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  1. #1
    Administrator ALIPAC's Avatar
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    ALIPAC: Money transfers by illegal aliens mounting

    Money transfers mounting
    U.S. encourages cash flow across border as tool to deter illegal immigration

    BINYAMIN APPELBAUM, RICK ROTHACKER AND FRANCO ORDOŃEZ
    Staff Writers
    The Charlotte Observer
    http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/15372237.htm

    To curb illegal immigration, the federal government has posted soldiers on the Mexican border, arrested workers at job sites, and talked about making it a felony to enter the U.S. without permission.

    But it puts greater hope in a relatively unknown and unlikely strategy: increasing the amount of money immigrants send back to Mexico.

    The Bush administration says the billions sent south each year can be used to build the Mexican economy, thereby reducing immigration. For the past five years, the government has worked with Mexico and money senders to reduce the cost of remittances, and increase the volume.

    Remittances to Mexico have more than doubled, topping $20 billion in 2005. Only oil exports made more money for the country.

    But there is little evidence the inflow of money is reducing the outflow of people.

    Critics in both countries say remittances actually encourage immigration by making Mexican families dependent on American jobs.

    Even some supporters say the idea will work only if the government can change the way remittances are sent. Instead of transferring cash, senders must be convinced to put the money in a Mexican account, they say. When one person makes a deposit, another can borrow, spurring economic development.

    But that's a tall order. Distrust of banks is widespread in Mexico; most people don't have accounts. Last year, the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Bank of Mexico launched a system offering low-cost transfers if the recipient opened a bank account.

    So far, the service has enlisted only thousands out of potentially millions of users.

    Even if more money is directed to economic development, the gap between wages in the two countries suggests the motivation to emigrate would remain strong for a long time.

    And the government's attempt to harness remittances is a political lightning rod. Illegal immigrants are among those sending money. By encouraging remittances, the U.S. is, in effect, trying to make illegal immigration so successful that it will end.

    "I'd say that's about as plausible as unicorns and leprechauns," said William Gheen, head of Raleigh-based Americans for Legal Immigration, which advocates tighter borders. Other critics see the remittance policy as another example of how the government makes it easy for illegal immigrants to participate in American society.

    Congress could resume its debate on the future of America's estimated 12 million illegal residents when it reconvenes in September. Competing House and Senate bills don't directly address the remittance industry but would affect its customers.

    For all these obstacles, many experts view economic development as the only plausible strategy to deal with immigration -- and remittances as one of the most valuable tools for promoting development. A 2004 study by Inter-American Dialogue, a think tank, began simply, "A strong case can be made that remittances are now Latin America's most important resource."

    Basic needs

    Every week, millions of people throughout Latin America walk to the corner store or the local bank to collect a few hundred dollars from relatives working in foreign countries. The numbers add up. Last year, the region received more than $53 billion in remittances, up 17 percent from 2004, according to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).Three-fourths is sent from the U.S., and the largest share -- 38 cents of every dollar -- flows to Mexico.

    The money lifts many from deepest poverty. A 2005 World Bank study of 71 countries found that a 10 percent increase in remittances per capita produced a 3.5 percent dip in the number of people in poverty, which was defined as life on less than $1 a day.

    Antonio and Fernandez Lopez, brothers who work in Charlotte, send about $400 a month from Banco de la Gente on South Boulevard to their family in Aguascalientes, Mexico. It is the only reliable income the family receives. With it the family pays for rent, electricity, groceries.

    "It's so they can eat," Antonio said Friday. "I'd like to send more, so they could eat more."

    Some immigrants also pool money for development projects. The poster child is the Mexican state of Zacatecas, in an agricultural region on the central plateau. Hundreds of thousands of its residents have emigrated to the United States. Groups of them in cities including Los Angeles and Chicago have sent back millions of dollars to build roads, schools and other infrastructure.

    Immigrants from another Mexican state, Michoacán, have banded together to fund 40 scholarships to Mexican universities for students in their hometown of Indaparapeo.

    Both efforts receive help from the Mexican government through a program called "Three for One." When immigrants pool money for projects, each dollar is matched by the federal, state and local governments. Last year, the federal government budgeted about $23 million for its share. Earlier this year, Western Union agreed to match some remittances, as well.

    Nonprofits, international development agencies and Mexican companies have also tried to use the flow of money to power economic development. Cemex, a giant concrete company, accepts payment in the U.S. for construction materials to build homes in Mexico. It even offers free building plans.

