Biden’s illegal immigration surge triggered 30% rise in home prices, $ 20% in rents, Fed paper finds

A Federal Reserve paper, not some think tank with an axe to grind, just put numbers on something a lot of working families already felt in their gut. Every 1% bump in unauthorized workers tracked with a 2.2% rise in home prices and a 1.4% jump in rents. That's not a coincidence buried in a spreadsheet. That's rent checks and mortgage applications.

For years, anyone who connected mass illegal immigration to housing costs got waved off as heartless or worse. Now the people who study money for a living are saying the math checks out. More bodies competing for a housing stock that wasn't built to absorb them pushes prices up. It's supply and demand, not a talking point.

The frustrating part is how predictable this was. Builders weren't given incentive to keep pace, localities weren't asked to plan for it, and the people footing the bill were mostly renters and first-time buyers already stretched thin. Nobody in Washington priced that in because nobody wanted to say it out loud.

This isn't an argument against immigrants. It's an argument for having a policy that actually accounts for consequences instead of pretending there aren't any. The Fed just did the math the White House wouldn't.