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By Taft Wireback
Staff Writer
Greensboro News and Record

A North Carolina group against illegal immigration is leading a boycott of Bank of America for testing a credit-card program allegedly catering to people living unlawfully in this country.

The Raleigh-based political action committee, Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, is urging Bank of America customers who are opposed to illegal immigration to sever their financial ties with the banking behemoth based in Charlotte.

ALIPAC says it has enlisted about 100 like-minded groups and attracted more than 15,000 signatures on a petition protesting the bank's pilot program in Los Angeles and all companies that help people break immigration laws.

"If what they're doing isn't illegal, then it should be," said William Gheen, president of the group. "We are fed up with these large, multinational banks and corporations. They have two standards: one for Americans, one for illegal aliens."

At issue is a program that Bank of America is testing in Southern California, offering provisional credit cards to people who don't have any credit history and who might also lack a Social Security number.

As substitute identification, the bank will accept the "matricula consular," a document issued by Mexican consulates to its citizens who live outside Mexico.

"The matricula consular card has received its share of criticism, much of it because it allows for the possibility that illegal immigrants may use it to participate in our financial systems," BOA Chairman Kenneth D. Lewis acknowledged in an article he wrote in The Wall Street Journal last week.

The bank says its target audience is not illegal immigrants, but people who have limited or no credit history. In fact, most applicants in the Los Angeles pilot do have Social Security numbers, Lewis said.

But he said the Mexican card was sanctioned as a suitable document in the USA Patriot Act for use in helping the federal government enforce laws against money laundering and terrorist financing.

Gheen said that his group believes the bank's true motive is corporate greed. The American taxpayer will foot the bill for illegal immigrants who default on the loans, through such programs as federal bank insurance, he said.

"They're acting like it's Bank of America that controls our country's destiny instead of we, the people," said Gheen, who has been interviewed about the boycott in recent days on several nationally televised new shows.

Bank of America has said it is test-marketing the new credit cards with Spanish-speaking customers in Los Angeles County.

To qualify for the cards, the applicant must be a Bank of America customer who has maintained a checking account for several months with no overdrafts. The cards carry a high interest rate and payment of an advance security deposit.

If the program does well in Los Angeles, the bank has said it will be rolled out nationwide.

Gheen said the boycott is aimed primarily at Bank of America, but groups supporting it also are gathering information about other financial institutions that accept the matricula card.

The boycott's Web site notes, for example, that BB&T and Wachovia banks honor the matricula.

But spokesmen for both banks said that they do not accept it as valid identification for credit transactions, only for people wanting to open checking and savings accounts or certificates of deposit.

Bank of America spokeswoman Betsy Weinberger said it had been unaffected by the boycott: "We're not seeing any abnormal business activity because of this issue."