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August 13, 2005
 Mortgages
For Illegal Aliens: Are Banks The Treason Industry?
By
Joe Guzzardi
Before becoming an educator and journalist, I had a
long
Wall Street career as a commercial and investment
banker.
I received my training in the
basics of sound credit at the
Bankers Trust Company; at that time a staid old bank
that moved slowly but surely before it added new loans
to its portfolio.
Then I moved to
Merrill Lynch where greater gambles were often
taken. But risk was always weighed carefully against
potential reward.
Not surprisingly, given my rigid
financial training, I am aghast at the newest trend in
accommodating illegal aliens—home
mortgages.
No matter how hard I try, I simply
cannot conceive of any bank granting
home loans to applicants who cannot produce a social
security card.
Nor can I for the life of me
imagine proposing to my former superiors a new type of
loan whose success is dependent on
violating federal law on several levels.
All I can say is that if I had ever
summoned up the nerve to try such a scheme, my career
would have been instantly and forever in the toilet.
Merrill Lynch, with five floors of
in-house lawyers and a squadron of outside counsel,
would have relegated me to the boondocks from which I
would never have emerged.
But that was then and this is now.
The issue in a nutshell is that
many illegal aliens, now
widely viewed by banks and
businesses of all stripes as a hot "new emerging
market," can qualify for a
home mortgage with as little as two years of U.S.
residency, a "credit history," and an Individual
Tax Payer Identification Number.
The
National Association of Hispanic Real Estate
Professionals, salivating, reports that according to
its own study
"Undocumented Latino immigrants would add an estimated
$44 billion in new mortgages to the
housing economy…"
According to NAHREP, the only
barriers standing in the way are of home ownership for
"undocumented immigrants" are:
"…Identification, legalization, traditional
credit requirements and language…lack of
relationships with financial institutions, lack of
credit and therefore credit scoring challenges;
low-to-moderate income…"[NAHREP
News Release]
That’s all? Well, why worry,
then? The
federal government as well as several
state governments is there to make your dreams come
true.
In her August 3rd column
titled Mortgages for Illegal Aliens Encouraged by
FDIC, Diane Grassi states that the FDIC is
"formally encouraging" banks to enter "this
largely untapped market." [Mortgages
for Illegal Aliens Encouraged by FDIC,
Diane M. Grassi, Common Voice. August 3, 2005]
Grassi quotes FDIC spokesman
Michael Frias:
"Banks
aren’t legally required to verify legal status. There is
no federal law which requires banks to verify the
immigration status of foreign account holders."
Frias’ comment may be technically
true. But the policy of lending to people you know are
illegally residing in the US is against federal law.
Financial institutions get around
the rules by accepting the
Individual Taxpayer Identification Number in lieu of
a social security number and the
matricula consular card, now known as
High Security Consular Registration. (Note: like
D.A. King, I have one!)
They just don't seem to care that
an ITIN has as much value in terms of identification as
a dry cleaning receipt. Anyone can get them over the
phone, no questions asked.
But more importantly from a bank
compliance perspective, the Internal Revenue Service, on
its website,
states with crystal clarity that "ITINs are not
valid identification outside the tax system," and "ITINs
do not prove identity outside the tax system, and should
not be offered or accepted as identification for non-tax
purposes."
The legal argument against
financial institutions making loans to illegal aliens is
three fold:
- First, the IRS expressly
forbids accepting ITINs as identification.
- Second, as pointed out by
Grassi in her column, under U.S. Criminal Code 274
"it is a
crime punishable by 10 years in jail for aiding
and abetting someone in this country illegally for
commercial gain."
provides that banks must know their
customers and any illegal activity must be reported to
the government.
With the hope that I could ferret
it all out, I spoke at length with a real estate loan
executive at a leading
San Joaquin County bank.
He told me that within a matter of
minutes any lending officer would realize that he was
likely dealing with an illegal immigrant. And my source
wonders how loans made on the strength of non-secure
documents will pass the scrutiny of
auditors.
Over and again, my source repeated
that it would be irresponsible to lend money to an
individual who could not properly identify himself.
"We are legally obligated under
the
Bank Secrecy Act to know our customer," my
source said.
Here’s where we stand today:
Illegal aliens are working,
illegally, on
construction crews that are
building houses to be sold, illegally, to aliens who
have obtained their mortgages illegally. (See
VDARE.COM statistics compiled by Edwin S. Rubenstein on
Hispanics in the construction trades:
"National Data: Employment Report Shows Immigrants
Displacing Americans…Again.")
At VDARE.COM, we often write about
the "Treason Lobby"—the alliance of ethnic
interests, immigration lawyers etc. who are working to
destroy America as we know it through mass immigration.
Is banking the "Treason
Industry"?
But all is not lost. My friend and
fellow VDARE.COM contributor
D.A. King is tenaciously pursuing the criminals who
lend illegally to aliens.
King tells me he has developed a
file of correspondence and research documents "9
inches high."
In June, King wrote a column titled
"Can Banks Profiteer from Illegal Immigration with
Impunity?" that urged the Controller of the Currency
to enforce the law and act on behalf of all Americans to
end the practice of mortgage lending to aliens.
And King engaged the support of the
two Georgia U.S. Senators,
Saxby Chambliss and Johnny
Isakson who wrote pointed letters to the
Controller’s office.
The very good news is that King’s
push to eliminate non-secure identification in Georgia
may be on the verge of paying off.
According to a story in the
Atlanta Journal Constitution, a panel
of Georgia House and Senate lawmakers recently met with
more than a dozen statewide law enforcement officials to
promote new legislation that would crack down on
crime committed by
illegal aliens.
Central to the any proposed
legislation would be stamping out fake identification
cards. ["Illegal
Immigrants Will Be Hot State Topic," Sonji Jacobs,
Atlanta Journal Constitution, August 11, 2005]
Those like King who fight illegal
immigration are properly outraged by the banking
industry’s latest affront in the name of greater
profits.
We have many targets for our anger.
But let’s make sure that we never
forget that immigration law breaking is condoned at the
highest level---George
W. Bush and the White House.
In 2000, Bush constantly reminded
voters that America
"is a nation of laws."
But that sound clip turned out to
be a sad joke. In more than four years, Bush has not
shown the slightest indication to
enforce immigration laws.
What does it say about the
leadership in our country when it falls to grassroots
activists like King to do the work that Bush and his
administration should be doing?
Among other things, it suggests
that Bush is more
cravenly beholden to
business interests than any president in history.
But Bush's fixation on immigration,
particularly from Mexico, goes beyond anything business
could want.
Maybe he's trying to build a
Tex-Mex family dynasty, as
Steve Sailer has suggested.
In the process, he's selling out
his party—and his country.
Joe Guzzardi [email
him], an instructor in English at the Lodi
Adult School, has been writing a weekly newspaper column
since 1988. This column is exclusive to VDARE.COM. |
