• MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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    5 months ago

    Please correct me if I’m wrong, and IANAL, but my understanding is that to own land (which would contain a house), in a country, you need to have a contract with the government where the land is, thereby identifying yourself as a foreigner.

    It would seem that if this insane claim was actually a problem, where foreign persons were buying homes and then living in them, illegally in the USA for an extended period of time, that such a problem would be easy to solve?

    “This home has been occupied by a Spanish speaking family, and it’s owned by a Mexican citizen” would be a good reason for border services to go knock on the door and be like, who the hell are you people and do you have the legal right to be in the country?

    IDK, but it feels like a problem that would fix itself.

    Also, most illegal immigrants are fleeing their country with little more than the clothes on their back, nevermind enough cash to buy a house. I’m sure some rich people can do this but are they really the problem? If they want to live in the country and spend their wealth here, why would we want to stop them?

    The whole argument is nonsensical to me.

    • icanred@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      Even if everything you say is true, where does this leave us in ~20 years when all of the children born here, who are now citizens, enter the housing market? Or the illegals who are granted citizenship which includes Dreamers plus any future actions?

      • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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        5 months ago

        I feel like illegal immigrants is less of a problem than you think it is.

        But you’re talking about the effects that would happen over multiple generations, all of whom come from essentially poverty conditions.

        I am unable to count the number of people who became middle class from a poverty class family, because I’m not aware that it has ever happened. So any children of illegal immigration, who were born in the country who is now a citizen would probably fall into the poorest rentals and communities, which isn’t capable of home ownership.

        I’m middle class and I had to pair up with another family to break the cycle of violence that is renting. I’m 40 and I’ll be 65 by the time we pay off the mortgage, at which time any savings from the mortgage is likely going to need to be fed into surviving, because inflation will have likely spiked the cost of everything to the point where we need that money just to buy food. I understand that’s anecdotal, though I have seen others with similar stories. The only people I know of that are doing okay, bought a house in, or directly after college when the average price of a home was half of what it is now.

        So if you ask me if these people are raising house prices, my answer is no, because the vast majority of them are impoverished. Those that are not, can afford the time, cost, and effort to go through the proper immigration process, and they become citizens.

        Simply: rich/middle class foreigners are immigrating legally. Poor immigrants are coming over illegally with nothing, and given how ruthless our society is, they will not escape poverty in our lifetimes, and likely not in the lifetimes of our children, or their children. By the time they “become a problem” for the housing market, they will be 3rd or 4th generation citizens at a minimum, using their meager generational wealth to finally hoist themselves out of poverty.