Does Immigration Drive Up Housing Costs?

WEBVTT
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We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United
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States undetected, undocumented, unchecked.
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And complete the dang fence.
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This bill that we will sign today is not a
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revolutionary bill. Cast down your bucket where you are. We
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come from France.
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And I am, you know, adamantly against illegal immigrants.
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They're coming in by the thousands, just unbelievable.
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A wall is an immorality. Who are you rooting for?
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Those masters of the universe are at it again.
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They're not sending their best. You maniac! You blew it up!
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Welcome to Parsing Immigration Policy, the podcast of the Center
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for Immigration Studies. My name is Mark Krikorian, Executive Director
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of the Center. And today we're going to speak with
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our own Jason Richwein, about an issue, specifically the connection
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of housing and immigration policy. This is something that's relatively new.
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The discussion is new in this country. I think the
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vice president has talked about it. I think he may
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have talked about it when he was still in the Senate,
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but it's a relatively recent thing.
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The last few years, really.
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Probably because of Biden and Mayorkas' border fiasco, that it
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became a discussion.
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But it's been an issue.
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The effect of immigration on the housing stock and housing
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prices and affordability and what have you. It's been an
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issue in Canada and Australia and I think even Europe
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longer than it has been here. Maybe just because we're
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a bigger place, we're more spread out.
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I don't know.
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Australia is pretty spread out, but I guess everybody just
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lives in a handful of places. So it became an issue.
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But anyway, it has become an issue here finally. And
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so Jason has written a little bit about this and
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I think is going to have some more coming out
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on this. And so I thought it would be good
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to have him on the show and kind of lay
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out what the story is, what effect immigration has on
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housing policy and housing prices and affordability and such like.
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So thanks for coming in, Jason. So the first thing is,
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some people have already studied this to some degree, even
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though it hasn't really been, it's only the past couple
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of years that it's become an issue in the public debate.
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What are the people who have studied this heretofore found
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about this connection between immigration and housing?
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This is one of those issues where in the academic discussion,
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there's actually not all that much debate. Normally, if there's
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any issue, there has to be like three or four
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different sides and they're all competing. It's not an absolute consensus,
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but the large majority of the literature does find this
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positive correlation. In other words, when immigration goes up, so
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do the housing prices in that particular area. The sort
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of foundational study on this, at least in the modern times,
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was by Albert Seiss. His 2007 paper in the Journal
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of Urban Economics kind of established a good rule of
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thumb here, which is that when the share of immigrants
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in an area increases by one percentage point, you can
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expect the cost of housing to go up also by
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about 1%.
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So he studied U.S., metros, right?
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That's right. And his paper, of course, being published in 2007,
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obviously has data that's older than what we have now,
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but it doesn't seem like the relationship has changed a lot.
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And just not to focus on that particular finding too much,
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but was he an actual academic?
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I mean, this wasn't... Is he a professor? Oh, yes.
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He's very much a well-known economist. Okay. So I have
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my own paper on this coming out, and the findings
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are pretty much in line with past work, although... There's
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a couple of improvements. One is it just updates the data.
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You know, we've had this huge surge in immigration during
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the Biden years. So we'll get to see how that looks.
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I look at smaller regions, which we can get to
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in a second. And I also look at spillover effects,
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which again, I'll explain in a minute. But the basic
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sort of bottom line estimate here is is pretty similar
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to SAIS. It's one percentage point increase in the immigrant
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share of an area. For me, it was about one
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and a half percent increase. And this is just rents.
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I looked at rent because that's what affects low-skill Americans
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more than higher skill. We're always sort of interested in
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how they're affected by immigration.
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And presumably, immigrants would initially be more likely to be
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renting anyway, probably.
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That's where you'd expect to see the larger effect, I think, generally.
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Right, right.
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So if you put this into perspective a little bit,
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imagine that an area starts out as 5% foreign-born, there's
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an immigrant influx, and now it's 15% foreign-born. That means
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if your rent was $ 1, 000, now it's $ 1, 150, right? So
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that's a substantial effect. That's not nothing at all. But
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I thought I'd just briefly explain what I mean by
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these spillover effects and why This is somewhat different from
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the way SAIS and others have looked at it. To
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understand this, you have to understand PUMAs. So how familiar
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are you with PUMAs, Mark?