    But such efforts remain the exception: 90 percent of the money remitted to Mexico is used to pay for basic needs, such as food and health care, according to Rodolfo Garcia Zamora, an immigration expert at the Universidad Autonoma de Zacatecas.

    Zamora is among a growing number of Mexicans who warn the nation is relying too much on remittances and doing too little to promote its own development.

    Relying on remittances as an income stream means families must continue to send relatives to work in more prosperous countries. And it does not guarantee future prosperity; if the U.S. tightens immigration controls, the flow of money could dry up.

    "The U.S. has become addicted to cheap Mexican labor, and Mexico has become addicted to the remittance," Zamora said in a speech in April before a United Nations conference on remittances in Mexico City.

    The number of Mexicans in the U.S. has increased by about 500,000 a year over the past decade, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Other experts believe the population is growing even more quickly.

    Last year, Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., said Mexico was "hooked" on remittances. He threatened legislation to cut foreign aid by the amount of remittances to offset what he called the strain on U.S. taxpayers. Tancredo spokesman Carlos Espinosa said the legislation was never introduced because it would have been unconstitutional, but the congressman "wanted to raise it as an issue."

    Legislators in North Carolina and other states have similarly proposed taxing remittances.

    Jeffrey Humphreys, director of the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia, calls the reasoning behind singling out remittances "bogus." For the American economy, he says, there is no difference between spending money on an European vacation and sending money to Mexico.

    Mexican-U.S. partnership

    In September 2001, President Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox announced a "Partnership for Prosperity." The two countries would promote economic development in the Mexican regions that produced the most migrants "on the premise that no Mexican should feel compelled to leave his home for lack of economic opportunity," according to their joint statement.

    Remittances were named as a major focus of the partnership. The first goal was simply to reduce the cost of sending money. The governments hoped to encourage banks to enter the business, increasing competition.

    Banks eager for Hispanic customers have piled in, and prices have dropped. The IDB estimates the cost to consumers on average is about 6 cents to remit a dollar, down from about 15 cents in 2000. And government officials hailed Bank of America Corp.'s announcement last year that it would offer free transfers to Mexico to anyone who opened a checking account.

    Persuading recipients to put the money in a bank account has been much harder.

    Most remittances are distributed by Mexican banks, but the recipients generally are not customers. The process is the same as getting the money at a corner store. Bank of America and others that require senders to open accounts don't require recipients to do the same. "We developed our system based on what customers told us was important," said Marcos Rosenberg, a Bank of America executive.

    In 2003, Bush and Fox met again, in San Francisco. This time, they announced they were entering the remittance business. The U.S. Federal Reserve and the Bank of Mexico would start a remittance system that required recipients to open accounts.

    The system, Directo a Mexico, allows banks in the U.S. to send money to banks in Mexico at a low cost. It is intended for use by small banks and credit unions. Large banks can arrange their own international transfers.

    The Fed charges a fixed fee of 67 cents, allowing the bank or credit union to charge a fee to customers that can be as low as $2. On larger transfers, the savings can be considerable. To use the service, the sender must have an account in the U.S. -- and the recipient must have an account in Mexico.

    "It's a stepping stone for radically changing one's financial future," said Elizabeth McQuerry of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. "Their funds will be waiting for them safe and secure and insured in a bank account. They'll have access to a growing number of other financial services."

    But the service has been slow to catch on. The Fed processes about 27,000 transactions through the program each day, but fewer than 1,000 are personal remittances -- a small fraction of all personal remittances to Mexico. Mostly the service is used to send Social Security checks to people who worked legally in the U.S.

    Low profile

    Remittances have kept a low profile during the congressional debate about immigration. Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., told the Observer he believes Congress has not fully grasped the significance of the money flow. He said the question of how best to harness remittances should be central to any immigration reform legislation."When you're talking about $50 billion it's staggering; it's a lot of money," said Engel, the ranking member of the Western Hemisphere subcommittee of the Committee on International Relations.

    Meanwhile, the Fed is working to increase use of Directo a Mexico. Payment volume is up 13 percent since last fall, when it launched a new publicity campaign. As of July, 86 banks in the U.S. offered the service and another 54 had signed up.

