How many of these are newly illegal immigrants? May be heartless to say that, but one cannot take them all. Obviously winter time and we should have mercy. But there are limits.
We have enough space, but refuse to build affordable housing, for our citizens or for immigrants/asylum seekers. It's a fake problem conjured entirely from broken incentives and an utter lack of political will to fix them.
In point of fact the country is -littered- with affordable housing, frequently sitting unoccupied in places people were perfectly happy to live before all of the economic opportunities in rural America were gutted. How sure are we the current crisis actually involves housing?
99% sure that it's caused by lack of housing. Housing in places people don't want to live in anymore whether due to job availability or etc isn't that useful. Although possibly improving transportation to places with lots of job opportunities might partially reverse that
You're certain that issues affecting the geographic majority of the country, that are demonstrably the effects of bullshit trade policies and overconsolidation, are resolvable by building houses in high cost markets? Neat take.
Many cities have overly-restrictive building codes that prevent adequate housing from being built, which raises housing costs.
Our immigration rate is too high for the amount of new housing units we build, which raises housing costs.
Many businesses have taken a hardline stance against remote work, even for jobs where it would make sense. That forces people to live in areas with inadequate housing, which raises housing costs.
Existing housing is being increasingly purchased by multibillion dollar companies for rent-seeking purposes, which raises housing costs.
There's really no one-size-fits-all solution to the problem, but slightly reducing the immigration rate, limiting corporate ownership of detached single family homes, incentivizing remote positions, and forcing cities to approve more new units would almost certainly improve the situation.
I participate in local politics, it's not just housing. Housing means more people which means more infrastructure, schools, fire, police, roads and so forth. All of that costs money and immigrants/asylum seekers tend to be at bottom of economic scale which means any taxes they pay are extremely likely not to cover their share of cost. This is why many communities are against it and it's massively impacting local services the community provides. In particular, we got influx of asylum seekers and schools had to made massive cuts to many programs because budget was being poured into education programs for the asylum seeker kids and support services for their parents. This is required by law. This is why my county went for Trump in a way it hadn't seen since Bush.
Before you go posting links about Social Security and Federal Taxes, it doesn't matter to local governments, they don't see that money. Also worth noting, Local Governments don't work like Federal Government, any debt they take on must be repaid on time or go bankrupt which is not good.
> immigrants/asylum seekers tend to be at bottom of economic scale which means any taxes they pay are extremely likely not to cover their share of cost.
I understand that people are worried about this – and it's certainly an intuitive idea –, but is it true? I would count taxes on the total economic output / labour, not just the taxes from what is captured as salary (after all, underpaid workers make the world go 'round), but any analysis would do.
I've searched for sources that break it down instead of just looking at United States GDP but also remember, states/counties can only capture income from sources that fall under that state/county. For example, immigrant worker enables bigger salaries for Tyson Food HQ people in Springdale, Arkansas but Tyson Food Plant in upstate New York means county/state in New York is absorbing that burden without getting taxes from Springdale, Arkansas people.
So sure, the entire US GDP and thus taxes is extremely reliant on these workers but who sees the benefits is not uniform throughout the country and thus the friction around immigration.
This explanation is even better than what I asked for! Do you know if increasing the minimum wage would stop people being so upset? I imagine this would funnel enough of the value immigrants are creating to the immigrants that they can pay tax in their local area, thus avoiding the "we're subsidising other parts of the country" problem – but I'm no economist. (The whole "pay a fair wage" thing has other benefits, but it might not solve this problem.)
Increasing the minimum wage might help but it's still a sticky problem. It probably requires some federal solution which is to say, it's not going to happen.
I don't know the solutions, I'm just aware of the problem.
In my area (Seattle), almost none of the visible homeless are illegal immigrants. Granted, these are mostly drug addicts (otherwise you wouldn’t notice them!), but I get the feeling that they have living arrangements somehow given that they are here to make money and not do drugs (it has to pay off for them, and I can’t see that happening if they live in the streets). It might not be very great housing though (think 4 men sharing a room).
The “illegal immigrants” are homeless thing feels like a meme to me, but I live far from the southern border so maybe it’s worse down there?
We don't know. The best we can do is model it as a random variable based on what little data we do have. What data do we have? Well over 2 million border encounters for 2023 and 2024. For a nation of over 350 million that doesn't sound like much but remember, housing is an inelastic good where a 1% fluctuation in the supply can be an absolute shock to the system.
These people have to live somewhere — and whether they're taking up a single bedroom or an entire residence, they're living somewhere. So I don't think you should be downvoted. There's nothing wrong with asking about how an uncountable yet sizable population will affect the dynamics of an inelastic good.
11 million crossing doesn't mean 11 million people (multiple crossing attempts) and it doesn't those people are still in the US. Unfortunately there's a lot of FUD about immigrants and immigration. Most estimates don't go above 12 million unauthorized immigrants *TOTAL* a large percentage who have been here a long time. And that this is probably slightly below a peak unauthorized immigrant population around 2008.
* Since some people tend to often claim people who are here legally are "illegals" it's important to note that asylum seekers are here legally as are those granted TPS.
You're implying you have a conscience but your first thought is that the affordable housing shortage is aggravated by nebulous "illegal" immigrants rather than profit-seeking corporations?