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Cougars, I know. PUMAs, I don't know.
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This stands for Public Use Microdata Area. So it's the
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smallest unit of geography that we're allowed to look at
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as mere members of the public. The Census Bureau allows
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us to look at this.
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And just so people understand, because if it were more granular,
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you might actually be able to identify individual people or families, right?
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Isn't that why they do that?
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That's right.
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That's right. Yeah. Anyway, go ahead.
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It's also the case that when you look at annual data,
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as I am, remember, they only count everyone every 10 years, right?
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So I'm looking at the annual data, which is called
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the American Community Survey, and that's just a sample. So
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you also run into a problem of just not having
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large enough samples to look at individual neighborhoods.
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Right.
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So anyway, the idea of spillover is fairly simple. Basically,
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what happens is that when immigrants come into a particular puma,
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they raise the rent there, but there's always going to
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be spillover, right? If they come into one puma and
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raise the rent, because the rent is now higher in
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an adjoining puma, those other adjacent pumas are likely to
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experience rent increases as well. That can be partly just
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because it's kind of as a unified market. It's also
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perhaps because the demand for housing outside of the area
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where immigrants are coming to could also increase. So that's
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a possibility as well.
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So just so people understand what– like maybe in the D.C. context,
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are there Pumas within D.C.? In other words, is like
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Northern Virginia one and Maryland is different?
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You know what I mean? In other words, how– small
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are these areas?
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There are about 1,700 Pumas in the United States.
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Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah.
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So some of them are large because they cover very
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low population density areas, but some are quite small. Some
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of them actually do seem like neighborhoods. In my paper,
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I put a highlight on Los Angeles County to show
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just how small they are. I think it's only like
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50 or 55 Pumas.
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In Los Angeles County?
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Yeah, only in Los Angeles County.
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Wow.
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Okay.
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Yeah. So that's pretty fine-grained.
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Right.
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So you see both direct and indirect effects. And if
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you look at just immigrants coming to one Puma, and
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let's assume they don't come to any other Pumas, the
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effect is not particularly large directly, right? But the analogy
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I like to use is you take a pebble and
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you throw it in the lake and it creates ripples.
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There's a splash right where it lands, and it creates
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some ripples. And the ripples are the indirect effects. But
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the real big effect comes, this 1.5%. It comes when
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you get these interactions, when immigrants are coming to all
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the pumas, and they have spillovers upon spillovers upon spillovers.
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So imagine throwing 1,000 stones into a lake all at
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one time. It creates all these different ripples. They're all
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interacting with each other. And that's where you get this 1.5% effect.
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So is the mechanism basically just supply and demand? I mean,
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is that what's driving all of this? In other words,
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there's more people coming in, there's not as many units,
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rental units, and so the prices go up.
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That would seem to be the case. I mean, you
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can think of some other mechanisms that could go in
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either direction. And in fact, there have been some people
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who try to come up with other ones. I mean,
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sometimes immigration advocates will say immigrants might lower housing prices
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because They provide the necessary construction labor to build new houses, right? And,
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you know, that's plausible enough, I suppose. But this is
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why you do empirical analysis, right? And you realize when
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you do that kind of analysis that any effect like
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that is going to be a niche effect. It's obviously
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swamped by the pure sort of greater demand that comes
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from immigrants coming in.
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Right.
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So why don't we just build more houses then? In
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other words, what's the problem here?
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Well, you're getting ahead of me a little bit, Mark.
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But yeah, I could certainly talk about that. I think
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one of the reasons we don't do that is partly
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that we actually just can't really build fast enough to
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handle major surges like what we had during the Biden administration.
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That would be a very difficult thing to do. But
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imagine we could, right? Imagine that this sort of like
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the libertarian's dream that we take away all the housing regulations.
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So in other words, no zoning stuff, no whatever. Right.
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So you could just imagine just a skyscraper being put
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in next to your house. That's a great way of
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adding supply, right?
