Indiana's Bank Calumet gives home loans to illegal aliens

The local paper reports:
On Tuesday, Bank Calumet announced it would begin extending home loans to illegal immigrants, becoming the first locally-based bank to do so...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the federally chartered institutions that buy home mortgages from banks to sell as securities, will not buy ITIN mortgages. Both institutions are in the midst of studying borrowers' ability to repay such mortgages...

The FDIC and banks two years ago formed the New Alliance Task Force to expand banking opportunities in immigrant communities. That task force has 40 member banks.

Those banks have made about 800 ITIN loans since then, with a total value of $100 million. It has also led to the opening of about 70,000 bank accounts by customers using Mexican-government issued identification cards and ITIN numbers.

That is still not a large number of loans. Many individual banks originate far more than $100 million in home loans in a single year.

More than 300 bankers showed up for a New Alliance Task Force briefing at the Mexican Consulate in Chicago two years ago. Almost all were interested in the ITIN loans. But FDIC statistics show only a small number are actually now doing it...
I was unable to find the bank's press release, but if they actually came out and said they were giving loans to illegal aliens that would be something. Note that, from the playing-both-sides department, the same reporter offered a much more PIIPPy treatment of this story in "Bank Calumet opens home ownership to illegal immigrants".

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Comments

WHAT IS WRONG ABOUT BANKS HELPING US OUT WE DO MORE THAN PLENTY FOR YOUR COUNTRY! HOW DO YOU THINK YOU FOLKS GET VEGGIES AND FRESH FRUIT TO YOUR TABLES, WHO IS OUT THEIR PICKING THESE PRODUCTS?? AINT NO WHITE REDNECKS IS IT??????

Just one more way Indiana is going to hell in a hand basket:
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050818/NEWS01/508180499/1006/NEWS01

The big concern for us is that once banks start making home loans to illegals, the banks will be a powerful lobby against any sort of deportation. A deported illegal may well stop making his mortgage payments, leading to an unhappy bank.