In response to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) newly published guidance to lenders that they should consider the immigration status of borrowers in credit decisions, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition’s (NCRC) President and CEO Jesse Van Tol issued the following statement:
“Credit decisions should be based on a borrower’s actual ability to repay, not hypotheticals based on the borrower’s immigration status. Access to credit expands opportunity for families, entrepreneurs and communities. Policies that encourage lenders to consider immigration status risk excluding qualified borrowers from the financial mainstream.
“The hypocrisy of discouraging lending to hard-working immigrants who pay taxes, while claiming that banks improperly ‘debanked’ some wealthy people based on their highly risky, often international, crypto transactions should be lost on no one. Favoring one while denigrating the other makes clear that this policy is not about risk: it’s about picking winners and losers.”