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Right.
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The fact is, you know, hardly anyone wants that kind
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of transformation. I mean, and I'm not just saying that,
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you know, I'm not pulling that out of the air.
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I mean, we know that because of nimbyism, right? Not
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in my backyard. Very few people are excited about adding
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high density housing to an area, especially when they happen
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to live in a low density area. My wish here
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is that the NIMBY types, who I don't think are
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wrong necessarily, they're often portrayed as villains, but I think
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it's natural to want to maintain your neighborhood or your community,
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not have it transformed. So many of them seem fine
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with mass immigration and yet are so, so concerned about
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protecting their neighborhood's borders.
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Those are complaining about the symptom, but not doing anything
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about the cause kind Right.
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It's almost as if, well, if we can figure out
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how to eliminate new constructions in our neighborhood, then so what?
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Let the border be overrun and, I don't know, Southern
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Texas can deal with it because we don't have to
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worry about that. I think this is a perfect group
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of people, I think, to target and say, hey, what's
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the underlying source of this? Why is there this population
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pressure coming so fast? It's not that I'm against building
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new homes. I mean, we'll have to, but to build
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them so fast and in a way that doesn't respect,
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you know, neighborhood traditions and culture, I think is something
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that almost everyone opposes.
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And, you know, as you pointed out, the hypothetical here
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was assume that, you know, we had no zoning regulations
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and all that, but that's sort of the assume a
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can opener joke about, you know, economists. There's the joke,
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what is it, a chemist, a physicist, and an economist
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are on a desert island and there's a can of beans,
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but they don't have a can opener. And the chemist says, well,
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let's put it on the fire and then it'll heat
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up and the top will blow off. And the physicist says, well,
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if we hit it with a rock at just the
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right angle, we'll be able to break it open. And
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the economist says, what are you talking about? All we
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have to do is assume a can opener. So, but
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my point here is that in the real world, even without,
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you know, whatever the more, if you want to think
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about nimbyism as kind of pathological, which I don't think
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it is, but even this grant it is, there's still
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all kinds of challenges in increasing housing construction. I mean,
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it just seems to me an argument for low and
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slow on immigration.
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Yeah. I mean, I think it's a classic case of
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I think what you would call a basic feature of
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modern first world nations is that there's going to be
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restrictions on building housing. In the same way that even
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though I personally would like to see a much smaller
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welfare state, there's going to be welfare that gets handed
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out in a nation like ours.
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And it's not even just zoning too. There's things like occupational.
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For instance, different areas have rules about a house can't have, say,
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more than, I don't know, three unrelated individuals. The point
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is not you're not allowed to have kids. It's that
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you can't have a boarding house in the suburbs. And
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that is, again, a kind of neighborhood concern. character issue
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that unfortunately, with regard to immigrants is often not enforced
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because they're the protected class often. I mean, this came
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in the news in Montgomery County, Maryland, where they simply
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refused to enforce occupancy rules. And they had, you know,
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suburban homes with 10, 15, 20 people, you know, sleeping
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in shifts on the same beds. And they basically turned
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into a boarding house. And it's, you know, obviously illegal,
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but Nobody was enforcing it. So isn't it good though?
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Look, I'm a homeowner.
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I think you're a homeowner too. Isn't it good to
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have our home values go up?
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Well, yes, it is. And this is one of those
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things where you have to remember that immigration, when you're
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talking about economic effects, it's always going to be pluses
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and minuses. It's always going to be some good things,
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some bad things. We have to decide how to weigh
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those things up. But I would say in general that
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it's not really a good thing for prices of things
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to go up in an economy. It's kind of like
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saying it was great that oil prices are up on
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the global market because I'm a shareholder of Exxon and
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that means I benefit. I mean, it's really sort of
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the same argument, right?
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Right. I mean, and especially since it's artificially generated increase
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in prices. In other words, it's something Congress essentially is
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increasing the price of housing.
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I mean, through allowing so much immigration, it's not just
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a matter of natives happening to value housing more now
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or something like that.
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Right, right.
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I mean, there's a lot of effects that go into that.
