President Donald Trump questioned former President Joe Biden over soaring housing costs, pointing to a recent Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas working paper to ask whether an “illegal immigrant” wave drove 30% of the recent surge in U.S. home prices.
Market ‘Demand Shock’
The debate centers on a newly released working paper estimating the economic impacts of approximately seven million unauthorized immigrants entering the country between 2021 and 2024.
According to the researchers, these unauthorized immigrant worker flows acted as a “demand shock” to local housing markets, boosting prices and rents in the face of relatively inelastic short-run housing supply.
“From early 2021 to early 2024, the U.S. experienced an unprecedented boom in unauthorized immigration, followed by a rapid slowdown beginning in mid-2024,” the working paper states.
