There’s no doubt that we need to change our broken immigration system. And there’s no doubt that we need more housing. But while some politicians are trying to tie immigration to our housing crisis to justify extreme policies like mass deportation, the available evidence tells a much different story.
Some politicians try to make the United States’ housing shortage — estimates of the deficit run anywhere from 4 million to 7 million homes — a simple equation of supply and demand. Add more people, and housing prices go up; deport more people, and housing prices go down. The reality is far more complicated. Undocumented immigrants don’t just use housing. They also build housing, maintain housing and put money into the pockets of Americans who buy or rent housing.
Even if firms could eventually find new workers, there would be years of turmoil in the interim.
A new report from the American Immigration Council, where I am a senior fellow, finds that mass deportations would lead to a widespread economic downturn. The impact would be concentrated in industries that rely on undocumented workers, the most prominent of which is construction, the industry necessary to address the country’s housing shortage.
Our analysis finds that 1 in 7 people employed in the construction industry as of 2022 were undocumented, accounting for more than 1.5 million workers. Within many of the trades relevant to housing construction and maintenance, the proportion is higher. We estimate that more than 1 in 3 roofers, ceiling tilers, stucco masons, plasterers and drywall installers are undocumented. These workers not only build many of the roughly 1.79 million new units that go onto the market each year, they also maintain and repair existing housing stock. If you think getting a contractor is hard now, wait until the workforce has been cut by a third.
Some might argue that deported construction workers would be replaced by U.S. workers. However, the data suggests that is not true. As of 2024, the construction industry has an extreme labor shortage, even though wages are 80% higher than the average nonfarm job. With persistent hiring problems across the industry, the likeliest outcome of deporting 1.5 million construction workers wouldn’t be 1.5 million Americans choosing to fill those jobs; it would be the closure of firms and fewer construction jobs, period.
But even if firms could eventually find new workers, there would be years of turmoil in the interim. In the last year, 1.48 million new residential building permits were issued. How many of those projects would even begin if a third of workers were deported? It could take years before the industry recovered and housing construction got back on track. Americans would suffer in the meantime.
More broadly, there is little evidence that Americans are dealing with high housing prices because of undocumented immigrants — who are much less likely to be homeowners than the population at large. We estimate that in 2022, the homeownership rate for undocumented immigrant households was 39%, compared to 65.3% for the entire country.
Migration rose dramatically even as rent prices plateaued and fell.
Most undocumented immigrants are renters, and there too, the evidence does not show migrant arrivals have driven up rent prices. According to Apartment List, median rent began spiking in January 2021, peaked in August 2022, and began slowly falling after that. That trend does not align with migration. Our analysis of Department of Homeland Security data shows roughly 1.5 million migrants entered the country during the period when rents were spiking. But from August 2022 through May 2024, an additional 3.6 million migrants entered the country. In short, migration rose dramatically even as rent prices plateaued and fell. This strongly suggests that migration across the border is not directly correlated to rent prices.
Immigration is not a zero-sum game. One migrant entering the country and working does not mean one American will lose a job. In fact, the opposite is true. Immigrants are job creators in multiple ways. We estimate that undocumented immigrants hold $256 billion in spending power, much of which is distributed back into the community, growing the economy and stimulating consumer demand. As demand rises, the need for labor goes up, more jobs are created, and native workers fill those jobs. When the economy contracts, demand goes down, fewer jobs are needed, and native workers lose their jobs. One recent study found that for every 500,000 people deported, 44,000 American citizens lose work. We estimate that mass deportations would cause the U.S. gross domestic product to fall anywhere from 4.2% to 6.8%. By comparison, the GDP dropped 4.3% during the Great Recession, which at its peak saw 15 million Americans out of work. The answer to the country’s housing shortage is obvious: build more housing to make up for years of stagnant growth following the 2008 housing crash. Mass deportations are not a realistic economic strategy. They would leave us all worse off, facing a collapsing construction industry, rising food prices and destabilizing labor shortages across the supply chain. Rather than destabilize the economy for the sake of harsh enforcement, we should increase resources to the government agencies that manage the enforcement and adjudication system to ensure that people have their cases heard in a reasonable period of time, while pursuing a path to permanent status for the long-term residents whose hard work makes us better off in the long run. When millions of people leave, they take their skills, money and hard work with them, and American workers, renters and homeowners suffer.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick is a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. 
