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Cake day: April 13th, 2025

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  • We all know that immigration needs sensible reforms. And we all know that there is a housing crises. The question is whether immigration “created the housing crises”. But the cost of housing has outpaced incomes globally. If it were just created by immigration, then shouldn’t the prices balance out globally as countries that lose population get more housing availability?

    Surely the pressure from immigration aggravated the housing crises, but it did not create it. The crises has been building for at least 50 years. It is created by the financialization of housing and the withdraw of public investment in affordable housing.

    Housing is a human right, because it is a basic necessity for living a decent and secure life. When you let core needs be met entirely by the market, without any social support to guarantee access, the profit motive will inevitably squeeze the population to extract more and more upside.

    In any market, maximum profits can be made when there is high demand with a restricted supply. By surrendering housing entirely to increasingly unregulated markets, the production of housing becomes prioritized based on return on investment, and that means in order to attract capital housing production and sales have to be more profitable (for some segment of available investment) than other investments, such as mining, oil, finance, etc. If not, any capital would just flow to those more profitable avenues. As a result, we get luxury housing when we need affordable housing and we get unproductive sprawling, overly large single family homes when we need medium density housing near urban centers.

    So then, is it any surprise that think tanks and corporate interests that want to drive forward market deregulation to maximize profit potentials will try to tell us to blame immigration for “creating” the crises that is actually due to the very deregulation they want to advance?

    Caveat Emptor:



  • 1.5 million immigrants in a year isn’t a “little too far”. The UN called it modern slavery.

    This is misleading and arguably just a lie. AFAICT, the UN did not infer anything from the amount of immigration, only from the conditions and treatment of the immigrants: https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/09/1140437 – those two things may have some connection, but it is obviously mediated.

    If you want to help the poor then reducing demand is the first step

    According to what economic or social theory? Why isn’t progressive taxation, redistribution, improved social welfare, stimulating industry, or improving education the first step?

    Why do you assume that the problem is caused by the poor people seeking opportunity rather than caused by the landlords and corporate oligarchs extracting profit?