Immigrants built this country, and immigrants built New Orleans. The Irish who arrived in the 1800s didn’t come solely to escape famine—they came to work, often enduring brutal conditions as they labored. Sicilian immigrants, arriving in waves in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, helped craft the culinary landscape of the city, bringing with them the flavors and traditions that birthed iconic dishes like muffulettas and cannoli, now inseparable from the fabric of New Orleans cuisine. Haitian immigrants, many of them refugees fleeing revolution, wove their rich cultural traditions into the complex tapestry of African and French influences in the form of jazz music.

New Orleans is a living monument to the resilience, creativity, and fortitude of immigrants who came in search of a better life. They left their homes, their families, and their pasts behind, all for the possibility of starting anew in a place that promised nothing except a chance. J.D. Vance, a sitting U.S. Senator, recently claimed that migrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating cats and dogs—a claim that has been repeatedly debunked, including by Springfield’s Republican mayor. So why does Vance continue to spread such baseless falsehoods? To “protect” the country, he says.

Vance is not protecting anything. He is a man of profound moral elasticity, bending the truth to serve his pursuit of power. His willingness to peddle these lies reflects cowardice and a fundamental emptiness at the core of his political persona. This is a man who has built his career on a foundation of fear mongering and division, playing to the darkest instincts of a frightened voter base. In any other context, this kind of behavior would be disqualifying and unbecoming of even a mid-level Burger King manager, much less someone entrusted with one of the most important and powerful jobs in the world.

But why should New Orleans care about J.D. Vance? Because he will soon be visiting this city, and his very presence here is an insult to everything New Orleans stands for.

New Orleans—a city with over three centuries of history, a city that has stood as a testament to the power of immigration, a city that wouldn’t exist as we know it without the contributions of people from all over the world—and Vance has the audacity to walk those streets while peddling the kind of rhetoric that spits in the face of everything this country stands for.

Vance would like for you to consider him a sort of “everyman”—someone who understands the plight of working-class America, a class that is heavily populated by immigrants. Much like his fellow working-class Americans, he went to an Ivy League school and had his senate bid funded in part by a very generous donation from Peter Thiel to the tune of $10,000,000. In his memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” he frames himself as someone who grew up with nothing—a true rags to riches story. All too often, though, in these stories, Vance also succumbs to the cliche of the man who’s grasps towards money and power supersedes his ability to relate to the place he came from. 

Vance is of Scottish-Irish descent, which is ironic because his ancestors—the very people who built this nation brick by brick—are the same people he’s spent his career vilifying. How does someone claim to love America but hate so deeply the ones who laid the foundation for the roads they walk on? The food they eat? The music they listen to? New Orleans is a living, breathing example of what happens when you welcome the world to your doorstep. The French, the Haitians, the Italians, the Africans, the Irish—they didn’t just come here. They made here. They created a culture that is unique in all the world, and it’s a culture that thrives because of immigration, not despite it.

But J.D. Vance? He wants you to believe otherwise. He wants you to believe that immigrants are a threat. He wants you to believe that the people who risk everything just for the chance to stand on American soil are somehow less worthy of that soil than he is.

J.D. Vance is married to Usha Vance, an Indian American woman, someone whose family, too, has a story of immigration, of sacrifice, of seeking opportunity. So how does he reconcile that? How does a man who, without his marriage, would view her presence as antithetical to what this country stands for get up and speak with a straight face about “protecting” America from the very thing that created it?

He doesn’t. He doesn’t because his version of America isn’t the one that exists. His version is one where fear is currency, where division is power, and where the truth gets twisted into whatever it needs to be that day to keep people afraid of the “other.”

There is no “other.” Not here. Not in New Orleans. This country doesn’t have a single corner that hasn’t been touched, shaped, or outright built by the hands of immigrants. You want to talk about the American spirit? That spirit is made up of the people who risked their lives for the chance to be a part of something bigger than themselves.

To disrespect those people is to disrespect America itself.

J.D. Vance is un-American. He’s un-American because he’s forgotten—or maybe he’s just chosen to ignore—that America’s greatness comes from its diversity, its ability to welcome those who seek a better life, who work hard, who dream bigger. New Orleans is no place for the likes of him. Because here, in this city, we celebrate what makes us different. We honor the contributions of everyone who’s come here, past and present.

J.D. Vance can visit, sure, but he should know—his very presence here is an insult to the rich history and culture that has been brewing for over 300 years.