    It is perhaps a sign of the political times that many of the banks have declined to publicize their participation. Of the six banks signed up in North Carolina, only three have given the Fed permission to disclose their names: Latino Community Credit Union, the State Employees Credit Union and First National Bank of Shelby.

    There is no doubt that illegal immigrants use the service. A questionnaire about Directo explains that if a customer is deported, the money in his bank account can still be withdrawn from an ATM in Mexico.

    "You don't have to be a legal resident in the United States to have a bank account," said the Fed's McQuerry.

    "To us, a payment is a payment is a payment."

    -- Binyamin Appelbaum: bappelbaum@charlotteobserver.com

    Rick Rothacker: rrothacker@charlotteobserver.com

    Franco Ordońez: fordonez@charlotteobserver.com

    --


    Immigrant Population

    North Carolina is ranked eighth among states that send the most money to Latin America. In 2004, immigrants living in North Carolina sent $833 million to Latin America, according to the Inter-American Development Bank, which calculates state-by-state remittance data. South Carolina sent $148 million and is ranked 25th.

    The estimated total population of illegal immigrants in the Carolinas has skyrocketed since 1990.


    1990 2000 2004
    North Carolina 25,000 205,000 390,000
    South Carolina 5,000 45,000 55,000
    United States 3.5 million 8.4 million 12 million


    SOURCE: Pew Hispanic Center
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  2. #2
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    Banks: Residency not our business
    Companies court immigrants but avoid immigration politics

    RICK ROTHACKER
    rrothacker@charlotteobserver.com

    Is it the responsibility of a bank or a money transmitter to check the residency status of a customer?

    The companies say resoundingly, "No."

    It's the government's job to monitor immigration, they say. Their job is to provide a much-needed service to customers.

    "We don't have the capabilities to assess the immigration status of people that live in the U.S.," said Marcos Rosenberg, Bank of America's executive for Hispanic checking. "We try to make our services available to any and everybody that wants to take advantage of it."

    Some immigration opponents say businesses are legitimizing illegal immigrants' participation in the U.S. financial system by targeting the growing Latino population for new profits. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that 30 percent of foreign born residents in the U.S. are here illegally; most of them are Latino.

    Others say businesses are stuck in the middle of patchwork immigration laws that provide little avenue for legal immigration, while doing too little to stop undocumented workers from crossing the border or to detect them once they're here.

    Immigration reform proponent Rep. Sue Myrick, a Charlotte Republican, says it would be an unfair burden to require banks to check immigration status. She prefers tougher border security measures in legislation she would like to emerge from Congress in September.

    "Remittances are part of the global economy," she says.


    Remittances are subject to anti-terrorism and money-laundering laws designed to prevent the movement of money to criminals, but companies are not required to check immigration status. For remittances of $3,000 or more, senders must show some form of identification, though not to verify immigration status.

    Competing House and Senate bills do not specifically address the remittance industry. But either could affect immigrants' ability to enter the country and whether they can stay.

    Financial institutions, such as Charlotte's Bank of America and Wachovia Corp., say they have stayed out of the fray. "Our position on the immigration debate is one of not taking a position," said Chris Butler, Hispanic segment director for Wachovia, in an interview.

    Banks haven't always been so laissez-faire.

    Under the USA Patriot Act, the U.S. Treasury Department implemented rules in 2003 that required banks to verify the identification of customers opening accounts. The guidelines allowed banks to accept government-issued identifications, such as Mexican ID cards known as matricula consular.

    After pressure from Congress and the Justice Department, however, the Treasury Department agreed to review the acceptance of the IDs issued by Mexican consulates. Critics said the cards were fraud-prone and allowed illegal immigrants to open accounts. The IDs do not list immigration status.

    The Financial Services Roundtable, an influential industry trade group, lobbied to preserve the use of matricula consular, and the Treasury Department later affirmed its rule. Andy Barbour, vice president of government affairs for the trade group, said banks wanted the flexibility to use the IDs and the ability to serve Hispanic customers.

    "We are very supportive of banking the unbanked, whether Hispanics or others," he said.

    Bank of America, Wachovia and Winston-Salem-based BB&T Corp. are among the banks that accept matricula consular. All three have since launched remittance services that require customers to open accounts.

    Bank remittance services were in the works before the Treasury Department debate, but the use of matricula consular likely helped their growth, Barbour acknowledged.

