On February 16, 2001, just 3 weeks after his inauguration, President George W. Bush met with Mexican President Vicente Fox to discuss the terms of the Partnership for Prosperity Agreement (with Mexico). (See: Partnership for Prosperity Agreement (with Mexico))

The P4P agreement was signed on September 6, 2001.

On October 26, 2001, Bush signed the USA Patriot Act of 2001 into law. Contained in section 326(b) was the provision that allowed US banks to accept the Mexican Matricula Consular card as valid ID for opening a bank account.

Congress sent a request for opinion to Bush's Treasury Dept. about 326(b). Bush's Treasury responded:

“The proposed rules set forth the requirement that financial institutions would have to establish a customer identification and verification program applicable to all new accounts that are opened, regardless of whether the customer is a U.S. citizen or a foreign national. While the proposed rules prescribe minimum standards for such programs, they leave sufficient flexibility to permit financial institutions to tailor their program to fit their business operations. The customer identification program would have to contain reasonable procedures for identifying any person, including a business, that opens an account, setting forth the type of identifying information that the financial institution will require. At a minimum, for U.S. persons the proposed rules would require financial institutions to obtain the following information: name, address, taxpayer identification number, and, for individuals, date of birth. While a taxpayer identification number is not required for non-U.S. persons, a financial institution must describe what type of information it will require of a non-U.S. person in place of a taxpayer identification number. The regulations state that financial institutions may accept one or more of the following: a U.S. taxpayer identification number; a passport number and country of issuance; an alien identification card number, or the number and country of issuance of any other government-issued document evidencing nationality or residence and bearing a photograph or similar safeguard.”

This also contained a footnote (17):

“Thus, the proposed regulations do not discourage bank acceptance of the ‘matricula consular’ identity card that is being issued by the Mexican government to immigrants.” (See: Treasury Department Issues USA PATRIOT Act Report to Congress)

Note that no Mexican banks accept their own government's Matricula Consular card as valid ID for opening a bank account because the bearer's identity is all but untraceable. In contrast, thanks to Bush's Treasury Dept., almost all US banks accept it.

On June 17, 2002, Bush held a press conference. In this press conference he said that by 2010 he wanted to see 5.5 million new 'minority' home owners.

He called on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to increase commitments to the 'minority' market by $440 billion. (See: President Calls for Expanding Opporunities to Home Ownership)

Here's how he described the minorities:

Three-quarters of white America owns their homes. Less than 50 percent of African Americans are part of the homeownership in America. And less than 50 percent of the Hispanics who live here in this country own their home. And that has got to change for the good of the country. It just does.

In response to the mandate contained in the P4P agreement, the New Alliance Task Force was formed in May 2003. (See: New Alliance Task Force)

The NATF is a broad-based coalition of 62 members, including the FDIC, Mexican Consulate, 34 banks, community-based organizations, federal bank regulatory agencies, government agencies, and representatives from the secondary market and private mortgage insurance (PMI) companies.

Their goal was to open the Mexican illegal alien market to US banks and visa-versa using low-cost remittances as the bait. As Bush's 2002 speeches show he was talking about hundreds of billions of tax dollars to directly benefit millions of Mexican illegal aliens.

The NATF was organized into four working groups that were tasked with the following goals:

• Financial Education—educates immigrants on the benefits and importance of holding accounts, the credit process, and mainstream banking.
• Bank Products and Services Working Group—encourages banks and thrifts to develop financial service products with remittance features as a strategy to reach the unbanked immigrant community.
• Mortgage Products—created the New Alliance Model Loan Product for potential homeowners who pay taxes using an ITIN.
• Social Projects—provides scholarship funds for immigrant students and fosters economic support for Plazas Comunitarias, a program that will give Mexican citizens an opportunity to finish their high school education.

In 2004, Wells Fargo reported that they had signed up 400,000 new Matricula Consular accounts and at the time were opening up 22,000 new accounts a month. Keep in mind this is just Wells Fargo and that sub-prime lending would not reach its peak until 2005-2006.

The IRS says they've issued over 11 million ITINs since its inception. Mexico says they've issued over 5 million Matricula Consular cards.

But, none of this would be workable if ICE was deporting the banks' new customers. Once again, Bush swung into action, hobbling border and interior enforcement.

