Those Biden years were so "great" for America, weren't they?
Turns out flooding the country with tens of millions of illegal immigrants creates a shortage of affordable housing.
Who would've thought?
These numbers come from James Carter, who served as a deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury in the George W. Bush administration.
He writes in the Wall Street Journal this week:
A 2024 study by Troup Howard, Mengqi Wang, and Dayin Zhang found that heightened enforcement reduced residential construction workforces in affected counties, resulting in fewer homes built and higher prices.
But demand is shifting too. A recent Federal Reserve working paper finds that unauthorized immigration accounted for roughly 30% of house-price growth and 20% of rent growth in the average metro area between 2021 and 2024.
Well, that's just great.
If you or your family and friends are having a hard time affording a house, now you know why.
Thankfully, according to reports, the increased focus on immigration enforcement should (eventually) have an effect. Elections do have consequences!
As that demand eases, so should price pressure. Zillow reports national mortgage costs at their best level since August 2022, with affordability expected to improve in 49 of the 50 largest metros by year's end.
Now imagine if we deported tens of millions more!
ICE statistics show roughly 443,000 deportations in fiscal 2025 — a significant increase but well short of the million-a-year scenarios critics typically model against.
Carter notes how competition with immigrants hurts American workers, particularly when a flood of low-skill workers put downward pressure on blue collar wages.
For much of the 2010s, pay in lower-skill occupations lagged behind while professional salaries pulled away. As immigration enforcement has increased, that gap has narrowed.
When Obama and Biden flooded the country with illegals, wage growth slowed to 2.5% for Americans in manufacturing and trades. It has now jumped to 3.1% compared to 3.4% for white collar jobs, meaning the gap in wage growth is being eliminated as deportations ramp up.
Since we are speaking about immigration, this guy asked something a lot of us would like the answer to:
Good question!
While it may not be known if the housing market will ever recover from years of insane prices, we can now confidently point our collective finger at who was largely responsible…
Thanks, Joe.
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