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I did a piece on fertility recently that is directly
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related to housing prices in some way. There's a few
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different papers on this. There's a 2014 paper in the
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Journal of Public Economics where it found that when housing
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prices go up, this isn't actually necessarily about immigration, but
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you can see the link, obviously. When housing prices go up,
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you see fertility for non-homeowners go down. In other words,
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they're people who, you know, they want to start a family,
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they want to begin their life together in their own home,
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but they can't because their prices are high. And so
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they delay that fertility. But on the other hand, it
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seemed like for homeowners, it actually went up a little bit, fertility.
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So again, you can see this trade-off here when they
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have this extra, you know, equity in their house that
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maybe they can use that in some way. Maybe it
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makes it easier to have children. There's another paper just
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came out a couple of years ago in Population Research
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and Policy Review, again, showing renters in particular, when they
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see decreases in their expected lifetime fertility. The authors say
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something I think is very important.
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They see decreases what? With increasing housing prices or.
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Yes, again, when housing becomes more expensive. Very important quote
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here from the authors. They say, even temporary housing unaffordability–
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might have long-lasting effects on the age pyramid because you
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have this temporary thing, they delay fertility, and it ends
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up then that their completed fertility is lower than what
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it otherwise would have been. So, you know, there's going
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to be a lot of effects here, particularly on lower skill,
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you know, more working class Americans.
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Right, right. So what, you know, what do we do
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about it?
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Well, I mean, the solution, so to speak, you know,
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really is what we've already talked about. It's that when
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immigration is low and slow, I like your phrasing there,
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then we have a much greater ability to be able
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to respond to it. As I said, under today's regulations,
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even if we said, okay, we're going to build as
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much as possible, you would not be able to build
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enough to make up for the Biden surge. In fact,
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there was a NBER paper that came out last year
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that looked just at the sheltered homeless population. So that
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means people who live in shelters, right?
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Okay.
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I didn't realize this until I read the paper that
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the number of sheltered homeless had actually been declining in
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the 15 years prior to the Biden administration. Then you
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have this big increase, and the authors estimate that about
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60% of that increase was due to immigration during that period.
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This is in the major destinations, New York, Chicago, Boston,
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and so on. And these authors, they said it was
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about $ 100, 000 per family per year. these cities were having
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to expend on these sheltered homeless. So you can see
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how quickly they increase in number. And if New York
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City can't handle it, I don't know that some small
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town in Texas would.
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Be able to handle it any better. Right, Uvalde, Texas
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is not going to be able to deal with it.
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So that's interesting.
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So it actually, immigration can, depending on the circumstances, actually
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increase homelessness.
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As well, which I guess that's true, be a related thing. Interesting.
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So to go back to how we got into this debate,
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When the vice president was– well, when he was still running,
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I think it was during the campaign, he had brought
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this up. And I remember the great and the good
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kind of ridiculed the idea. So what did they say
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and have they been chastened?
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Well, as I mentioned earlier, there's actually not that much
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debate about this in the academic literature among scholars. I
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think really the only major skeptics are the people, you know,
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who write for the New York Times or just in general,
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you know, wanting to oppose basically anything that J.D. Vance
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says or someone associated with Trump says. And so, you know,
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there was a vice presidential debate in 2024 where Vance
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makes this point, you know, that housing seems to increase
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in cost when you have a lot of immigration.
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This was the debate where he had the kind of
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he was looking at the camera. He At one point,
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you know, with his head cocked, it kind of became
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a meme sort of.
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Yes, I believe so.
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Yeah.
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Anyway, yeah. So what did he say?
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And so, yeah, I mean, he made that basic connection.
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And then he followed that up with a tweet where
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he had cited three sources for it, sort of a
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preemptive tweet, right? He cited a speech by a member
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of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. He cited a
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CBO report. And he cited a 2017 article in the
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Academic Journal of Housing Economics.
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Right.
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It seems pretty authoritative, right? Well, so the New York
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Times did an analysis of this and it's instructive in
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a way as to how they kind of dealt with it, right?
