Home Loans For Illegal Immigrants

Digger's Realm has finally discovered that illegal immigrants have been getting home loans based on taxpayer ID. Actually, pretty much every single one of the lenders I do business with will do EIN loans.



I wrote on it here on July 20th, 2005. Here's the Business Week article I referenced then. I got a Employer ID Number (EIN) for my dba over the phone with zero documentation. But I can't get a loan with an EIN because I'm a citizen.



In all fairness, one cannot blame the lenders in this instance. My reading of California anti-discrimination law, together with our "shelter the illegals" law practically forces them to deal with the illegal immigrant market. If you have to serve the market anyway, you might as well serve the market.



(It's also worth noting that practically anyone can buy land in the United States. They don't even have to be here in the country, much less here legally. If Osama bin Laden were to contact me for help buying property, I'm not certain it would be legal for me to turn him down).



Add to this the fact that many housing and loan markets are overextended and lenders are trying to maintain volume, and you have the recipe for an ideal environment for questionable loans of all sorts.



It's the responsibility of our elected politicians and their surrogates in law enforcement to deal with this, but they are held hostage by fear. Hispanics are a very strong voting block, especially here in Southern California, and they are afraid of being voted out of office. Never mind that those here legally want illegals curtailed as much as any other american citizen. We're dealing with a political dichotomy here. Hispanic leaders want the illegals here, where the hispanics themselves do not. If the politicians listened to their actual constituents instead of their supposed leaders, the problem could get dealt with.



I haven't done any deals for illegals (that I'm aware of - there are ways to hide it), but I find it very hard to find scorn in my heart for those who have. Given the regulatory environment, it's simple self protection to cooperate.