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 News from Around the Americas | March 2007 
Show Mexican ID, Open an Account
 Nicole Garrison-Sprenger - Pioneer Press
| | Wells Fargo employee Ivan Lopez, center, shakes hands with Leandro Perez after he and his friend Rigoberta Sosa, left, signed up for a checking account at the Mexican Consulate in St. Paul on Feb. 21. (Ben Garvin/Pioneer Press) |
Maria Garcia has done a lot of banking with Wells Fargo since coming to the Twin Cities from Mexico more than a decade ago.
She holds checking and savings accounts at the bank and often uses Wells Fargo's money transfer services to send cash to her parents and children still living south of the border.
"Having this bank account is just fabulous," she said.
Though Garcia, who lives in Minneapolis, describes herself as a permanent legal resident, she is not a U.S. citizen and does not have a Social Security number. She used a Matricula Consular identification card issued by the Mexican government to open her bank accounts.
But that card and the availability of financial services to non-U.S. citizens have come under fire recently, creating a clash between advocates of immigration reform and banks, which regard immigrants as an important source of new business.
A bill introduced earlier this month by U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., would require U.S. financial institutions to accept only U.S.-issued identification or foreign-issued passports, effectively banning the acceptance of Matricula cards. The American Bankers Association issued a statement opposing the bill.
When Bank of America said in February it was issuing credit cards to customers without Social Security numbers, the Charlotte, N.C.-based bank faced a firestorm of criticism, including some from a Minnesota group.
"This program rewards lawbreakers who have broken our immigration laws and, in addition, threatens our homeland security through possible use by terrorists," said Ruthie Hendrycks, founder of Hanska, Minn.-based Minnesotans Seeking Immigration Reform, which has lobbied for restrictions similar to those in Blackburn's bill.
Bankers say that, by accepting Matricula cards, they aren't taking sides in the immigration debate but are merely responding to changing demographics.
"We don't question the legal or immigration status of any of our customers or potential customers," said Kelly Gosz, a Wells Fargo community banking president from Minneapolis.
"We are in 24 states and, by tradition and by mandate, banks are all part of the community," said Christine Hobrough, regional market manager for U.S. Bank in the Twin Cities. "This is a way for us to serve a growing segment of our community."
MATRICULA CONSULAR
The Matricula Consular is an identification card issued by the Mexican government to any Mexican national living abroad. Other countries issue similar forms of identification.
More than 90 U.S. banks accept the Matricula card for the purpose of opening bank accounts. The law doesn't require banks to ask whether an account applicant is a U.S. citizen, and the Matricula card doesn't mention the holder's immigration status in the United States or any other country. It simply reveals the person's identity, place of residence and place of birth.
People who hold Matricula cards aren't necessarily illegal immigrants.
"I have diplomatic status in the U.S. and I have my Matricula Consular," said Nathan Wolf, head of the Mexican consulate in St. Paul. "There is no relation between having the Matricula Consular and being documented or undocumented."
Matricula cardholders may be refugees or permanent residents, such as Garcia. Some of them, like Garcia, have signed up for individual tax identification numbers from the Internal Revenue Service so they can pay taxes.
In 2005, there were between 75,000 and 100,000 illegal immigrants living in Minnesota, a Pew study found. There were roughly 11.1 million illegal migrants in the United States. The U.S. census estimated Minnesota's foreign-born population — which includes naturalized U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, temporary migrants and refugees — at 300,000 in 2003.
The Pew Hispanic Center in Washington, D.C., surveyed Mexican citizens in line for their consular ID cards in seven U.S. cities in 2004 and 2005 and found 53 percent of the applicants said they had no U.S. government-issued ID.
A GROWING MARKET
Minnesota's two biggest banks, Minneapolis-based U.S. Bank and San Francisco-based Wells Fargo are both big players in the fast-growing market for Matricula card holders.
Both began accepting Matricula cards in 2001. Since then, more than 750,000 people nationally have opened Wells Fargo accounts using Matricula cards, up from 400,000 two years ago. Besides Mexico's Matricula Consular, Wells Fargo accepts similar cards from Guatemala, Argentina and Colombia.
U.S. Bank didn't provide figures on its Matricula accounts. But before the Mexican consulate opened an office in St. Paul, officials said U.S. Bank opened more than 600 checking accounts during four days in August 2004 when the consulate was in town granting Matricula cards to Mexican nationals living in the area.
Big banks aren't the only ones going after such customers. St. Paul-based BankCherokee started accepting Matricula cards three or four years ago.
"We consider ourselves players at the community banking level in banking Latinos," said Bill Patient, compliance and Community Reinvestment Act officer at BankCherokee. "It's clearly one of our niches."
Representatives from U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo each visit the Mexican consulate twice a week to provide financial information to visitors. Though bankers can't open accounts at the consulate or ask people for their contact information, the people they speak to can contact the banks later to open accounts.
"I think it's been very helpful for our community to have banks doing this job," said Wolf, of the consulate. "It's a mutual benefit."
BANKS BENEFIT
Hispanic buying power in the United States will increase 8.1 percent to $863 billion in 2007, according to the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business.
Banks hope to latch onto new immigrants when they first enter the country and turn them into long-term customers.
"Research says these people are not leaving," said Luis Fitch, principal of Uno, a Minneapolis advertising agency that specializes in marketing to Hispanics.
Fitch himself is a native of Mexico. "(Immigrants) are hard workers, and they are spending a lot of money, and they want the same piece of the American dream. To do that, you need credit."
Patient, of BankCherokee, says he worries about what a bill like Blackburn's, should it pass, would mean for immigrants.
"It would effectively shut (people) out of the mainstream financial system," he said. "They will be taken advantage of if they are outside of the system in terms of the fees (they'll be charged) and their ability to transfer money."
Nicole Garrison-Sprenger can be reached at 651-228-5580 or ngarrisonsprenger@pioneer press.com. |
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