The arrival of millions of foreign nationals, many of whom are illegal aliens, under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris is helping to drive up rents for working- and middle-class Americans, an expert witness told Congress Wednesday.
Center for Immigration Studies Director of Research Steven Camarota told the House Oversight Committee that immigration levels are intrinsically linked to housing costs — particularly in recent years, when research shows that high immigration levels tend to increase rents for Americans.
“Census Bureau data shows that since January of 2021 the number of immigrant-headed households is up 2.4 million, with perhaps 1.4 million of this increase due to illegal immigration,” Camarota said:
Prior research shows that by increasing demand for housing, immigration drives-up [sic] costs in areas where immigrants settle. My own analysis indicates that a 5-percentage point increase in the recent immigrant share of a metro area’s population is associated with a 12 percent increase in the average U.S.-born household’s rent, relative to their income. However, more analysis is needed to fully explore this relationship. [Emphasis added]
Camarota said United States household data of immigrants who arrived from January 2022 through August of 2024 found that almost 9 in 10 said they were renters.
“Adding very large numbers of people to the country must significantly impact housing prices by driving up demand for rental properties … the Census Bureau reports that the increase in rents in 2023 was by far the largest in the past decade,” Camarota said. “This is certainly consistent with the possibility that immigration, including illegal immigration, has significantly increased housing prices in areas of heavy immigrant settlement.” [Emphasis added]
Former President Donald Trump’s running mate Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) has long raised the issue of mass immigration spiking housing costs for Americans.
At a recent rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, Vance said President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have “flooded the country with cheap labor and people who are competing with you for homes,” making housing “completely unaffordable for young Americans.”
In another interview with Spectrum News, Vance said “When you let in millions of migrants, you actually have homes going to foreigners that should, by rights, go to American citizens.”
“That puts huge stress on American citizens’ ability to buy a home,” Vance continued:
It also drives up the cost of housing for American citizens. We’ve been talking about this for months, and the American media largely ignored it, until some of the more outlandish claims from citizens in Springfield started to make their way to the top of the national conversation. [Emphasis added]
While inflation has come down some, housing prices have yet to do the same. A recent report from Axios detailed how economists believe that much of current inflation is driven by consistently high housing costs that do not seem to be coming down anytime soon.
Camarota, in his testimony, said it is “reasonable to assume that the recent influx of immigrants is contributing to the increasing share of Americans struggling to afford housing in many areas of heavy immigrant settlement.”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at
