President Donald Trump has found a new data point for his immigration argument: housing costs.
In a Sunday, July 12, Truth Social post, Trump wrote, “Fed Reserve working paper suggests Biden illegal immigrant wave drove up home prices 30%.” The claim referred to a Dallas Federal Reserve study examining the economic effects of unauthorized immigration between early 2021 and early 2024.
The study did find that unauthorized migration put pressure on housing markets. According to the working paper, unauthorized immigrant worker flows raised house prices by 6.6% and market rents by 4.3% in the weighted-average local market between March 2021 and March 2024.
But the 30% figure Trump cited was not the direct increase in home prices caused by immigration. The paper found that unauthorized immigration accounted for roughly 30% of total home-price growth during the period, with most of the increase left to other housing-market forces.
The findings give both sides something to point to. Trump and immigration hardliners can argue that a rapid rise in unauthorized migration worsened housing affordability in communities already short on homes. Immigration advocates can point to the same research showing that migrants did not appear to take a fixed pool of jobs from US-born workers.
The study found that the migration wave added roughly as many jobs as workers to local economies, had no statistically clear effect on local wages and reduced government transfer spending per person in affected places, likely because undocumented immigrants are barred from many benefit programs.
The political fight now turns on what problem Washington chooses to solve. Trump is arguing for tighter borders. Critics of that approach argue the data points just as clearly to a shortage of housing supply.