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But well, first of all, you might assume that if
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you're a journalist who wants to really take on an
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issue like the relationship between housing and immigration, that you
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would try to find all the sources on your own, right?
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Find the major sources and really come to your own
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decision about it. But instead- I'm speaking of the ideal
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world in which I occasionally allow myself to live in
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in my head.
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Right.
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And so they didn't do that, of course. All they
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did was they took those three pieces of evidence and
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dismissed them in the most flimsy of ways. So Federal Reserve,
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they said, well, this is just a speech and he
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didn't cite any evidence. Now, you would think normally in
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any other situation. If a member of the Federal Reserve
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Board of Governors says something in a speech, probably that
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would be considered valuable, but not this time because– It
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was the wrong thing. The CBO report– This is.
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Congressional Budget Office.
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Yes.
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Explicit quote about how the impact of immigration on inflation
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is probably small, but where it's largest is on housing costs.
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There's a quote just like that, right? And so the
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Times dismisses it by saying, well, that report was about
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a lot of things, That was just one little thing
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they mentioned. And then we get to the academic paper,
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which is a very good paper. In fact, a lot
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of it sort of inspired my own because this paper
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also looks at these spillover effects. And their results actually
404
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were even stronger than mine. They looked at metropolitan areas,
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which were larger than the areas I looked at. And
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they found even larger indirect effects than I did. And
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yet somehow, I guess something got lost in translation because
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the writers did interview one of the authors of that.
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But at least it sounded like from the quotes of
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the author herself didn't really understand the paper that she wrote.
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And I hesitate to say that because it was filtered
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through a New York Times reporter. So I don't know
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for sure. But it seemed like she was really downplaying
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her own paper. which is unusual for an academic.
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00:20:28.359 --> 00:20:30.720
Yeah, except it might be better for her career to
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downplay the paper. In other words, she might be up
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for tenure or something, you know?
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00:20:34.259 --> 00:20:37.079
Yeah, it was an interesting paper until it became politically inconvenient.
419
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I don't know.
420
00:20:38.420 --> 00:20:40.180
That's sad if it's true, but that is the case.
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And so, as I said, it's mostly political at this point.
422
00:20:44.069 --> 00:20:48.329
It's not academic. I think academics are pretty solid on
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where this relationship stands.
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So the president, I think, talked or tweeted about this,
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and so did some other people. And I think They
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had misunderstood a Federal Reserve. Correct me if I'm wrong here.
427
00:21:00.349 --> 00:21:03.329
It was a Federal Reserve report about this. And they
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said something like immigration increases housing prices 30%, but it
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00:21:08.170 --> 00:21:13.000
was actually 30% of the increase was driven by immigration.
430
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Am I misunderstanding that?
431
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No, that's correct. That's exactly right. Yeah, there is a
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Federal Reserve working paper that came out recently. And it's
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gotten a lot of play, I think, in certain circles,
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at least.
435
00:21:22.900 --> 00:21:23.200
You're right.
436
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That's exactly what they found. It was like a 20%
437
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to 30%. the proportion due to immigration was about 20
438
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to 30% is what they were saying.
439
00:21:29.769 --> 00:21:31.769
Of a smaller increase, but still. Right.
440
00:21:32.269 --> 00:21:35.369
Which again, is pretty important. And again, is completely in
441
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line with what the past literature is saying.
442
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Right.
443
00:21:39.309 --> 00:21:43.970
So the interesting thing that struck me about the Biden
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surge is that it was a lot of people. There's
445
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no question about it. But we refer to it as
446
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open borders as a shorthand.
447
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And it kind of was.
448
00:21:54.740 --> 00:21:58.160
It's sort of close enough for government work, but real
449
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open borders, which is what the libertarians want, like anybody
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from Haiti just gets to move here and they just
451
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have to show up, that would have been dramatically more
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people than we ended up. And it seems to me
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living on the street in the United States is better
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than living in Congo. And so there's just no question
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that if we had what the left and the libertarians,
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at this point, I'm repeating myself because they're the same
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on immigration. We had their immigration policy. You would have
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not only housing, cost of housing increase, you'd have enormous
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increases in homelessness.
