The White House amplified a story that claimed unauthorized immigrants caused housing prices to rise by 30%. But the paper didn’t say that.
An article from the New York Post caught Vice President JD Vance’s attention as it attributed the rising costs of housing and rent to the surge of unauthorized immigrants between 2021 and 2024. Vance shared the story, adding that the goal in halting “illegal migrants” is to make housing more affordable for Americans.
“Despite the left’s incessant whining, Trump was right all along,” Vance wrote on X Tuesday.
It reached the White House’s account, accusing former President Joe Biden of creating an immigration crisis and rising rent and home prices. Both posts cited conclusions from the New York Post that unauthorized immigrants caused housing and rent to rise by 30% and 20%, respectively.
The story has become a new policy stance for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which wrote on X that “the solution to high housing costs: mass deportations.”
An archived version of the New York Post story had the headline “Biden’s illegal immigration surge triggered 30% rise in home prices, $ 20% in rents, Fed paper finds.”
Except the working paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas doesn’t say that.
“Putting these together, for the average (metropolitan statistical areas), (unauthorized immigrant worker flows) can explain approximately 30% of the total increase in house prices and 20% of the total increase in rents,” Daniel Wilson and Ziaoqing Zhou wrote.
In layman’s terms, if a home’s value increased by $10,000, the report suggests that about $3,000 of that could be attributed to unauthorized immigrants. The same formula applies to rental increases.
The actual total increase in housing and rent prices across average metro areas was 22.4% and 21.6%, respectively. The authors said immigration accounts for roughly 30% of that percentage increase, not the full increase entirely.
Wilson and Zhou noted the 65-page paper is meant to inform policy debates on how unauthorized immigrants affect the economy, and not as a supported stance from the Federal Reserve Bank or its Dallas chapter. They also said that after the population grew, it flattened in the following years.
The Post corrected the story, but the error remains on X. The story originally appeared in Fox Business, but doesn’t have a correction. It was accompanied by a headline that stated: “Biden-era illegal immigration drove up housing costs, Fed economists find.”
Just The News, which became a favored source of Trump, covered the working paper but stated the population caused a percentage of the total increases, as opposed to saying they caused the housing increases.
Trump allies, Republicans share claim
Hours before Vance shared the post, allies in Congress and throughout the country have shared the story and demanded answers for why it’s not “viral.”
“Your daily reminder that 20 million deportations would solve a large swath of the problems in our country,” wrote Turning Point USA commentator Savanah Hernandez on X.
House Speaker Mike Johnson wrote on X Monday that Biden allowed “millions of criminal illegals” into the U.S. and drove up rent and housing costs.
“Keep this in mind next time a Democrat mentions affordability,” U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wy., wrote on X. “Illegal immigration has real victims, and it’s hardworking American families who always pay the price.”
Several people have, however, noticed the error in the details.
Eagle-eyed users notice erroneous conclusion
Users on X noticed the error in the Post’s story, as it linked to the Federal Reserve working paper.
Many pointed out that the story stated a 1% increase in unauthorized immigrants accounted for a 2.2% and 1.4% increase in rents.
But Wilson and Zhou attributed that amount to a variable estimate. The larger 30% and 20% estimates they said were for the average metropolitan area.
The researchers used data from Zillow, the U.S. Census Bureau and immigration court data for the paper. It hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed.
“The headline is false, and the paper actually shows that illegal immigration was good for the US budget and Americans overall,” wrote Cato Institute Director of Immigration Studies David Bier on X.
Round out your reading
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