Nalin Haley, the son of former South Carolina Gov. and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, has again taken a hardline position on immigration, this time linking illegal and legal immigration to the affordability crisis in the United States.
In a post on X, Haley argued that immigration is directly connected to rising costs and called for sweeping restrictions on both unauthorized and legal immigration.
“Don’t let anyone tell you illegal and legal immigration have nothing to do with the affordability crisis. There’s a direct correlation. We need to deport illegals, deport those who hate America, end legal immigration, and end the H-1B visa now!” Haley wrote.
His post came as he reshared a post from Insider Wire that claimed, “States with the most ICE deportations are seeing the largest rent decreases.”
Haley added a short message to the post: “America for Americans!”
The comments come amid an ongoing national debate over whether immigration enforcement can directly reduce housing costs and ease pressure on American workers.
The claim that deportations are driving rent declines has also been promoted by the Department of Homeland Security. In a September 25 post cited by other outlets, DHS pointed to rent declines in several cities, including San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Phoenix, Atlanta, Nashville and New Orleans, while connecting those trends to increased immigration enforcement.
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However, the relationship between immigration enforcement and housing affordability is more complicated than a direct comparison between deportations and rent prices suggests.
A March 2026 working paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas examined the effects of unauthorized immigration on local labor and housing markets. The researchers found that increases in unauthorized immigrant worker flows were associated with higher local house prices and rents when housing supply did not expand at the same pace. The study also found that those inflows increased local employment and did not produce significant declines in local wages.
Other research and analysis has reached different conclusions about the extent to which deportations can lower housing costs. The Wall Street Journal reported that economists have attributed recent rent declines in some cities to factors such as increased housing supply and changes in migration patterns, rather than immigration enforcement alone.
A July 2026 PolitiFact analysis of claims connecting unauthorized immigration to rental costs also found that a Federal Reserve study estimated U.S. rental housing prices increased 22.6% between 2021 and 2024, with unauthorized immigration accounting for 4.3 percentage points of that increase.
Haley’s latest comments also extend his previous criticism of legal immigration and the H-1B visa program.
He has repeatedly called for an end to H-1B visas. In late 2025, Haley said the United States should stop both illegal and legal immigration, arguing that young Americans were struggling to find jobs.
In another post later that year, he called for a complete halt to the H-1B program, a position that drew attention because the visa is widely used by foreign professionals, particularly workers from India.
His stance on legal immigration is notably different from the position previously expressed by his mother.
During her 2024 Republican presidential campaign, Nikki Haley argued that the U.S. should maintain a legal immigration system based on merit and the needs of the American economy. She said immigrants should be admitted based on factors such as talent and the needs of U.S. businesses rather than through what she described as arbitrary quotas.
Nalin Haley’s latest remarks therefore go beyond calls for stricter border enforcement. His post explicitly calls for ending legal immigration and the H-1B visa program, while also arguing that immigration is tied to the broader affordability problems facing Americans.
His comments come at a time when immigration enforcement has expanded significantly under the Trump administration. Reuters reported earlier this month that ICE arrests reached nearly 51,000 in August 2026, the third consecutive monthly high. The report also noted that more than three-quarters of recent arrests involved people without criminal records, while deportations were running at roughly 1,200 per day.