[dh2022]

Immigrants help with housing - because a lot of builders are immigrants. In my Seattle/Bellevue area - any time I needed help with anything housing related it was either Latinos or Ukrainians or Eastern Europeans. By housing related I mean plumbing, electrical, re-building a deck. The outside of the house next door was repainted (and some of its siding replaced) by Latinos. The roofers on a house on my walk spoke Spanish. Same with the workers who were doing a remodel.

When I installed French drains the guy that inspected and calculated the bid was American. The guy that dug the ditches and connected the house drains was Latino (I need to add that the Latino's English was better than mine. He used to be elementary teacher in Everett and switched to construction. He explained to me the term "lingua franca" :)).

In my neighbourdhood I also see a lot of Chinese laborers working in construction (the population of my neighbourdhood is probably 50% Chinese, and the rest either Korean or Japanese or South East Asian or Indian.)

I hardly ever see US born people working in construction around me.

[FloorEgg]

This is a good point, and I agree! Though when supply growth is bottlenecked by zoning, permitting,etc and not labor, immigration could still result in higher prices.

However if immigration disproportionately adds to construction labor supply, and if construction labor supply is the primary bottlebeck for housing supply growth, then immigration would indeed lower the price of housing.

To be clear I'm not anti immigration, I'm not Republican and I'm not even American.

I just saw a question (which I realize in hindsight was politically charged) that seemed to ignore some basic economic principles, and for some reason today I felt compelled to respond.

It's also worth noting that the comment I replied to was edited after I replied to it.