WASHINGTON—In a speech to the National League of Cities on March 10, Vice President JD Vance spoke about the challenge of high housing prices, linking them in part to high rates of immigration under President Donald Trump’s predecessor, President Joe Biden.
Vance’s speech began with a discussion of zoning, which he noted is a local issue, and Trump’s day-one executive order to “lower the cost of housing and expand housing supply” through changes to regulation. He then pivoted to another side of the issue.
“I think it’s important to talk about the demand side of the housing market,” the vice president told attendees of the league’s Congressional City Conference.
“One of the drivers of increased housing demand, we know, is that we’ve got a lot of people over the last four years who have come into the country illegally—and that’s something we have to work on if we want to meaningfully reduce the cost of housing too,” Vance said.
The foreign-born population of the United States, both legal and illegal, increased by 5.1 million between March 2022 and March 2024, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, which noted that it was “the largest two-year increase in American history.” The total foreign-born population—51.6 million people, or 15.6 percent of the country’s population—is also the highest ever recorded.
Vance said increased housing demand from an influx of people into the United States coincided with strain on supply because of stringent zoning, building regulations, and related factors. He went on to say that similar trends could be observed in countries the world over.
“You go across the world, and you see a very consistent relationship between a massive increase in immigration and a massive increase in housing prices,” the vice president said, specifically citing dynamics in the UK and Canada.
The University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory has found that “there is some evidence that migration is likely to have increased house prices in the UK,” alongside other factors. Net migration into the UK was recorded at a record high of 906,000 in 2023, up from an earlier estimate of 740,000 for that year from the UK’s Office for National Statistics.
A study from Canada in 2011, published at a time when immigration there was already surging, identified “a statistically significant but small” relationship between immigration and housing costs in that country.
Since 2011, the foreign-born percentage of Canada has substantially increased, rising from 20.6 percent of the population that year to a projected 25.2 percent in 2026, according to Statistics Canada. The total number of foreign-born Canadians has gone from 6.7 million in 2011 to a projected 10.1 million in 2026. The country admitted more than 483,000 permanent residents in 2024, setting a new record.
As Vance discussed the connection between immigration and housing, someone in the audience shouted something. The vice president had a rejoinder.
“I see one of our nice representatives out here wants to actually, I guess, continue to flood the country with illegal immigrants, making your communities and citizens unaffordable,” he said.
The vice president went on to discuss the steep decrease in illegal crossings at Eagle Pass, Texas, under Trump—a statement that drew sustained applause from the audience, which was mostly made up of local government officials from across the United States.
“With all due respect for some of the disagreements in opinion, I’d say we welcome disagreements. We want to talk about those disagreements, but we also have to respect the law in the United States of America,” Vance continued.
“We can’t do immigration enforcement with sanctuary cities. We’ve got to have everybody respecting the law.”
