During his campaign for vice president, Republican JD Vance scoffed at the "deranged" notion that the nation's housing crisis might be alleviated by bringing in illegal immigrants.

Questioned on Saturday on "The Interview" podcast by the New York Times, Vance discussed former President Donald Trump's intention to start deporting the millions of illegal immigrants presently residing in the nation, as The New York Post reported.

A third of construction workers are Hispanic, and "a large proportion are undocumented," as host Lulu Garcia-Navarro reminded out.

The Line of Questioning

"So how do you propose to build all the housing necessary that we need in this country by removing all the people who are working in construction?" Garcia-Navarro asked.

Vance took the question tongue in cheek, saying "Well, I think it’s a fair question because we know that back in the 1960s, when we had very low levels of illegal immigration, Americans didn’t build houses. But, of course they did. And I’m being sarcastic in service of a point," Vance responded.

He continued, "The assumption that because a large number of homebuilders now are using undocumented labor, that that’s the only way to build homes, I think again betrays a fundamental—"

"The country is much bigger. The need is much bigger," she interrupted.

Later in the Interview

The notion that construction jobs require millions of illegal immigrants, despite the fact that millions of male Americans are currently unemployed, was later criticized by Vance.

"This is one of the really deranged things that I think illegal immigration does to our society is it gets us in a mind-set of saying we can only build houses with illegal immigrants, when we have seven million — just men, not even women, just men — who have completely dropped out of the labor force," Vance said.

The vice presidential candidate went on to bash the theory that American's wont do the jobs being done by the immigratns in question.

He contradicted it, saying that Americans "won't do the jobs for below-the-table wages," going to to say "They won’t do those jobs for non-living wages. But people will do those jobs, they will just do those jobs at certain wages," Vance said.

Vance's Take on Industry

Vance, who is running on the ticket with a well-known businessman who has made his mark by touting his interest in American industry, spoke to the issue from that angle:

"Think about the perspective of an American company. I want them to go searching in their own country for their own citizens, sometimes people who may be struggling with addiction or trauma, get them re-engaged in American society.

"We cannot have an entire American business community that is giving up on American workers and then importing millions of illegal laborers," he continued.