    "To the extent it allowed more Hispanics, or Mexicans in particular, into the formal banking system, I'm sure there is a symbiotic relationship," he said. -- Staff Writer Binyamin Appelbaum contributed.


    Bank Account Crackdown

    With regulators closely monitoring money-laundering laws, a number of banks, including Bank of America, have been canceling accounts that money transmitter businesses have with them.

    Many banks are wary of doing business with these companies, from giants such as Western Union to Mom-and-Pop outfits, because they are worried the firms may run afoul of regulators -- getting banks in trouble with their own examiners.

    Money transmitters say they follow money-laundering regulations and shouldn't be losing their accounts. They use the accounts to manage their cash flow and must scramble to find other banks to serve them.

    "I have people telling me they are skittering on the edge of going out of business," said David Landsman, executive director of the National Money Transmitters Association. "It's changing the economics of the business."

    Even as regulators have been increasing scrutiny of banks, they also have discouraged closing accounts with money transmitters. Banks, however, remain worried about taking excessive risks.

    Bank of America has gained attention for ending relationships with the biggest names in the industry, Western Union and MoneyGram International. The bank exited a "significant number of relationships" but has kept some accounts, said bank spokeswoman Shirley Norton.

    "It comes down to the risk environment," she said. "We look at it on a case-by-case basis."

    Wachovia spokeswoman Mary Beth Navarro said the bank has a limited number of relationships with money transmitters. "We maintain strict review policies regarding (money transmitters), both with account opening procedures and ongoing due diligence," she said.

    Many banks are going into the money transfer business themselves, but Landsman said he doesn't believe they're closing accounts for competitive reasons.

    "Banks are being pressured by the federal government into doing so," he said. -- Rick Rothacker
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  3. #3
    Senior Member posylady's Avatar
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    Must be nice to be able to save money to send home to help family. Then get health care and school and everything free. I would love it myself. To bad I have to pay tax's to pay for them!

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    Senior Member curiouspat's Avatar
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    Both efforts receive help from the Mexican government through a program called "Three for One." When immigrants pool money for projects, each dollar is matched by the federal, state and local governments. Last year, the federal government budgeted about $23 million for its share. Earlier this year, Western Union agreed to match some remittances, as well.
    Thanks for the important posts, W.

    The above, certainly proves that the Mexican gov't is encouraging illegal immigration, as if we didn't already know it.
    TIME'S UP!
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    Senior Member steelerbabe's Avatar
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    Since the pro illegal groups are always saying that illegals pay their fair share of taxes, I am amazed they can afford to send so much back home

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    Senior Member JohnB2012's Avatar
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    Of course the banks are making money off of this.

    NC has one of the the highest gas taxs in the nation. They are raising the taxs on cigarettes. Why not have a foreing money transfer tax?

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    Senior Member lsmith1338's Avatar
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    They can send so much back because most are not paying taxes and are getting food stamps, low-cost housing, welfare, etc.
    Freedom isn't free... Don't forget the men who died and gave that right to all of us....
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    Senior Member jp_48504's Avatar
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    I stay current on Americans for Legal Immigration PAC's fight to Secure Our Border and Send Illegals Home via E-mail Alerts (CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP)

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by posylady
    Must be nice to be able to save money to send home to help family. Then get health care and school and everything free. I would love it myself. To bad I have to pay tax's to pay for them!
    Posylady,

    You and me both! I owe taxes and could never afford to send money to family or relatives if they needed it. On top of this, I was recently denied Medicaid and have requested a hearing. I'm also not eligible for SS disability (I checked so didn't apply)

    This all makes me sick!

    Even though my ancestors have been in the USA for centuries, I so far have not mooched off of any fellow taxpapers other than reduced lunches for my children at school. This was in recent years too plus I did work mostly full-time and paid taxes several years before having kids and for a few years after.

    As far as those reduced or in some cases free school lunches and breakfasts too, the forms are printed in both languages and a child nor their parents have to be legal citizens to apply. There are reduced or free Medicaid forms too sent home by the schools for needy children and these are also printed in both languages. My kids are covered under their father's employer's insurance plan and he doesn't have to pay their premiums, the company does that. I haven't had health insurance for more than three years now.