460
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Yeah.
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So during the Biden administration, you know, I'm trying to
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think the number of immigrants who came, what percentage of
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the unlimited immigration program would that have been? You know,
464
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did we get like 10% of the immigrants we would
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have gotten if we just had unlimited. I mean, if
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that's the case, then there it is. There's 10% of
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that program right now, huge homeless shelter increases, homeless shelters overrun,
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people staying in hotels on city expense with 10% of
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their favored immigration plan.
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And even if it's 50%, in other words, even if
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real open borders were only double that number, which almost
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certainly would be more than that, it's unmanageable even with
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what they were doing. So- It really is kind of sobering,
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just broadly speaking. In other words, if you go beyond
475
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trying to measure the actual dollar effects, which is essential
476
00:23:28.019 --> 00:23:31.400
and is important, you know, it's unsustainable.
477
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And the solution, you know, for people who are willing
478
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to talk frankly about it, and there are some people,
479
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is again, it's the skyscraper next to your house kind
480
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of solution.
481
00:23:40.309 --> 00:23:40.509
Right.
482
00:23:40.529 --> 00:23:41.380
That's how you help people.
483
00:23:41.609 --> 00:23:42.170
Yeah. Yeah.
484
00:23:42.690 --> 00:23:44.109
Okay. Well, that's great.
485
00:23:44.190 --> 00:23:47.539
So is there any other– studies or anything that are
486
00:23:47.619 --> 00:23:50.240
worth kind of taking a look at? We'll put some
487
00:23:50.299 --> 00:23:52.579
links in the show notes about this.
488
00:23:53.000 --> 00:23:53.160
Yeah.
489
00:23:53.180 --> 00:23:55.019
So my study is coming out in the fall. It's
490
00:23:55.079 --> 00:23:59.359
already finished. It was undergoing peer review at the journal Cityscape.
491
00:23:59.599 --> 00:24:02.319
It's actually a publication of the Department of Housing and
492
00:24:02.339 --> 00:24:02.980
Urban Development.
493
00:24:03.299 --> 00:24:05.400
But it's a regular peer-reviewed academic journal.
494
00:24:05.460 --> 00:24:05.700
Yes.
495
00:24:06.190 --> 00:24:08.569
It's got academic editors and they go to academic peer
496
00:24:08.589 --> 00:24:11.450
reviewers and it's been accepted. So it's just, I'm not
497
00:24:11.470 --> 00:24:14.549
exactly sure when the special issue is coming out. They
498
00:24:14.609 --> 00:24:17.319
sponsored an issue. It was all about the housing and
499
00:24:17.339 --> 00:24:20.119
immigration topic. So it should be coming out this fall,
500
00:24:20.180 --> 00:24:20.559
I believe.
501
00:24:20.799 --> 00:24:21.660
Right. Okay, good.
502
00:24:21.819 --> 00:24:26.220
And we have the abstract of that kind of the
503
00:24:26.299 --> 00:24:31.289
punchline of your study already posted on our blog. And
504
00:24:31.309 --> 00:24:33.130
so we'll have a link to that. And we'll have
505
00:24:33.150 --> 00:24:35.730
a link to the Fed paper or at least to
506
00:24:35.869 --> 00:24:36.579
coverage of it.
507
00:24:37.029 --> 00:24:40.490
Okay. Well, this is anything I forgot to ask? No,
508
00:24:40.509 --> 00:24:41.849
I think we're good. Okay, good.
509
00:24:41.990 --> 00:24:46.009
So this really does kind of open a whole new–
510
00:24:46.539 --> 00:24:49.839
front in the immigration debate, because people always talk about
511
00:24:50.299 --> 00:24:54.819
the effect on welfare and taxpayers and all of that,
512
00:24:54.839 --> 00:24:58.319
and that's essential. People talk about assimilation, again, an essential
513
00:24:58.380 --> 00:25:03.119
part of it. The effect on less skilled workers, their
514
00:25:03.369 --> 00:25:07.529
wages and their ability to get jobs, all the security issues. Again,
515
00:25:08.069 --> 00:25:12.549
this is just one more wrinkle of the immigration debate
516
00:25:12.589 --> 00:25:17.460
that's relatively new, but really is essential. and has, as
517
00:25:17.480 --> 00:25:22.430
you suggested, broader effects because this does affect things like fertility.
