Thread: A little-known aspect of deportations: foreclosures

A little-known aspect of deportations: foreclosures

By Reema Khrais August 10, 2017 | 1:20 PM


Immigrant services staffer Lorely Peche (C), speaks with immigrant parents fearing deportation on March 25, 2017 in Stamford, Connecticut. - John Moore/Getty Images

President Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to ramp up immigration enforcement.

From February through June, an average of 13,085 undocumented immigrants were arrested each month, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That compares to an average of 9,134 arrests per month during the last three months of 2016.

The economic ripple effects of arrests – and eventual deportations – are wide-ranging. But one little noticed consequence is their effect on the housing market.

Research shows that deportations lead to higher rates of foreclosure among Latino communities. That’s because the loss of an income for families – especially if it is the breadwinner who is detained – can make it harder for remaining family members to make mortgage payments.

That reality is what spurred Maria, an undocumented immigrant who runs a Quinceañera shop in Los Angeles, to recently transfer the title of her house to her 22-year-old daughter, a U.S. citizen.

“I refinanced it and took the money because if they come up and deport us, we have that money put away,” Maria said in Spanish.

“It’s with my daughter.”

Maria, who didn’t want her last name used to protect her safety, has owned a home in California for more than 20 years.

She and her husband scraped together $2,000 for the down payment and have since remodeled it over the years. The thought of losing the house because of a deportation, she said, is terrifying.

“Because everything we made, all that we built could fall apart at any moment,” she said.

Maria is among the 31 percent of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. who own a home, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

Without social security numbers, many undocumented immigrants are able to take out loans by using their Taxpayer Identification Number.

The link between deportations and foreclosures is something Jacob Rugh, an assistant professor of sociology at Brigham Young University, has studied extensively.

He found that deportations during the Great Recession, which reached record levels, exacerbated foreclosures among Latinos.

Rugh, along with Matthew Hall of Cornell University, looked at data from 2005 to 2012, focusing on counties that collaborated with Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the 287 (g) program.

That’s the program that allows local law enforcement to help arrest and detain people suspected of violating immigration law.

They found that in 42 counties, foreclosure rates among Latino households were nearly 70 percent higher than in otherwise similar counties.

That’s because while many undocumented immigrants are homeowners, many live – and contribute income — to multi-generational households owned by Latinos who are here legally.

“Even in expensive markets, you could see that immigrants were pooling their resources across legal statuses, across families, to make the American dream possible,” Rugh explained.

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Rugh said deportations act like other triggers for foreclosure that are well-known: “It’s as though someone was divorced or became ill,” he explained.

Most undocumented immigrants who are deported are Latino men with jobs. So, for families that hold the bulk of their wealth in a home, that loss of an income can mean losing money for college or medical bills.

“It has this sort of domino effect on the rest of the community and on the economy, frankly,” said Marisa Calderon, executive director of the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals.

Calderon said a huge spike in deportations could have an impact on the housing market as Hispanics are expected to drive home demand over the next decade.

“People don’t come to this country dreaming to be renters, they want to be able to have a little place to call their own,” she said.

That’s what Claudia, who’s undocumented, wanted. Her parents brought her to Wichita, Kansas from Mexico when she was a young girl. That’s where she eventually fell in love with her boyfriend, got married and bought her first home.

“I wanted to have something more stable for my son. Like a lot of my friends, they still have their memories or like their pictures, and I didn’t have that,” she said.

Claudia was on her way to building that stability when, in 2005, her husband, who’s also undocumented, was detained. He lost his painting business. The court fees and bills started piling up.

“We were really trying to save the home,” she said.

But they couldn’t make the mortgage payments. They lost their home. Eventually Claudia’s husband was deported. He is now back in the U.S. and both Claudia and her husband are seeing political asylum.

But instead of the two-bedroom home with the big backyard, they’re renting in the same Wichita apartment complex they were in when they first got married.

“It was really hard for me last year when I turned 40,” she said. “It was like, I cannot believe I’ve been working hard my whole life, had dreams, and here I am at 40, starting all over again.”

She said she wonders where they’d be if they hadn’t lost their house.

https://www.marketplace.org/2017/08/...s-foreclosures

Why are banks aiding and abetting ILLEGAL aliens and giving them home loans?