    It further makes me sick when calling a government welfare, job placement or other office such as public schools, having to hear messages repeated in Espanol after the Ingles.
    People who take issue with control of population do not understand that if it is not done in a graceful way, nature will do it in a brutal fashion - Henry Kendall

    End foreign aid until America fixes it's own poverty first - me

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    http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/15378302.htm

    Posted on Mon, Aug. 28, 2006

    Banks creative in courting Latinos
    Firms try offerings from Spanish-speaking staff to free money transfers

    RICK ROTHACKER AND BINYAMIN APPELBAUM
    rrothacker@charlotteobserver.com
    bappelbaum@charlotteobserver.com

    In the pursuit of Hispanic customers, banks have hired bilingual tellers, relaxed lending rules, even distributed financial literacy materials in the style of Spanish soap operas.

    The latest push is to offer low-cost services to transfer money to friends and relatives in foreign countries. Some, including Bank of America Corp. and BB&T Corp., offer transfers for free.

    The only requirement: Senders must open a bank account.

    The arrival of banks in a business long dominated by wire services, such as Western Union, has sharply reduced the cost of sending money. That's because most banks aren't trying to make money off the transactions.

    "Bank of America is not in the business of sending remittances; we are here to establish long-term relationships," said Marcos Rosenberg, Bank of America's executive for Hispanic checking.

    Worldwide remittances to Latin America and the Caribbean rose to over $53.6 billion in 2005, with $20 billion going to Mexico, according to the Inter-American Development Bank. About 75 percent of the total came from the United States. But banks have only a sliver of the market.

    Many Latinos come from countries where banks are distrusted. They prefer the anonymity of wire-service transfers. There are relatively few bank branches in the farming areas and inner cities where immigrants live. The hours may be inconvenient. Communication can be difficult.

    There is also the sticky question of illegal immigrants.

    Bank of America, Wachovia and most other large banks insist they have taken no position on illegal immigration. They say they don't know the immigration status of their customers. The law does not require them to ask. And they note that illegal immigrants form a minority of the nation's Latino population.

    Critics say the banks have taken a position through their actions. They serve illegal immigrants, which makes it easier for those people to remain and prosper in the U.S. Both Bank of America and Wachovia accept as valid ID a Mexican document called a matricula consular, relied on almost exclusively by illegal immigrants.

    "Illegal immigration, combined with unscrupulous companies, is killing this country," says William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration, a Raleigh-based political action committee that advocates more control of immigration.


    Banks began to focus on Hispanics after the 2000 U.S. Census highlighted the community's booming growth, said Gwenn Bézard, research director at Boston-based financial-services consultancy Aite Group LLC.

    In the most recent numbers released by the U.S. Census Bureau, the nation's Hispanic population increased more than 18 percent to 41.9 million from 2000 to 2005, while the non-Hispanic population rose less than 1 percent to 246.5 million.

    The estimated illegal immigration population is 12 million, up from 8.4 million in 2000. The Washington-based Pew Hispanic Center has estimated that 390,000 illegal immigrants live in North Carolina and 55,000 live in South Carolina.

    "There's not much organic growth in mainstream America, if you will," Bézard said. "Mainstream America is banked. The immigrant population is a source of organic growth."

    Most banks, including Charlotte's giants, are trying to serve Hispanics through existing branches. But the boom has also led to the creation of institutions focused primarily on the Hispanic community.

    Here's a look at the effort of Charlotte-area institutions to woo Hispanic customers.

    Bank of America

    Bank of America's branches are concentrated on the coasts and in the Sun Belt, the regions where the Hispanic population is booming.Bank executives say 93 percent of U.S. Hispanics live in their footprint.

    The bank advertises in Spanish and sends employees to ethnic street festivals. It aims for a work force that resembles its customers. It has hired bilingual tellers, and added Hispanics to its board of directors.

    Perhaps the most intentional strategy was the 2005 launch of SafeSend, a program that offers free money transfers to Mexico to anyone who opens a checking account. The bank loses money on each transfer, but it hopes the people who open accounts will eventually take a loan, sign up for a credit card, put money in savings -- and tell friends.

    SafeSend mimics wire services. Money sent before 2 p.m. can be picked up the same day, in cash, at 4,500 locations throughout Mexico. A customer can send up to $1,500 at a time, up to $3,000 in any 30-day period.

    The bank will not disclose exact numbers, but it has signed up about 250,000 people, some of whom already had a Bank of America account. About 70 percent of the people who sign up have transferred money.

    The bank is now considering offering free transfers to other countries, Rosenberg said.

