Mass Deportations Would Lower Housing Prices

Simple supply and demand.

Housing prices are out of control. As any economist will tell you, there are two ways to bring the price of a good down: increase the supply or reduce the demand.

Building houses—increasing the supply—is a complex and relatively difficult business. It requires time, labor, materials, and expertise. It is also environmentally taxing. Building lots of houses in quick succession can easily lead to urban sprawl, congestion, and unaesthetic cookie cutter suburbs stretched out to the horizon. Residents of Dallas-Fort Worth know exactly what I’m talking about.

But there is, of course, another way to reduce the cost of housing in America—we could reduce demand. And there is, helpfully, an easy way to do this: mass deportations.

The Biden administration has let in more than 8 million legal and illegal migrants since 2021. That equates to a roughly 7% increase in the national population and a concomitant rise in the demand for housing.

Considering skyrocketing inflation—the dollar has lost half of its value in the last four years—investors have flocked to real estate as a hedge. This phenomenon, combined with mass immigration, has driven the prices of homes skyward.

The median home price today in America is $400,000. The current 30-year mortgage interest rate is 7.8%. Buyers put down a median amount of $52,000. At those numbers, the average new buyer in America is paying $3,100 a month in mortgage payments. Over the life of the loan, the buyer will pay three times the sticker price. In other words, the median home in America today is worth a million dollars.

There is no other way to slice it, the current first time home buyer in America faces an unrelentingly bad situation. Indeed, current college students should expect not to be able to afford a mortgage until they are well into their 30s or 40s. The starting salary for a recent college graduate is still just $51,000 a year. With soaring rent, stagnant wages, and a recession inevitably looming on the horizon, most young people today simply don’t have the financial wherewithal to be able to afford a home without decades of scrimping and saving.

This is a depressing state of affairs and a potentially explosive one. The bifurcation of economic status in America along distinct age lines bodes ill for the wealthy elderly who make up America’s dominant political class.

It is very easy to see how the coming recession could lead to revolutionary populism from both the left and the right. My advice to America’s rulers is simple: head this problem off before it gets to that point.

There is an easy solution lying right before you—deport large swaths of America’s immigrant population.

The flood of foreigners into America over the last 60 years has meant higher home prices and lower wages. Again, this is basic supply and demand. The more people there are in the country, the more housing they need. The more workers there are competing for the same jobs, the lower the wages.

Mass deportations of illegal and legal immigrants alike would go a long way to securing economic prosperity for actual American citizens.

Since 1965, the year the Hart Celler Act passed, some 75+ million foreigners (and their children) have poured into America. If that immigration had never happened, there would be only 270 million or so Americans in the country today. That would mean a much less congested country for the rest of us.

The idea that a nation needs lots of immigrants for economic growth is absurd. Native-born Americans have long been the most productive part of the nation. That is why there is such a rush of third worlders to try and get into our borders. They need us more than we need them. It is an imbalance that Americans should take advantage of.

Deporting all of the third world migrants who have come to America since 1965 would, of course, be an unfeasible solution. But there are plenty of ways to reduce the foreign-born population in America without much fuss.

First, the federal government should begin taxing all remittance payments to foreign countries by 90%. The mercenary class of grifter migrants who use the American economy to funnel money back to friends and relatives overseas would immediately find themselves unable to accomplish their purposes. Many of those migrants would simply leave on their own.

Moreover, the United States should slash all “high-skill” migrant visas by 90%. Most of these supposed “model migrants” are really just a way for big corporations to reduce the negotiating power of middle class Americans. India and China are especially egregious suppliers of this kind of scab labor. America does not need to import an entire class of foreigners to economically rule over its native population. America is more than capable of cranking out talented engineers, software developers, and CEOs. That is why, for the entire 20^th century, the epicenter for technological innovation was in America, not India or China.

The federal government should also finish construction of the border wall with Mexico. You don’t need to deport an illegal immigrant who never makes it here in the first place.

The United States should also crack down on visa overstays by enforcing harsh penalties on violators and on the countries that are vectors for misbehavior. The federal government needs a much stronger and more accurate database of foreigners who are in the country.

The United States should also make English the national language and ban the use of translators for accessing federal services. Immigrants who refuse to learn English and adopt American cultural norms before arriving to this country have no business being here. America is a country, not a homeless shelter.

The federal government should also crack down on welfare usage by immigrants. Any foreigner found to be unable to sustain themselves here in the country should be automatically deported. Illegal immigrants and their children should be barred from accessing any and all public services—including schools, health care, and housing. Those benefits are for citizens, not invaders.

The federal government should also crackdown on the firms that employ illegals, as well. Going after the agricultural and meatpacking industries especially would help incentivize self-deportations. Big Ag benefits greatly from using cheap serf labor to boost profits. It is time those fat cats paid their fair share.

Every major firm caught employing an illegal immigrant should be forced to pay a million dollar fine per capita. The grifting would come to an end with a quickness.

The up-shot of these policies is that they don’t require a large expenditure of money or the use of lots of manpower to round up illegals. By changing the paperwork at a few key junctures in society, the number of foreigners in America today would be reduced substantially.

That, in turn, would reduce the number of people using housing, meaning a drop in home prices. What a wonderful development for young American families looking to settle down and get a home of their own! Helping Americans, our fellow citizens, is paramount.

Deporting illegal immigrants and reducing the number of foreigners in this country is a good neighbor policy. It is the kind of moderate centrist political solution that should be the basis of a bipartisan reach-across-the-aisle politics that we can all agree on.

Original version published at American Greatness.