Increased cost of living in the US was never driven by immigrants. That was a lie. It was an obvious lie, because this is an empirical question and the data did not support the hypothesis that rents and mortgages and grocery prices increased due to demand from immigrant families.
(Note that it is totally possible for immigration to impact prices in these markets. Immigration did have a measurable impact in Canada and Sweden, for example. This is not ideological, it is math.)
Mass deportation is not lowering rents and mortgages. Mass deportation is not reducing the price of goods and services. There are zero legitimate economic arguments for mass deportation in the USA. Maybe you didn't trust the empirical models, now we have the result of the experiment. It did not work. In fact, as the models predicted, mass deportation has had the opposite effect.
This was always a racist lie that played on Americans' emotional fears. They kept you from using facts and data by relaying graphic details of individual crimes. They triggered your sense of revulsion and outrage and then used your emotions to control you and steal from you.
That sucks and you should be mad.
How can it be that increased demand without increased supply doesn’t increase prices? Please back up your claim with the economic theory supporting it.
That's easy. If the goods were already over-supplied, then increasing demand will not increase prices, it will just consume some of the over-production.
Do you think that undocumented immigrants working minimum wage jobs and sending half their money back to family in their home country have much demand to purchase housing in the USA?
CC u/Accomplished-Leg2971
In the US, undocumented immigrants produce more with their labor then they consume in markets with their capital.
In Canada, they opened the door to a flood of educated, high-skill immigrants that had the opposite effect. Those individuals rapidly drove increased housing costs. They had a lot of liquid capital to buy and rent. They did not take low-wage construction jobs, they took professional jobs.
Most of us produce more than we consume. What’s that got to do with the cost of housing?
Most of us do not produce housing. Many of us do not produce at all, rather we profit from capital investments.
Immigrants produce more housing than they consume in the US. Ending immigration and deporting established families will increase the cost of housing. The signal is there already and will become unignorable for all but the most dedicated ideologues in the coming years.
Eventually we'll get another Reagan, who will do another amnesty, and reap another economic boom decade.
I thought we were discussing the recent (Biden admin) increase in immigration and the recent substantial increase in housing costs. Not the longstanding immigrant unskilled labor supply. Please clarify.
The recent substantial increase in housing costs was not driven by Biden era migration increases. That was an innumerate lie that Americans should have been smart enough to see through.
I’m certainly willing to believe you if you could just help me understand the economic theory you are standing on. Where’s your proof?
One example:
My city in LA county has lost 10% of its residents in the last 10 years. Contributing to the state of CA losing a congressional representative.
Mortgages doubled over the same time period.
Housing prices are driven by commodification of housing and not simple supply and demand. Properties are traded as commodities and their prices are set at what the market will bear.
Now that's just an anecdote that proves in this case that supply and demand are decoupled from market prices. Here is a link to more substantial analyses. Please click through the citations to see the primary economic analyses.
https://www.epi.org/publication/immigrants-and-the-economy/
Thank you, I’ll read it tonight.
They produce more houses than they consume on average, so therefore the increase in demand is cancelled out by a larger increase in supply.
Don't know if "they produce more houses than they consume" is true about undocumented immigrants, but it is economically logical that it would not lead to higher home prices.
There is absolutely no way that this is true. Source?
As I said, I don't know if it's true about undocumented immigrants, but the logic is sound.
You think that undocumented construction workers working for minimum wage or less are buying more houses than they build???
Have there been a lot of immigrants that entered the country in recent years?
Have the number of houses for sale increased by the same amount?
If not, maybe we should reduce the amount of buyers.
In Canada we have reached critical mass on housing vs immigration. My wife and I want to move out of our condo, but no one is buying right now. The real estate companies are trying to hold till the buyers come back…
I think reducing immigration has helped here so far, Carney has only recently been working to decrease immigration, and look, the housing market is reacting.
You need to prove something here…
The difference is that Canada allowed a lot of middle class immigrants all at once. Those families drove up housing costs because they came into the country with capital.
In The States, undocumented immigrants import almost no capital. They produce more labor than they consume. This is measurable.
In many ways, yes, but many pile into houses in Brampton, there was a house fire some weeks ago and they were saying how 6 people were recovered, and 2 were still missing. Modest house, people are really being crammed in, looks fishy.
Non-residential investment into residential property as a financial haven for generating returns also contributes to the increase in housing prices and is independent of any immigration or emigration
Canadas issue seems more to be due to foreign wealthy investment. It seems like the Chinese love investing into Canada and scoop up tons of homes they don't even use.
What makes you think that the immigrants are buyers?
In the context of u/Accomplished-Leg2971 's post, we're talking about the USA, so (often undocumented) blue collar workers taking on low-paid, often below minimum wage, jobs. Most of them are sending money back to family in their home country. They absolutely are not buying houses and deporting them is not going to reduce housing costs or convince builders to make more houses.