This needs to stop!

Judge Rules That Banks MUST Give Loans To DREAMers Here Illegally

Judicial activists strike again!

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

ByELLIOTT HAMILTON@ElliottRHams
August 8, 2017 12k views

In another blow to Americans' sovereignty, U.S. District Court Judge Maxine Chesney refused to dismiss a lawsuit that argued Wells Fargo violated federal law by denying loans to illegal immigrants who came to the United States as children. Judge Chesney, a Bill Clinton appointee, argued that the bank violated California civil rights law as well as federal laws prohibiting the denial of loans based on citizenship status.

Both the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund represented more than 750,000 immigrants who came to the United States before age 16 who received protections from President Obama's unconstitutional Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. The program intended to protect those who were registered for deportation despite their unlawful standing in the United States.

Wells Fargo, however, argued that its denial of bank loans to illegal immigrants did not violate the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (15 U.S.C. § 1691) since the act does not mention anything about citizenship.

Here is what the law explicitly states:

(a) Activities constituting discrimination: It shall be unlawful for any creditor to discriminate against any applicant, with respect to any aspect of a credit transaction—
(1) on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex or marital status, or age (provided the applicant has the capacity to contract);
(2) because all or part of the applicant’s income derives from any public assistance program; or
(3) because the applicant has in good faith exercised any right under this chapter.
(b) Activities not constituting discrimination: It shall not constitute discrimination for purposes of this subchapter for a creditor—
(1) to make an inquiry of marital status if such inquiry is for the purpose of ascertaining the creditor’s rights and remedies applicable to the particular extension of credit and not to discriminate in a determination of credit-worthiness;
(2) to make an inquiry of the applicant’s age or of whether the applicant’s income derives from any public assistance program if such inquiry is for the purpose of determining the amount and probable continuance of income levels, credit history, or other pertinent element of credit-worthiness as provided in regulations of the Bureau;
(3) to use any empirically derived credit system which considers age if such system is demonstrably and statistically sound in accordance with regulations of the Bureau, except that in the operation of such system the age of an elderly applicant may not be assigned a negative factor or value;
(4) to make an inquiry or to consider the age of an elderly applicant when the age of such applicant is to be used by the creditor in the extension of credit in favor of such applicant; or
(5) to make an inquiry under section 1691(c)(2) of this title, in accordance with the requirements of that section.

Nowhere in either § 1691(a) or 1691(b) does it suggest that discriminating over immigration status is prohibited. However, Judge Chesney argued that a California law that requires businesses to grant equal contract rights to all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States includes individuals including those who are here illegally. Furthermore, Judge Chesney also argued that federal law did not supersede the state's civil rights laws, thus justifying her refusal to dismiss the lawsuit.

This is ridiculous. Federalism dictates that federal law trumps state law. Nothing in the Constitution states that federal law should be held in lower regard based on the feelings of anyone, including the judicial activists occupying federal courtrooms. Our sovereignty and our borders remain jeopardized as long as the federal courts continue to virtue-signal for those who entered the country illegally. The Left seems bent on ensuring that those who received executive amnesty remain protected, even if the current mechanism to do so was unconstitutional. Even in Trump's America, much needs to be done to repair the Left's damage regarding immigration.

http://www.dailywire.com/news/19491/...ton#exit-modal

Banks help illegal immigrants own their own home - Aug. 8, 2005


Aug 8, 2005 - Banks are seeing an untapped resource in providing home loans to ... about the message these home loans send to illegal immigrants: break ...



Big Banks' Loan Push: Illegal Immigrants - WSJ - Wall Street Journal


May 3, 2007 - The nation's big banks, including J.P. Morgan, Citigroup and Wells Fargo, are pitching mortgages to illegal immigrants. . .

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Deportations could hit real estate markets in state, nation

“It was really hard for me last year when I turned 40,” she said. “It was like, I cannot believe I’ve been working hard my whole life, had dreams, and here I am at 40, starting all over again.”

Welcome to America many citizens have lost their homes and saving also. Many because they were pushed out of the job market because of the flood of illegals and cheap labor. Many citizens in their 40's up into retirement age are seldom hired because of the cost of higher healthcare thanks in part to the uninsured coming here from other countries and getting free healthcare. Nothing is free someone is paying. Savings? most legal citizens don't have any saving left and retirement savings is a dream. Welcome our world the world you helped create.

