American Companies Embrace 11 Million Illegals
Jim Meyers, NewsMax.com
Thursday, July 14, 2005
American companies are bending over backwards to cater to a booming new market – illegal aliens.

Latin American consulates can now issue an identification card – called a matricula consular in the case of Mexico – to nationals who reside illegally in the U.S.
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Armed with these IDs, the undocumented immigrants can open bank accounts and apply for credit cards and car loans.
Then they can apply to the IRS for an individual tax identification number (ITIN), allowing them to pay taxes like any U.S. citizen – and even get a home mortgage.

Companies are rushing in to serve this previously untapped market.

Among them:


Wells Fargo & Co. has more than half a million matricula accounts - most of them, the company acknowledges, opened by undocumented aliens.
In all, more than 400 banks, thrifts and credit unions, including Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup, now accept a matricula as a valid ID.
Blue Cross of California sells health insurance to matricula holders from desks set up inside Mexican and Guatemalan consular offices in the U.S.
Sprint and Verizon both offer cell phone service to matricula holders.
Home mortgages taken out by illegal aliens could be worth up to $60 billion over the next five years, Business Week reports.
Kraft Foods Inc. provides workbooks at local English as a second language classes that include coupons for Kraft products, such as Capri Sun drinks.
The Los Angeles department store chain La Curacao offers credit cards to undocumented Latino immigrants with a matricula and has issued nearly 1 million so far.
The number of illegal immigrants in the U.S. has been estimated at from 11 million to as many as 20 million, and their growing numbers put downward pressure on American wages and strain schools, hospitals and other public services.

And while it may be against the law for these immigrants to be in the country or for an employer to hire them, there's nothing illegal about selling to them.

So companies are beginning to see this fast-growing population as "an untapped engine for growth," according to Business Week.

"But by finding ways to treat illegals like any other consumers, companies are in effect legalizing – and legitimizing – millions of people who technically have no right to be in the U.S."

Meanwhile, the federal government has virtually given up enforcing the law forbidding the employment of illegal aliens and instead has focused on potential terrorists who might try to enter the country.

Last year the U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement agency brought just three actions against companies for hiring undocumented aliens. But not everyone is thrilled about the buying power of the illegals. An Alabama bank that began offering mortgages to applicants with an ITIN immediately received hostile phone calls and e-mails, with at least one calling the bank's action "traitorous."

And before companies get too excited about the long-term prospects of reaping big rewards from the illegals, they might consider this: A survey by the Mexican Cement company Cemex found that 58 percent of Mexican migrants to the U.S. plan to build a home of their own – in Mexico.




Editor's note: