Thread: Years of Extending Loans To Illegal Aliens Have Contributed

Years of Extending Loans To Illegal Aliens Have Contributed To Economic Crisis...Congress Silent!
By Dave Gibson
October 3, 2008

In 2006, Bank of America quietly began offering credit cards to illegal aliens without Social Security numbers in five Los Angeles branches. By 2007, they expanded the program to 51 L.A. branches.

Los Angeles has the largest number of Mexican nationals of any U.S. city, and also has designated itself as a so-called ‘Sanctuary City’ for illegal aliens. While only those in the L.A. area could initially take advantage of the pilot program, Bank of America officials planned to make the practice available nationwide.

All of my inquiries to Bank of America on this issue have been ignored and I have not been able to determine if they have expanded this program outside of Los Angeles. BofA has become quite tight-lipped after receiving enormous criticism over this practice which many believe have helped to entice illegal aliens to remain in this country.

While offering credit cards to people who are here illegally and lack Social Security numbers, Bank of America has been offering checking accounts and even mortgages to illegal aliens for years. Lending giants Wells Fargo and Citibank are among those who have also extended home loans to illegal aliens.

In 2005, President of Immigration Matters Marti Dinerstein, angry over this practice, told CNN: “It’s institutionalizing illegality. Now there’s no distinction being made between the people that follow all the rules and those who break our laws by entering the country or overstaying their visas.â€

Los Angeles has the largest number of Mexican nationals of any U.S. city, and also has designated itself as a so-called ‘Sanctuary City’ for illegal aliens.

It's also no coincidence that Arnold is asking the U.S. Government for a 7 billion dollar bailout for California.

WaMu needs to be added to that list.

They're the ones that loaned an illegal alien (who only had a 6th grade education and doesn't speak English) $615,000 -- THE WHOLE COST OF THE HOUSE, AKA NO DOWN PAYMENT. Yup, this illegal is a gardener making $9/hour. Guess what the monthly mortgage is? $4800. DUH, of course the home is in foreclosure now.

I wonder who the idiot underwriter of this loan was and what he was smoking when he approved this loan.

AND NOW WE HAVE TO PAY FOR THIS???

Originally Posted by MW

Los Angeles has the largest number of Mexican nationals of any U.S. city, and also has designated itself as a so-called ‘Sanctuary City’ for illegal aliens.

It's also no coincidence that Arnold is asking the U.S. Government for a 7 billion dollar bailout for California.

Oh, MW, the story I posted above, yup, this was in Santa Ana, CALIFORNIA.

Foreclosures: Did God Want You to Get That Mortgage?

By David Van Biema Friday, Oct. 03, 2008Images.com / Corbis

Has the so-called Prosperity Gospel turned its followers into some of the most willing participants — and hence, victims — of the current financial crisis? That's what a scholar of the fast-growing brand of pentecostal Christianity believes. While researching a book on black televangelism, says Jonathan Walton, a religion professor at the University of California Riverside, he realized that Prosperity's central promise — that God would "make a way" for poor people to enjoy the better things in life — had developed an additional, toxic expression during sub-prime boom. Walton says that this encouraged congregants who got dicey mortgages to believe "God caused the bank to ignore my credit score and blessed me with my first house." The results, he says, "were disastrous, because they pretty much turned parishioners into prey for greedy brokers."

Others think he may be right. Says Anthea Butler, an expert in pentecostalism at the University of Rochester in New York state, "The pastor's not gonna say 'go down to Wachovia and get a loan' but I have heard, 'even if you have a poor credit rating God can still bless you — if you put some faith out there [that is, make a big donation to the church], you'll get that house, or that car or that apartment.'" Adds J. Lee Grady, editor of the magazine Charisma, "It definitely goes on, that a preacher might say, 'if you give this offering, God will give you a house. And if they did get the house, people did think that it was an answer to prayer, when in fact it was really bad banking policy." If so, the situation offers a look at how an native-born faith built partially on American econoic optimism entered into a toxic symbiosis with a pathological market.

Although a type of Pentecostalism, Prosperity theology adds a distinctive layer of supernatural positive thinking. Adherents will reap rewards if they prove their faith to God by contributing heavily to their churches, remaining mentally and verbally upbeat, and concentrating on divine promises of worldly bounty supposedly strewn throughout the bible. Critics call it a thinly disguised pastor-enrichment scam. Other experts, like Walton, note that for all its faults, it can empower people who have been taught to see themselves as financially or even culturally useless to feel they are "worthy of having more and doing more and being more." In some cases the philosophy has matured with its practitioners, encouraging good financial habits and entrepreneurship.

But Walton suggests that a decade's worth of ever-easier credit acted like drug in Prosperity's bloodstream. "The economic boom 90's and financial over-extensions of the new millennium contributed to the success of the prosperity message," he wrote recently. And not positively. "Narratives of how 'God blessed me with my first house despite my credit' were common. Sermons declaring 'it's your season to overflow' supplanted messages of economic sobriety," and "little attention was paid to.. the dangers of using one's home equity as an ATM to subsidize cars, clothes and vacations."

With the bubble burst, Walton and Butler assume that prosperity congregants have taken a disproportionate hit, and are curious as to how their churches will respond. Butler thinks that some of the flashier ministries will shrink along with their congregants' fortunes. Says Walton, "You would think that the current economic conditions would undercut their theology." But he predicts they will perservere, since God's earthly largesse is just as attractive when one is behind the economic eight ball.

A recently posted testimony by a congregant at the Brownsville Assembly of God near Pensacola, Fla., seems to confirm his intuition. Brownsville is not even a classic Prosperity congregation — it relies more on the anointing of its pastors than on scriptural promises of God. But the believer's note to his minister illustrates how magical thinking can prevail even after the mortgage blade has dropped. "Last Sunday," it read, "You said if anyone needed a miracle to come up. So I did. I was receiving foreclosure papers, so I asked you to anoint a picture of my home and you did and your wife joined with you in prayer as I cried. I went home feeling something good was going to happen. On Friday the 5th of September I got a phone call from my mortgage company and they came up with a new payment for the next 3 months of only $200. My mortgage is usually $1020. Praise God for his Mercy & Grace."

And pray that the credit market doesn't tighten any further.

http://www.time.com/time/business/artic ... ml?cnn=yes

This article needs to go out in our email addresses.

Given the very transient nature of illegal aliens, it is incredibly irresponsible to extend loans to them. Combined with the fact that these people have no Social Security numbers, nor any documentation to prove who they are or where they go, it is very easy to simply walk away from a home which they can no longer afford.

Therein lies the heart of the matter! When things get bad for the illegal, they simply walk away, leaving the American citizens to clean up the mess. Who's to say that same illegal cannot go to the next bank, with a different fradulent identification, ( or no identifiication at all) and start all over with another bank, getting another loan? How many times has that happened?

It's pure insanity brought about by sheer greed! Once again, the hard working tax paying American gets screwed, while our leaders demand we bail out these financial institutions who engaged in this despicable pratice! Ironically, the illegal invader suffers absolutely no hardship whatsoever! We don't even know who they are!!

Thank you for bringing this back up for our attention Gogo.

Added to Homepage:
http://www.alipac.us/article-3635--0-0.html

Originally Posted by jean

Thank you for bringing this back up for our attention Gogo.

Added to Homepage:
http://www.alipac.us/article-3635--0-0.html

You're welcome. I was catching up on mail after my trip and I was reading this and thinking finally someone is saying this. I sent it out to Glenn Beck, Rush, Hannity, O'Reilly, oh I forgot Cavuto. Got to get it out to him and of course my email address book.

Are we going here again?