Thread: Stepping out from the shadows

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Stepping out from the shadows
Illegal immigrants use matricula cards to gain stability

By Zeke Barlow, zbarlow@VenturaCountyStar.com
September 11, 2006

Moments after Jorge Perez Lopez stepped out of Oxnard's Mexican Consulate with his freshly minted matricula identification card, he plopped it down at a Bank of America booth set up outside the building and got an account and a stack of new checks.

Lopez was also planning to use his card to get a cell phone and for any other times that he needed identification. The 20-year-old illegal immigrant from Santa Maria doesn't want to work in restaurants the rest of his life and figured that the matricula card is one of many steps in lifting himself up.

If he wanted, he could also use the ID to get a credit card, car and health insurance. He could get a tax identification number, which he could then use to get a loan for a home.

While illegal immigrants often live difficult lives in the shadows, businesses are increasingly offering services to the country's newest residents, from lines of credit on bedroom sets to mortgages for a place to put that furniture.

With an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the country and more coming daily, businesses stand to make a hefty profit by targeting the segment of the population previously served mainly by mom-and-pop operations. But by providing and accepting the cards, many say the United States is making life too inviting and encouraging immigrants to come to the country illegally.

Many companies use the matricula cards as a basis for establishing credit. Mexican citizens can get a card at the Oxnard Consulate by presenting a valid Mexican ID, such as a driver's license or voter registration card. Dozens of fake identifications are collected daily by the consulate.

Mexican consulates across the globe have been issuing the cards since 1870 as a means of identification for the country's citizens living abroad. But it is only in the past decade that major businesses and corporations have been accepting the card as the identification needed to provide services.

Many believed to be illegal

The consulate does not ask about legal status, although Deputy Consul General Eduardo Giles suspects that the majority are in the U.S. illegally.

Every weekday, people start lining up as early as 5 a.m. to be one of the roughly 200 who get an ID daily. Anywhere from 25,000 to 29,000 are issued annually, Giles said. There was a spike of applicants in 2002 when consulates started issuing more secure cards that are valid for five years. Across the state, the number of matricula cards issued has decreased since then.

Although there are no measurements of the buying power of illegal immigrants, a 2005 study by the University of Georgia found that by 2009, Hispanics will account for 9 percent of all U.S. buying power, or about $992 billion — up from 5.2 percent in 1990. It is the largest increase of any minority. The large rise is a result of a population jump because of immigration and births, the study says.

Those in the anti-illegal-immigration camp said businesses that directly or indirectly target undocumented workers and the matricula cards they use are compromising the stability of the United States and luring people to come here illegally.

"If you have no governmental right to be here, you shouldn't have a right to own a car, buy a home or go to college," said Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Simi Valley, who calls catering to illegal immigrants a "welcome mat." By "providing incentives, the problem is going to go from very bad to much worse," he said.

Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said that while it's doubtful anyone would come to the United States just because he or she could open a bank account here, any services that make their lives easier only make people want to stay. He said it's wrong for businesses to capitalize on the situation.

"The fact that someone can make a buck off this doesn't mean they should," he said. But David Rodriguez, national vice president of the Far West region of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said illegal immigrants are a larger part of the economic fabric of America.

"You have businessmen and stockholders demanding that American businesses reach out to the new market, and you can't say these are welcome mats," he said. "They are a necessary part of a free economy."

Wells Fargo, the first bank to accept the matricula card, did so because police were complaining about immigrants being robbed. Thieves knew that immigrants had nowhere to keep their cash, spokeswoman Mary Trigg said.

Since they started the program in 2001, more than 750,000 accounts have been opened using the matricula card. Many banks followed suit and now have booths outside consular offices to sign up new customers.

Similar cards issued from the consulates of Argentina, Colombia and Guatemala are now being accepted, she said.

In December, Wells Fargo announced a pilot program in Los Angeles and Orange counties called Celebrate Homes, which allows illegal immigrants to qualify for a $600,000 mortgage. To be eligible, participants have to have an account with the bank for at least six months and an individual tax identification number, which the IRS issues to people who don't qualify for Social Security numbers. The IRS does not inquire about legal status when people apply.

Although Wells Fargo has been the subject of intense protests by anti-illegal-immigration advocates, Trigg said the bank does not specifically cater to illegal immigrants.

"Wells Fargo believes that we have a responsibility to serve all segments of the communities in a fair manner," Trigg said. "We don't question any of our customers on their legal status; it's not our business."

But Christopher Thornberg, an economist with Beacon Economics, said that once companies start marketing in Spanish, they are, by default, marketing to illegal immigrants, too.

Big companies want part of pie

"Businesses don't say, ¿I'm targeting illegal immigrants,' but there are a growing number of businesses that will accept the matricula cards as a valid form of identification, and that is saying that, ¿We are allowing illegal immigrants to do business here,'" he said.

For years, small businesses were the only ones catering to illegal immigrants, but now, Thornberg said, big companies want a piece of the pie.

"It's really over the last five to 10 years that the big players entered the market," he said.

But just because companies are trying to make a few bucks doesn't make the life of an illegal immigrant any easier, Rodriguez said.

"These folks still live undercover; they live under the surface and are not able to participate in American life," he said.

The advantage of illegal immigrants having cell phones or mortgages is that they become entrenched in their community and are more likely to try to become citizens, he said.

which allows illegal immigrants to qualify for a $600,000 mortgage

Those must be for the illegal drug smugglers or for about 20 people living in the same house.