Originally Posted by Beezer

Why are banks aiding and abetting ILLEGAL aliens and giving them home loans?

This needs to stop!

Double standards!

Banks would not give me a mortgage using my business
ITN (tax payer identification number).

US citizens are required to have a ss#, a steady job and on the books proof of income and 3 years of tax filings.

So a bank can't decide not to give a home loan to someone who is here illegally, according to the judge.

Again, anyone can file a lawsuit for any reason and a judge can make law. It's really that simple.

I know a lot of people in a small town that lost their jobs to illegals. Many lost their homes, and had to move elsewhere to look for work.

This little town was about 50/50 black/white. It is now 38.3% white, 33.7 Hispanic, and 25.4% black. The blacks were the worst impacted. It is really sad.

This was a little town that was very unique.
It was a great place to raise children. There was a real sense of community.

That's gone -

If this woman has a 22 year old daughter, I doubt that she is a Dreamer... Illegals contributed to the housing crash in a big way and many used fraud to obtain the loans. Are we there again?

Calling the Old Media: Five Million Illegals Have Illegal Mortgages in U.S.A.!

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ByWarner Todd Huston |
October 9, 2008 11:42 AM EDT

A single report by KFYI radio of Phoenix, Arizona highlights a shocking claim made by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). HUD says that five million illegal aliens hold illegal mortgages. This is just one more example of the lax lending laws put into place by Democrats like Barney Frank that have contributed to this economic crisis. One would think this would be big news. But, so far we have only this one report to cover it.

There have been earlier stories of home flipping schemes that made liberal use of illegal aliens as straw buyers and the FBI has followed numerous cases to prosecution and conviction. But the Old Media have not done much with this story.

KFYI reports that these fraudulent straw purchases of mortgages by illegal aliens has affected every state in the union.

One illegal alien was arrested this year in Tucson after allegedly using a stolen social security number to buy two homes and rack up over $780,000 in bad debt.
Some five million fraudulent home mortgages are in the hands of illegal aliens, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

It's not known how many of those have contributed to the subprime housing mortgage meltdown, but it has affected every state, including Arizona.

The problem began years ago when banks were forced to give mortgages without confirming social security numbers or borrower identification. As a result, illegal immigrants were able to obtain home mortgages which they could not afford.

Lax immigration laws have also helped make this crime easy to perpetrate.

In 1965 a Democrat Controlled Congress under President Lyndon Johnson passed the concept of "chain" immigration into law. A later commission named the Hesburgh Commission convened during Ronald Reagan's first term, found that this concept statistically allowed each single immigrant to bring into this country 84 of his family members. Of course, all these people have to live somewhere making such fraudulent mortgages quite attractive.

What illegal struggling to survive is going to pass up a free house that he can move into without having to present any identification, proof of employment, financial history or even a down payment?

This story should be in every paper and on every TV news cast. Yet it isn't. I'll leave the guessing as to why with you, gentle reader.

Notice: the link to the story above is a Google cached page link because KFYI has pulled down their report.

** UPDATE**

I found why KFYI pulled the original piece. It turns out that they mistook the opinion of a HUD official as an official HUD announcement. KFYI stands by the essence of their original report, but had to clarify that their source was talking on his own and not as an official of HUD.

HUD Mum on Illegal Mortgages

A retired agent from Immigration and Customs Enforcement says that five million illegal immigrants nationwide may hold home mortgages.

Earlier this week, we posted a story that said figures from the Department of Housing and Urban Development showed that home mortgages were held by 5 million illegal immigrants and that this may have contributed, in part, to the housing crisis that has led to the recent failure in the financial markets.

Our source for that story, a retired agent from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, stands by those numbers.

A person from Housing and Urban Development contacted KFYI to tell us the number was inaccurate, that there were only 2.3 million mortgages held by immigrants, so there was no way that 5 million illegals could have mortgages.

When asked what HUD says the correct number is, the person (who identified himself only as 'Brian' and who refused to give his last name), either would not or could not say how many illegal immigrants hold mortgages. He also said there was "no way" HUD would grant an interview on the subject.

https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb...s-have-illegal