Since many of them are in construction, this will increase labor costs for house builders, and slow down construction.
If you want to talk about pressure on rents, then maybe, maybe, you have a point that the immigrants are forcing rents up. Maybe. But on prices for purchasing houses? You're dreaming.
Wait, this makes no sense at all. If I understand you, you're claiming that there are too many buyers in Canada (because of immigration) and not enough housing. That makes it a seller's market.
If you want to sell your condo, then sell it. You don't need permission from a real estate agent. (And trust me, RE agents working for commission are not going to go six months or a year without a sale to wait for the government to change immigration policy.)
Of course, having sold your condo, you may find it difficult to buy a new place, since its a seller's market.
"mass deportation" is a charade. millions-- possibly tens of millions-- of undocumented migrants have entered the US through various channels just in the last 4-5 years and only about 150k have been deported.
to claim that millions more residents has no effect on cost of living is to deny basic economics. that's millions more customers buying groceries and household essentials even if they buy nothing else. but obviously it's not the only contributing factor.
Not if those millions extra residents increase production more than they buy. That's just basic economics.
Food in the US is only as cheap as it is because you have millions of migrants picking the fruit and doing the manual labour for wages well under what American citizens would accept. Take those migrants away and your food prices will increase, even if demand decreases.
The population of the USA is around 330 million. If you have 33 million migrants, that might increase demand by 10% (but probably less than that). But if they increase production by 10% too, that will even it out, and if they increase production by more than 10% then overall they will decrease prices on average.
Of course, this is an average, not across the board. Luxury goods pricing will not be affected one way or another, since those migrants are neither buying nor producing those luxury goods.
The claim is well supported by quantitative economics models and empirical data.
You are forgetting about labor inputs. Undocumented immigrants do not import capital into the US. Undocumented immigrants do provide a lot of inexpensive labor for american producers.
This is very different from Canada. Canada open the doors to middle class immigrants, who came into the country with liquid capital and strongly impacted prices in the housing market.
Models are never wrong, just look at Neil Fergusons covid modeling. Reduce the population of the US by tens of millions and I guarantee housing utilization and prices will decline as they vacate the housing they were using no matter what your models might show. Economist often are baffled how reality doesn’t conform to the modeled results.
Just because Neil Ferguson is a hack with a long history of inventing hyper-complicated inaccurate models that always act in the interest of Big Pharma doesn't mean that models are always wrong. Other people, who aren't hacks, modelled what happens when you mass-vaccinate billions of people during a pandemic with a leaky vaccine, and correctly predicted that it would drive the evolution of new strains. Exactly what happened.
Quantitative models are more useful than vibes. What if we specifically reduce the number of young working people while the population continues to grow slowly and grey rapidly?
Turns out that is an empiricle question, and math can help. We can predict the position of the planets to the cm hundreds of years into the future. Vibes cannot do that.
Anyway, we are doing the experiment now. Southern border is closed. If you can keep an open mind to new evidence, you will see that you have been deceived about the economic impacts of immigration.
And the Covid models?
Idk Neil Ferguson. Sorry if his model was inaccurate.
Please do not allow that example to sour you on math. It is legitimately useful for a lot of things.
Those millions more customers are also millions more workers, so they increase demand and increase supply, cancelling out any inflationary effects.
This is not true if they do not work (increase supply) in the areas where they consume (increase demand), then there would be no cancelling effect.
in some cases this is true to an extent. largely they contribute inexpensive labor. but we live in a global economy and we do not produce all or even most of the goods we consume. the importers of those goods price-- at least in part-- according to demand and 10 million+ more people significantly increases demand without necessarily increasing supply. again, it's not the only factor but it is one.
But is it true when it comes to undocumented immigrants and housing? (Housing being the most significant component in COL)
I hesitate to say "no" because lots do indeed work in home construction (and thus help with the housing supply).
where do you think those 10+ million people are living? and to be clear, 10+ million is arrivals between 2019 and 2024, there are tens of millions more who arrived earlier.
I'm sure many are living with friends or relatives and not contributing directly to housing demand, but many more rent or own property. any time your population increases rapidly-- no matter how it happens-- housing is squeezed, especially affordable housing.
even though housing contributes a lot to monthly expenses, groceries and household essentials are a huge part of what's squeezing people financially.
As far as I'm aware the population of undocumented immigrants has hovered around 10-12 million for over 20 years now Source. I have not heard about the 10+ million who arrived between 2019 and 2024, or the tens of millions who arrived earlier. Do you have a source for this?
Agreed, because there are market frictions within supply chains that delay supplier's ability to adequately respond to increased demand with increased supply, and with an abrupt spike in increased demand, this would definitely inflate prices temporarily, until suppliers can catch up.
But if the population of undocumented immigrants has had little growth in an area, that should produce no inflation, as suppliers are able to keep up. The same goes with other life essentials like groceries, where there's less friction and delay so they can respond even better to greater changes in demand.
