Immigrant credit cards blasted
Bank of America said Tuesday that it was issuing credit cards to Spanish-speaking immigrants who might not have Social Security numbers, triggering complaints that the nation’s largest retail bank is tacitly endorsing illegal immigration.
The bank described the program as a pilot, confined for the time to 51 branches in Los Angeles County. If all goes well, the program could expand nationally this year.
The credit cards are not aimed specifically at illegal immigrants, a bank spokeswoman said, but instead people who lack solid credit histories. Even so, the bank was bombarded with angry calls.
Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., accused the lender of aiding terrorists, while the Department of Homeland Security worried that the program could be exploited by criminals.
“At face value the program seems to be problematic,” said Russ Knocke, a department spokesman. “It seems to be lending itself to possibilities of perpetrating identity theft or creating more risk for money laundering.”
The bank’s program, while controversial, illustrates how the business world increasingly sees the country’s estimated 12 million illegal immigrants neither as lawbreakers nor essential workers but simply as customers.
Wells Fargo & Co. and Citibank have launched similar initiatives to gain new customers within the burgeoning Latino community.
Wells Fargo began a pilot program last year in Southern California to offer home mortgages to immigrants who have lived in this country for two years. The customers are allowed to identify themselves using individual taxpayer numbers issued by the Internal Revenue Service instead of Social Security numbers. That’s the same system Bank of America customers can use to obtain credit cards under the new program.
“We are also looking at the possibility of offering unsecured credit cards to customers who may not have Social Security numbers,” Wells Fargo spokeswoman Mary Trigg said.
Bank of America, now based in North Carolina although once headquartered in San Francisco, still has its largest retail operations in California and is the biggest bank for Latinos in the country, said Richard Bove, who follows the banking industry for Punk, Ziegel & Co.
While the emphasis might pay off, “The political backlash is going to be substantial,” he said.
That prediction seemed to bear out Tuesday, after the program was reported in the Wall Street Journal.
“It helps to further embed illegal immigrants into American society,” said Steven Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies. “It makes amnesty a fait accompli.”
Tancredo said he sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff asking them to look into the program.
“I hope the administration will shut down this reckless and illegal program before Bank of America extends a line of credit to a potential terrorist,” said Tancredo, a leader of the anti-illegal-immigration forces in Congress.