jobs, etc., especially when those who make these claims have no policy plans to help most Americans.
“The irony is that the immigrants who make up the majority of the workforce in the construction sector have minimal chances at homeownership and very limited access to housing assistance programs.”
Menjivar co-wrote an introduction to the recent double issue of the journal American Behavioral Scientist titled “The Tools of Autocracy Worldwide: Authoritarian Networks, the Façade of Democracy, and Neo-Repression.”
And in a recent UCLA Newsroom Q&A on authoritarian tactics in the 2024 presidential campaign, Menjívar, the Dorothy L. Meier Social Equities Professor at UCLA, explains autocrats’ use of fear, the deliberate spread of misinformation, the deceptive use of democratic systems and the harnessing of hate groups to emphasize the fragility of democracy and sharpen the electorate’s critical eye to the ever present threat of autocracy.
