Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) spent Wednesday morning making an argument most Republicans gesture at but rarely document. Across eight posts, the Missouri Republican set federal housing data beside new Federal Reserve research and argued that both point the same direction.
"Official data from HUD and the Fed's economists shows it," Schmitt wrote in his opening post. "Mass migration and solving America's housing affordability crisis are incompatible. Immigration has created an explosive demand shock that's hurting working families. 🧵"
He anchored the first half of his case in HUD's Worst Case Housing Needs 2025 Report to Congress. "HUD's Report to Congress: During the Biden Administration, the foreign-born population surged, the largest short-term increase in U.S. history. This boosted housing demand and drove up prices," he wrote. The document backs him. HUD counts more than 6 million added to the foreign born population between 2021 and 2024, calls that the largest increase over so short a period in American history, and puts the total above 53 million.
The senator then quoted the report almost word for word. "In some markets, immigration accounted for nearly all of the increase in housing demand," he posted.
That sentence appears in HUD's own summary. Nationally the agency attributed two-thirds of rental demand growth to the foreign born population, a figure Schmitt paired with a blunt reading. "American renters are stuck at the bottom, and mass migration during the Biden years aren't helping," he wrote.
Schmitt reserved his sharpest point for the supply side consensus. "'We just need to build more houses', isn't enough," he argued. "America added almost 600,000 new apartments in 2024, the highest since the early 1970s." Census Bureau figures put the count near 592,000, the strongest year since 1974. Builders delivered, and affordability still slipped.
From there Schmitt moved to the Federal Reserve. "Dallas Fed economists show the damage: Illegal aliens who entered during the Biden Admin took around 30% of new jobs, caused roughly 30% of the rise in home prices, and caused about 20% of the rent price increase in the average metropolitan area," he wrote. The paper behind that post, released in March by Daniel Wilson and Xiaoqing Zhou, tied unauthorized worker inflows to close to 30 percent of employment growth, roughly 30 percent of home price growth, and about 20 percent of rent growth in the average metro area from early 2021 to early 2024. Supply never answered the demand.
His prescription followed. "Mass deportations fix this," Schmitt concluded, arguing that shrinking the population competing for scarce housing relieves pressure now rather than in twenty years. Removals also bring "less overcrowding, reduced strain on schools/services, and lower overall costs. Secure the border, enforce the law, and remove illegals. That's how we restore affordability for American citizens," he added.
Schmitt has identified the part of this fight that actually matters, which is that housing prices answer to arithmetic and nothing else. A nation that imports millions of new scab laborers while its own citizens bid against them for a fixed stock of homes has chosen, deliberately, to price its own people out of ownership, and no zoning reform or construction boom will ever outrun that choice. Restoring affordability requires rolling back immigration in full, illegal and legal alike, until American families stop competing with the whole world for a roof over their heads.
