WSJ reports that Bank of America issues credit cards for illegal immigrants without a soc.sec. number or creditcheck. Beside the political implications, just how good business is that??? http://money.cnn.com/2007/02/13/news/companies/bc.bofa.card.reut/ The situation is the same in the mortgage industry: "Competition for new customers is driving banks to offer home loans and other financial services to illegal immigrants -- and they are getting help from government agencies, such as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The FDIC encourages banks to lend and invest in underserved markets regardless of customers' immigration status." http://www.realestatejournal.com/buysell/mortgages/20050711-jordan.html
What's wrong with this? How can you expect these people to ever be good 'Murkans unless they experience the joys of debt? This country is powered by debt, and quite frankly, the more people that have credit cards, the better off we all are.
So if these illegals run up their credit card balances by going on a shopping spree, then get caught and sent back to Mexico, the credit card issuer takes the hit. Sounds like smart business to me.
FYI...The majority of "illegals" as a group actually represent a better credit risk than the average 10 card carrying American debtor.
The funny thing is, that a citizen could sue the bank for equal opportunity treatment. Equal to the illegals.... After all if an illegal can get a CC without creditrecord, why a citizen shouldn't? That would make the creditscore meaningless...
This is hilarious. The funniest part is that BofA is idiotic, because 1) immigrants hate credit cards, and 2) the only people who will probably use them are the ones who don't plan on paying their balances off - ever.
Of course they have a credit "score" and a credit record. What, you think lenders are totally stupid? There's many ways of calculating the ability/likelyhood of someone repaying a loan other than using some credit bureau score. It may take a little more effort but then the lenders usually recoup the costs thru higher fees. That's another problem with American society lenders don't face with illegals or immigrants...there's no sue, sue, sue attitude from these borrowers.