JD Vance was on Fox New Sunday yesterday and he touched on a number of topics, including the fires in California, immigration, the economy, and J6 pardons.

We thought a few things were interesting.

On J6 pardons, Vance confirmed his and Trump's position that they would look at pardons on a case-by-case basis, with the general principle that peaceful protesters would get a pardon, violent protesters wouldn't, and that there was a "grey area" in the middle.

On the economy, Vance called it a "dumpster fire," calling particular attention to the deficit, the debt, and the rising yields on treasuries. He also pointed to rising gas prices. The attention paid to the deficit and the debt is interesting, as we are currently working through a reconciliation package that will probably be deficit-busting.

Most of the time was spent on immigration, which as we know will be the top priority in the early days of the Administration. At the risk of fanboying, we have to say we're consistently impressed by Vance's ability to speak in well-formed paragraphs in high-stakes interviews.

Take this quote, which is verbatim and has not been edited for clarity in any way: "It is not compassion to allow the drug cartels to traffic small children. It is not compassionate to allow the worst people in the world to send minor children, some of them victims of sex trafficking, into our country. That is the real humanitarian crisis at the border. You're not going to exacerbate it through law enforcement; you're going to fix it through law enforcement."

But the key point in the interview, to us, rested on the question that has been lurking in the background of discussions of this issue, during the campaign until now, namely: ok, deportations—but how much?

Let us grant the following facts. Some people who are illegally in the US are awful people, gang members, violent criminals, and the like, and anyone who isn't a psychopath will be very happy if they are apprehended and deported. But some people who are illegally in the US are something like model citizens: they have been in the US since childhood, they speak English, they work, they pay taxes, they are involved in their community. And, of course, millions upon millions of people live somewhere between those extremes. Deporting all of them, practically, would cause significant logistical challenges, would cause a significant political backlash among moderates, and would cause, at least, short-term economic pain.

Before we move on, let us, once again, quote Vice President-elect Vance extensively: "You do have hundreds of thousands, maybe even a million people, who, in addition to crossing the border illegally, have also committed a measure of violent crime. So it's actually a very large number of people. [...] The point is, if you want to fix the overall border crisis, you have to engage in law enforcement. We can't buy into this lie [...] that law enforcement at the American southern border is somehow not compassionate to families who want to cross illegally. Our number one responsibility is compassion to our fellow Americans, and that starts with enforcing the southern border. You cannot have a country of law and order, of stability, of basic good governance, unless you get control of what Biden has left us at the American southern border, and President Trump is committed to doing it on day one."

The Trump-Vance (mostly Vance) answer to this question has always been a kind of two-step. Sometimes it sounds like the plan is to deport every single illegal. Sometimes the answer is: "We're going to start by deporting the worst people, and that'll be plenty, and then…we'll see."

There is, of course, a lot to be said for the idea that if you have serious enforcement and that you turn off the financial incentives for migrating to the US, a lot of people will self-deport. Still, that doesn't give us a number, or a criterion for deciding who to deport beyond the most egregious cases everyone agrees on.

During the campaign, then-candidate Vance floated the number of one million deportations per year. Using our advanced qualifications in mathematics, we worked out that that equates to four million people in a four-year Presidential term, and that four million is less than the 10 to 20 million people who are estimated to be in the US illegally. At the same time, that is more than the "hundreds of thousands, maybe even a million people" Vance cited yesterday as being violent criminals in addition to being illegal aliens who we intend to deport first. So, who do we think are the remaining three million people?

In terms of actually getting things done and improving the situation, "Look, we're going to start with the worst cases, and we'll cross the next bridge when we get to it" is not actually a bad answer. And maybe that's the answer. We're just not sure.

OF NOTE: We touched on this issue, and many others, with Mark Krikorian, Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies, in our podcast (YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts).

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