B of A: Bank of Aliens

Here are some quotes from LATimes.com:

Bank of America said Tuesday that it was issuing credit cards to Spanish-speaking immigrants who may not have Social Security numbers, triggering complaints that the nation's largest retail bank is tacitly endorsing illegal immigration.

The bank described the program as a pilot, limited for now to 51 branches in Los Angeles County, and said it could go national this year.

...

Despite Bank of America's compelling interest in Latino markets, it was arch-rival Wells Fargo that kicked off the competition in 2001, when it became the first U.S. bank to accept identification cards from Mexican consulates to open an account.

Since then, Wells has opened more than 1 million accounts for Mexicans using the consular card. It also accepts Guatemalan, Argentine and Colombian identity cards. The assumption is that most immigrants using the cards to identify themselves are here illegally, Wells Fargo spokeswoman Trigg said, but the bank doesn't ask.

This is an area where my fellow Libertarians may disagree with me, but I'm against making it easier for people to conduct business in this country when they can't produce identification issued by this country. In a Utopian world, all countries should be equally great and people should be free to roam across borders and conduct their business however they please without having to present papers to every authority and business that demands them. In the real world, however, the United States of America is one of the best places on earth to live and illegal aliens are coming here because their native countries don't offer them a decent quality of life. Sadly, we can't afford to welcome hordes of impoverished people who break our laws to get here, consume more tax based resources than they contribute and who send much of their income back to a foreign nation rather use it to support our national economy.

If we were a truly Libertarian society where everyone was expected to fend for themselves, I wouldn't mind it as much. Instead, we have tax funded schools that can't turn away students, hospitals that are required to treat people even if they can't afford the treatment, and various other programs that are being completely overwhelmed by illegal immigrants. We have a very different country today than we did back when we used immigrant labor to create our infrastructure and build our fledgling nation without offering much in the way of tax based social, educational and medical services.

I understand that banks are businesses and have a duty to seek out customers and increase profits, but this method of doing so is distasteful to me. While I am not calling for legislation to stop this, I will do my best to restrict my banking business to companies that do not go out of their way to encourage illegal immigration. Apparently The Freeholder feels even stronger about this than I, as he calls it a "national disaster in-the-making".

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