518
00:25:22.789 --> 00:25:25.789
It's not that with lower immigration, boom, everything would go
519
00:25:25.849 --> 00:25:28.670
away and we'd have replacement level fertility again.
520
00:25:28.710 --> 00:25:30.869
I mean, maybe it's worth a try. Let's see.
521
00:25:31.309 --> 00:25:35.150
But realistically speaking, it probably wouldn't be that kind of
522
00:25:35.410 --> 00:25:37.690
that dramatic an effect, but it does have an effect.
523
00:25:37.789 --> 00:25:42.609
So I think we as Americans just sort of don't
524
00:25:42.750 --> 00:25:45.970
think about it because, you know, it takes days to
525
00:25:46.029 --> 00:25:49.509
drive across our country. And so we figure it's huge,
526
00:25:49.950 --> 00:25:53.950
and it is huge, but people aren't living, population's not
527
00:25:53.990 --> 00:25:56.319
spread out an inch thick across the whole country. I mean,
528
00:25:56.359 --> 00:26:00.079
immigrants are coming to a handful of major metropolitan areas,
529
00:26:00.339 --> 00:26:03.460
and so they're going to have this kind of significant effect,
530
00:26:04.079 --> 00:26:07.500
whatever it is, whether it's on assimilation, whether it's on taxpayers,
531
00:26:07.680 --> 00:26:10.440
or whether it's on housing costs. And this is something
532
00:26:10.460 --> 00:26:14.309
that we need, broadly speaking, the debate needs to address
533
00:26:14.369 --> 00:26:18.609
this more than it has in the past. So thank you, Jason.
534
00:26:18.849 --> 00:26:24.029
And maybe in the fall when the issue actually comes out,
535
00:26:24.049 --> 00:26:25.990
because there's going to be a number of different articles
536
00:26:26.049 --> 00:26:29.170
in there, we'll talk about it again and talk about
537
00:26:29.349 --> 00:26:30.309
some of the other findings.
538
00:26:30.970 --> 00:26:31.869
All right. Looking forward to it.
539
00:26:32.690 --> 00:26:34.349
And finally, just a couple of thoughts about a New
540
00:26:34.369 --> 00:26:37.869
York Times story that appeared this week about a private
541
00:26:37.970 --> 00:26:43.730
meeting between Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law, and Hakeem Jeffries,
542
00:26:44.069 --> 00:26:48.890
the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, who, if
543
00:26:48.990 --> 00:26:53.529
the Democrats win the majority in the House in November,
544
00:26:53.710 --> 00:26:57.960
would be Speaker of the House. One quote from the
545
00:26:58.019 --> 00:27:02.220
story got a lot of people's attention. It says, quote,
546
00:27:02.619 --> 00:27:06.940
the pair discussed housing, immigration, and the high cost of
547
00:27:07.019 --> 00:27:11.940
living in as potential areas of common ground, unquote. I
548
00:27:12.000 --> 00:27:15.500
suspect they did not talk about housing and immigration in
549
00:27:15.539 --> 00:27:20.250
the context that we just talked about on this show.
550
00:27:20.890 --> 00:27:26.309
In fact, almost certainly, the discussions related to immigration were
551
00:27:26.390 --> 00:27:31.279
probably something like about how to pass some kind of
552
00:27:31.380 --> 00:27:34.700
partial amnesty, who knows what. And this has gotten a
553
00:27:34.720 --> 00:27:40.559
lot of people tighter immigration controls a little bit bent
554
00:27:40.619 --> 00:27:45.019
out of shape. And, you know, I think there's both
555
00:27:45.079 --> 00:27:49.390
more and less than meets the eye. In other words, obviously,
556
00:27:50.069 --> 00:27:55.509
eternal vigilance matters because political leaders can always sell you out.
557
00:27:56.150 --> 00:27:59.869
On the other hand, the Trump administration hasn't sold out yet.
