J.D. Vance criticized when he said his Catholic faith made him hate “low-wage foreigners.”
US Vice President J.D. Vance has come under fire after he said his Catholic faith supports policies that oppose the entry of “low-wage foreigners” into the United States. Social media indicated that his wife, the second lady, Usha Vance, is an Indian-American and a devout Hindu.Vance made the remarks during an appearance on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle while discussing his new memoir, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, which focuses on his conversion to Catholicism in 2019.Asked by host Laura Ingraham about how his faith influences his decisions in public office, Vance said his faith encourages humility and shapes his approach to policy making.“My faith is constantly asking me to be humble about what’s going on, so one of the things I try to do, Laura, is to constantly ask myself, ‘What have we learned?’He added, “I truly believe that the Christian faith humbles political leaders, because true humility is how you learn, how you learn about others, and how you make better decisions over time.”Vance then tied his belief to the Trump administration’s economic agenda.“The other thing I would say, Laura, is that my faith motivates me to remember that our economic policy doesn’t exist for corporations, it doesn’t exist for Wall Street, as much as we want everyone to be successful, it exists to uphold the dignity of human beings,” he said.
“We want every American to be able to raise a family and be able to provide for themselves in comfort and dignity, and that’s why we’re trying to bring investment and manufacturing back to the United States,” the vice president added.He continued: “That’s why we don’t like low-wage foreigners to come in and lower the wages of American workers. We want ordinary Americans to be able to live a decent life. I think that’s a very Christian concept.”
The clip went viral, with many users accusing Vance of distorting Christian teachings. One person wrote: “What faith is this? Jesus literally said, ‘Blessed are the poor.'”Another person wrote: “What he is saying is not the teachings of Jesus.”Another user said: “Jesus Christ was a low-paid foreigner.”One comment was more personal: “Like your Hindu wife Usha”?Usha Vance is the first Hindu second lady of the United States. An Indian American and the daughter of Indian immigrants, she grew up in a Hindu household in San Diego and graduated from Yale Law School.
Earlier this year, during an interview with CBS News, Osha Vance said she had no plans to convert to Catholicism like her husband. J.D. Vance later said he hoped she would one day convert to Christianity, but made clear that she had “no plans to convert” and that he respected her decision.Her faith has previously drawn criticism from some within the MAGA movement, with conservatives questioning the presence of a non-Christian second lady, Brown. The discussion also came on the heels of J.D. Vance’s previous statements in which he described the United States as a Christian nation.
