And if people aren't building because it makes more sense to buy a "used" house material prices would also drop.

Permitting, engineering, etc are also expensive.

Finally, construction costs are difficult to estimate up front, so it is difficult to be a rational actor when deciding to build or not.

After all, if you hit a 33% cost overrun half way through building, your best option is to pay the 33%. At that point the house costs 83% of the expected price of starting over. If you stop now, then you are out 50% of the initial budget.

If you think facing such a tradeoff is rare, look around for lots that are for sale with pre-approved plans or partially constructed houses. They're usually pretty easy to find.

I came to the US and found that, not only were the streets not paved with gold, they weren't paved at all. Furthermore, I was the one that was expected to pave them!

I don't think much has changed on that front.

I'm not saying there wouldn't be other issues with clamping down on immigration, but if you're trying to tackle the supply and demand issue it's the easiest way to handle it.

[0]: https://cis.org/Report/Estimating-Illegal-Immigrant-Populati...

Note that's just "enforcement actions," which nowadays largely means giving them a court date and letting them go. It doesn't count anyone who snuck in successfully.

Here's another link: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/migrant-border-...

"Inadmissibles refers to individuals encountered at ports of entry who are seeking lawful admission into the United States but are determined to be inadmissible, individuals presenting themselves to seek humanitarian protection under our laws, and individuals who withdraw an application for admission and return to their countries of origin within a short timeframe."

It's not totally clear, but it seems that it also includes other "border enforcement" actions that are not necessarily related to immigration at all, e.g. intellectual property and drug seizures.

So it has nothing to do with what you were claiming.

What is the connection here? And why is there a qualification of "illegal"? If these were legal immigrants, what would that change?

You're implying that demand is greater than supply, which has been quite overtly mentioned by many.

You're right that the type of immigrants don't matter, but the reason I mentioned illegal immigrants is because the amount is completely uncontrolled. Legal immigration we could easily ramp up or down.