Wages Are Low And 'The Rent Is Too Damn High' When Borders Are Not Enforced

Empirical evidence shows unchecked immigration distorts the economy

Sarah Wakefield, the Green Party candidate for the Makerfield by-election in Greater Manchester, recently told BBC Question Time that it is “absolutely wild” to blame immigration for soaring housing costs.

When Rob Kenyon from Reform UK replied that more people require more housing, Wakefield conceded the commonsense point while making a facial display of contempt. The laws of supply and demand are not real, to her.

Liberals, especially women, tend to put on this facial expression whenever their sacred cows are gored. Unrestricted immigration is the most sacred of progressive cows. We know this because we have witnessed leftist activists give their lives in Minnesota trying to liberate criminal illegal aliens from deportation.

As much as Democrats want to run on “affordability”, it was open border policy that made housing unaffordable across America in recent years.

Under Biden, the number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States reached 14 million, the highest ever recorded. Between 2.5 and 3 million have been deported, or left the country, since Trump returned to office in 2025 while border crossings plummeted.

Now, James Carter, a principal with lobbying firm Navigators Global, confirms that effective border enforcement is reducing the rent nationwide. Turns out the law of supply and demand still works.

“A recent Federal Reserve working paper finds that unauthorized immigration accounted for roughly 30% of house-price growth and 20% of rent growth in the average metro area between 2021 and 2024”, Carter writes in an op-ed this week at The Wall Street Journal.

“As that demand eases, so should price pressure. Zillow reports national mortgage costs at their best level since August 2022, with affordability expected to improve in 49 of the 50 largest metros by year’s end.”

“In Florida, rents have declined as interior immigration enforcement efforts have increased”, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida posted in reaction to the story.

“The consensus in Washington held for years that immigration enforcement didn’t impact the wallets of ordinary Americans”, but it does, Carter writes. Too many economists ignored this for too long.

Lack of border and immigration enforcement “is a market distortion that holds down wages for those Americans most exposed to labor competition from unauthorized workers, increases demand for housing without a corresponding increase in supply and undermines the legal immigration system that serves everyone’s interests.”

The problem is even more acute in the United Kingdom. “In major cities such as Birmingham, according to official data, at least one-third of all taxpayer-subsidised social housing tenants were born outside of Britain, of which less than half are currently working”, Matt Goodwin writes.

“In London, it’s 48 per cent. In Slough, it’s 41 per cent. In Leicester, it’s nearly 40 per cent. In Luton, it’s 38 per cent. In Manchester, it’s 32 per cent. In Coventry, it’s 31 per cent. I could go on. And on.”

Nigel Farage now says that under a Reform UK government, foreign nationals living in social housing would be given three months to find private accommodation or face deportation. The problem that liberal western parties face against this sort of ‘right wing populism’ is that it works.

A policy of deporting illegal immigrants and limiting legal immigration raises wages and lowers rents. The taboo against acknowledging this economic reality is no longer tenable, while the contempt of liberals for anyone who acknowledges this reality is no longer a deterrent from speaking about it.