    Wachovia

    Wachovia has stayed relatively quiet as other large banks vied to catch the attention of the Hispanic community. But a recent push into Texas and California is changing that.

    Executives estimate 50 percent of the population growth in the bank's footprint will now come from the Hispanic community. The bank started offering Spanish-language statements about six months ago. About 40,000 customers have signed up.

    Recent ads have featured Hispanic customers, sometimes speaking Spanish.

    The Charlotte company also offers a foreign remittance card that lets customers send money to friends and family in a range of foreign countries. After the first use, customers are charged $10 every time they add money to the card. While a higher fee than some banks charge, it's significantly less than wire services might charge on large transfers.

    Like its competitors, Wachovia has struggled to attract remittance customers. "I don't think any financial institution has cracked that nut yet," said Chris Butler, Hispanic segment director at Wachovia.

    Next up for Wachovia are in-house training programs for branch workers, starting this fall. The sessions include cultural awareness training for nonbilingual workers that includes learning Spanish phrases to help greet customers and introduce them to bilingual tellers. The bank also is teaching bilingual employees more technical financial terms in Spanish.

    BB&T

    Financial education has been a focus of BB&T's efforts to attract Hispanic customers -- a response to the fact that many Hispanics are uncomfortable with banks. Since 2002, the Winston-Salem bank has offered Spanish language audiotapes that educate immigrants about banking and life in the U.S.The tapes use a soap opera format to explain everything from how to obtain a mortgage to information about calling 911 in an emergency, said Teresa Mackey, Hispanic segment manager. The bank issued the ninth installment last month of the 60-minute "BiBi" tapes, named after the main character.

    The bank this year also launched a money transfer service, EasySend, that lets customers send money anywhere in the world free of charge, if they open a bank account.

    The bank has designated 140 branches as Hispanic locations, with bilingual tellers and Spanish language literature. BB&T also is planning on opening smaller branches in strip shopping centers with a Hispanic focus, starting with a test program in Washington.

    These locations may feature employees in less formal dress as a way to make customers comfortable. "For new immigrants it can be really intimidating going into a bank," Mackey said.

    Banco de la Gente

    To attract Hispanic customers, Newton-based Peoples Bancorp of North Carolina Inc. did more than just hire a few bilingual tellers. Two years ago, it created a Hispanic subsidiary and gave the new unit a Spanish name -- Banco de la Gente. The name means "People's Bank" in Spanish.

    Now the bank has branches on Charlotte's South Boulevard and Central Avenue and in Monroe, $28 million in assets and $7 million in deposits. The locations are hard to miss, emblazoned with bold green-and-yellow signs.

    From the beginning, the bank has worked to cater to special needs of Hispanics. For blue-collar workers, the bank is open seven days a week as late as 7:30 p.m. The bank offers check cashing to nonclients, a choice of remittance services for a variety of fees and even accounts that come with disability insurance.

    About 80 percent of the clientele is blue-collar, 15 percent professional and 5 percent businesses with a high concentration of Latino customers. The bank hasn't faced much competition from larger banks, because such banks target a higher-income population, says Manuel Rey, a former Wachovia executive who leads the bank.

    "Banco de la Gente is a grass-roots effort," said Rey, who was born in Texas but spent much of his youth in Mexico City. "It comes from the community."

    He hopes to add a branch in the Triad -- the Greensboro-High Point-Winston-Salem area -- this spring, and later go to Raleigh.

    Latino Community Credit Union

    Latino Community Credit Union was created to serve the immigrant community.

    Founded in 2001, headquartered in Durham, it has five branches, including one off Independence Boulevard in Charlotte. The credit union has 45,000 members, most of them immigrants.

    About 75 percent of members are first-time account holders. Most have only a few hundred dollars in their accounts.

    Credit unions are owned by their members, and run for their benefit. Cooperativa Comunitaria Latina de Credito, as it is known in Spanish, works to help members establish credit so they can borrow money. It graduates people from starter accounts to credit cards to car loans to mortgage loans, boosting them up the ladder.

    This summer, LCCU became the first credit union in the country to use a new low-cost remittance system operated by the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Bank of Mexico. The service, Directo a Mexico, lets account holders send remittances for a flat fee of $3, provided the recipient also opens an account with a Mexican financial institution.

    The credit union has become one of the largest users of the program. -- Staff Writer Franco Ordońez contributed.
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