People wait in line with their children after school pickup outside of the Roosevelt Hotel migrant shelter on Friday, February 25, 2025 in New York City. Michael Nagle

The catastrophic damage of Joe Biden’s open border policy continues: New research finds that the millions of illegal migrants he welcomed drove steep increases in housing costs in the average metropolitan area from 2021 to 2024. 

The data, presented in a working paper from economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, flesh out a point obvious to anyone who consider it: When you import millions of people — and Biden waved in at least seven million — you create soaring demand for housing, so prices must spike until (and unless) supply rises to match.

The Dallas Fed research suggests that every 1% rise in illegal workers relative to the local, legal workforce drives a 1.4% jump in rents and a 2.2% rise in home prices. 

This common-sense, basic truth of economics was simply denied by establishment media like Reuters and The New York Times, which mocked both President Trump and Vice President JD Vance for pointing it out during Trump’s third campaign and at the start of his second term. 

But the numbers are in, and they show the reality. 

On top of feeding crime and straining social services around the country, all those illegal migrants were doing direct damage to affordability for average Americans. 

Remember that the next time open-border Democrats — from Gavin Newsom on down to Zohran Mamdani — say they’re fighting for affordability. 

That’s not possible without a real border, as the data now prove. 

Don’t hold your breath waiting for progressives to admit the harm they’ve done and pivot to battling for the interests of the little guys they claim to love so much: Their answer to a failed policy is always to double down.