DBTrek wrote:You're conflating the necessity for housing with the ability to purchase (aka "demand").
Showing up broke in America and needing a house doesn't drive up housing/rent prices.
Being able to actually buy or rent property does.
Thus foreign investors stashing their cash in the form of American real estate drives housing costs up considerably, where ten thousand penniless Mexicans appearing in El Paso does not.
We are talking about rent, not housing prices, DB.
"Let's contract rent prices by slowing immigration"
You oppose that proposition on the basis that immigration does not affect rent.
Yes, it actually does. There exist only so many vacant affordable apartments for rent in a given market, and every illegal immigrant family that moves into the region increases the demand for those units by one. The higher demand for those units, the higher the landlords can charge rent (and they will raise rents).