558
00:28:00.450 --> 00:28:04.819
And the only advice I'd have for the administration to
559
00:28:05.609 --> 00:28:11.089
reassure its supporters that it's not going to sell them
560
00:28:11.210 --> 00:28:14.950
out is some more, you know, not just continued but
561
00:28:15.569 --> 00:28:21.900
additional measures, aggressive measures in the direction of tightening up immigration.
562
00:28:22.579 --> 00:28:26.119
We have seen something to that effect actually this week,
563
00:28:26.680 --> 00:28:34.160
a new rule regarding H-1B visas where $ 100, 000 plus fee
564
00:28:34.220 --> 00:28:38.500
would be applied not just to those coming from abroad,
565
00:28:39.480 --> 00:28:42.039
an entry fee, which is the thing that got a
566
00:28:42.079 --> 00:28:45.720
lot of attention and was announced several months ago, but
567
00:28:45.759 --> 00:28:48.660
would not apply to many H-1Bs because if you're already
568
00:28:48.740 --> 00:28:51.079
here as a foreign student or what have you, wouldn't
569
00:28:51.119 --> 00:28:55.190
apply to you. This would apply to all H-1B petitions,
570
00:28:55.289 --> 00:28:57.869
whether the people are here already or coming in. And
571
00:28:57.950 --> 00:29:01.410
so that's a good sign, potentially a sign that the
572
00:29:01.450 --> 00:29:05.289
administration is not likely to sell out despite what this
573
00:29:05.349 --> 00:29:08.759
meeting suggests. The other big thing I think the administration
574
00:29:08.839 --> 00:29:12.640
could do to put people's concerns at rest would be
575
00:29:12.740 --> 00:29:18.640
aggressive worksite and work-related enforcement. This is something we're seeing
576
00:29:18.700 --> 00:29:23.180
some of, but not nearly enough of, partly because businesses
577
00:29:24.160 --> 00:29:28.430
don't want to see it. They have the president's ear
578
00:29:28.490 --> 00:29:33.940
as well. Again, My suggestion here for the administration would
579
00:29:33.980 --> 00:29:36.579
be if you don't want this kind of meeting to
580
00:29:36.880 --> 00:29:39.910
raise hackles and, you know, this kind of meeting, it's
581
00:29:40.349 --> 00:29:42.809
is not a problem. If the Hakeem Jeffries end up
582
00:29:42.849 --> 00:29:44.970
being Speaker of the House, the White House is going
583
00:29:44.990 --> 00:29:49.140
to have to deal with him somehow. But if the
584
00:29:49.180 --> 00:29:53.059
administration is concerned about fears among its voters that they're
585
00:29:53.079 --> 00:29:58.380
being sold out, showing that continued and expanded measures are
586
00:29:59.069 --> 00:30:02.849
regarding immigration, not just illegal immigration, but legal as well,
587
00:30:03.329 --> 00:30:06.589
would be in a very important way of calming those fears.
588
00:30:07.470 --> 00:30:12.049
That's it for this week's episode of Parsing Immigration Policy.
589
00:30:12.869 --> 00:30:15.819
If you like what you see, or even if you heard,
590
00:30:15.839 --> 00:30:19.779
or even if you don't, feel free to rate us
591
00:30:20.319 --> 00:30:26.500
at your podcast platform of choice, and or send us
592
00:30:26.720 --> 00:30:33.480
an email at center at cis.org with compliments, criticisms, suggestions
593
00:30:33.539 --> 00:30:34.539
for future shows.
594
00:30:34.599 --> 00:30:35.119
What have you.
595
00:30:35.779 --> 00:30:40.410
Thank you to Jason Richwine for talking about the housing
596
00:30:40.470 --> 00:30:43.890
and immigration nexus, which is something that I think is
597
00:30:43.910 --> 00:30:47.329
going to become an increasingly important political issue. Thank you
598
00:30:47.369 --> 00:30:50.640
to Brian Griffith, our producer, for making this work. And
599
00:30:50.700 --> 00:30:52.380
thanks to all of you for tuning in.