If those undocumented immigrants can reduce some of those frictions by providing more plentiful cheap labor, and produce more houses than they consume, then it should have a deflationary effect on housing, at least in the long term.
there's a few issues...
one is that almost no new housing is affordable. even in lower cost areas, you're looking at a minimum of $400k for a no-frills new build. it's not profitable to build little 1500sqft 2bd/2ba houses. so it's not necessarily a supply chain issue, but an existing supply issue. more people are competing for the same older stock. the only new housing that's sometimes affordable are rental units, but those tend to have corporate management that rapidly raises rent. these are all generalizations of course!
2 is that we live in a world of national chains and, as I said earlier, they're importing most (if not all) of what they sell from other countries. so maybe one part of the country is blowing up with new residents while another remains stagnant, but they both have kroger grocery stores and kroger the corporate entity now has to import more product to accommodate that overall larger customer base. and because other corporations are importing more of those same products, the suppliers can raise their prices. and once prices go up and the customer gets used to them they rarely come down. and those products are usually already coming from the cheapest parts of the world in terms of production costs and labor so it's not always an option to find a cheaper supplier.
I see plenty of new housing in lower-cost areas like Houston selling in the very affordable $200K range: https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/Houston_TX/shw-nc
Direct imports accounted for 15% of the total U.S. food supply in 2023 Source. Embedded imports accounted for 4% of total U.S. food spending in 2023 Source.
An increase in demand, with no complementary increase in supply, does allow suppliers to increase prices, but prices can remain stable if there is a complementary increase in supply, and there's no reason why this wouldn't happen through the "Law of Supply."
Why did you deliberately show the out of date estimate for number of unauthorized immigrants? The latest Pew research shows it hit an all time record of 14M in 2023, more than 2M higher than in 2022. Your numbers from Pew are from 2022. Probably next year (the numbers appear to always come out 2 years late) it will show that it got even higher in 2024: https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2025/08/21/u-s-unauthorized-immigrant-population-reached-a-record-14-million-in-2023/
EDIT: The Center For Immigration Studies estimates the total number of unauthorized immigrants at 15.4M as of 2025, a 50% jump over the Biden term: https://cis.org/Report/ForeignBorn-Number-and-Share-US-Population-AllTime-Highs-January-2025
Ok, so that's not "10+ million arrivals between 2019 and 2024" or "tens of millions more who arrived earlier"
Did I make that claim? No...
It also isn't "the population of undocumented immigrants has hovered around 10-12 million for over 20 years now" which was your claim...deliberately relying on out of date data to mislead.
No, I did not intend to mislead, I just used the first source I found, which happened to be out of date.
I will update my claim and say it has hovered around 10-12 million for nearly 20 years, and in recent years spiked 2-3 million more. Even then, (the reason I bring up this statistic in the first place) it still does not suggest the "10+ million arrivals between 2019 and 2024" or "tens of millions more who arrived earlier" as claimed.
Covid was the fear play. Right this is the anger play. In psychology the hierarchy of motivation fear and anger are the quickest motivators…
You might be surprised.
I have lots of friends across the American ideological spectrum and I get into a lot of conversations. You might be surprised how many discussions of the economic impact of low-skill migration end up with my conservative friend describing - in lurid detail - the murder of Laken Riley. That was just an ASTONISHING propaganda win for American nativists.
Fear and anger are motivators. Quick motivation leads to manipulation. Look past the what is happening to why would one want to motivate in such way to gain what…
Pretty clear in this case that the GOP whipped up hysteria to win an election.
What is less clear is how folks will respond once it becomes clear that they were tricked.
Why would that be surprising? That's exactly what u/Designer_Emu_6518 suggests, and so does your own post. The migration thing is the anger play.
The murder of Laken Riley is a tragedy for her family and friends and very sad, but thousands of US women are murdered each year and I guarantee that your conservative friend gives zero fucks about most of them because they don't support his agenda.
There's no mass deportations happening lol. You are also fooled by the media, it can be proven by data.
Does limiting illegal crossing at the southern border have any impact on the US economy?
Yes.........
What economic impacts do you predict?
Before I answer that, are you insinuating, that illegal immigration does not affect the economy?
Where?
You make claims and reject claims but based on what data?
All I see is emotion.
Too many confounding variables to draw that conclusion.
You have Trump's tariffs, you have the uncertainty of wars with Russia, China, Iran and now Venezuela, there's the ever increasing national debt, the inflationary spike of tens of thousands of otherwise unemployable knuckle-dragging chimpanzees suddenly getting well-paid jobs as ICE goons, increased military spending, the slow decline of the greenback for international trade, increased trade going to BRICS countries leaving less for the USA, etc.
Playing Devil's Advocate, it could be that the deflationary effect of deporting hundreds or thousands of law-abiding, hard-working immigrants is simply not strong enough to overcome the effect of tariffs etc.