Worksite arrests of illegal aliens fell some 97 percent, from 2,859 in 1999 to 159 in 2004. Investigations targeting employers of illegal immigrants fell more than 70 percent, from 7,637 in 1997 to 2,194 in 2003. Arrests on job sites fell—precipitously, from 17,554 in 1997 to 445 in 2003. Fines levied for immigration-law violations fell from 778 in 1997 to 124 in 2003. Notices of intent to fine employers fell from 865 in 1997 to just 3 in 2004.

When the USA Patriot Act came up for renewal in 2004, some republicans wanted to remove the provision that allowed banks to accept Matricula Consular ID as the consular ID is unreliable.

Barney Frank (D-MA) and some of his Republican and Democrat friends swung into action to protect it:

Anti-matrícula proposal defeated; financial institutions can continue accepting consular ID's:

In a vote of 222 to 177, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bipartisan amendment, H.Amdt. 754, introduced by Reps. Michael Oxley (R-OH), Barney Frank (D-MA), Jim Kolbe (R-AZ), Ed Pastor (D-AZ), and Rubén Hinojosa (D-TX) to strike the so-called Culberson amendment that would have prohibited the Treasury Dept. from implementing regulations that allow financial institutions to accept matrícula consular identification cards as part of a valid customer identification program under the USA PATRIOT Act...

In countering Culberson’s allegations that the FBI and the Justice Dept. were opposed to the bipartisan amendment to preserve the use of matrícula consular cards, Bachus presented a letter for the record written by Deputy Atty. Gen. James B. Comey and addressed to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert. The letter, dated Sept. 14, 2004, stated:

The Department of Justice fully supports the Administration’s current policy under the USA PATRIOT Act that requires banks and other financial institutions to establish reasonable procedures for the identification and verification of new account holders, which is set forth in regulations of the Department of the Treasury. Therefore the [Justice] Department supports the Oxley-Frank-Kolbe amendment to H.R. 5025 that preserves these regulations. . . . The Department of Justice, including the FBI, continue[s] to work closely with the Treasury Department on this and other issues related to halting all financing of terrorists.

In the final roll call vote, 49 Republicans supported the Oxley-Frank-Kolbe-Pastor-Hinojosa amendment and 16 Democrats opposed it. This legislative victory was a joint effort by financial institutions, immigrants’ rights groups, consumer groups, and many others who worked in coalition to defeat, once again, efforts to limit the acceptance of consular ID cards by banks, credit unions, thrifts, and other financial entities.

In Bush's June 17, 2002 speech, he also called for the creation of the American Dream Down Payment Fund.

And so here are some of the ways to address the issue. First, the single greatest barrier to first time homeownership is a high downpayment. It is really hard for many, many, low income families to make the high downpayment. And so that's why I propose and urge Congress to fully fund the American Dream Downpayment Fund. This will use money, taxpayers' money to help a qualified, low income buyer make a downpayment. And that's important.

And, the 108th Congress (2003-2005) responded with the American Dream Downpayment Act:

Amends the Cranston-Gonzalez National Affordable Housing Act to: (1) authorize the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development to make grants to State and local participating jurisdictions for downpayment assistance and related home repair to low-income, first-time home buyers; and (2) limit family assistance to the greater of six percent of the purchase price or $10,000. Requires a participating jurisdiction to include intended grant uses in its fiscal year comprehensive housing affordability strategy under such Act.

Sets forth State and local jurisdiction allocation formulas. Permits fund reallocation.

Requires the Comptroller General to report respecting the impact of such grants on a State-by-State basis.

Terminates grant authority after December 31, 2007. Authorizes specified FY 2004 through 2007 appropriations.

Makes the Uniform Relocation Assistance and Real Property Acquisition Policies Act of 1970 inapplicable to such assistance.

The act was authorized to appropriate up to $200 million per year of US taxpayer funds between FY2004 through FY2007 to go to Bush's 'minorities'.

The sponsor and co-sponsors of this $800 million giveaway:

Sponsor: Sen. Wayne Allard [R-CO]

Co-sponsors:
Sen. Samuel Brownback [R-KS]
Sen. Conrad Burns [R-MT]
Sen. Ben Campbell [R-CO]
Sen. Michael Crapo [R-ID]
Sen. Michael Enzi [R-WY]
Sen. Charles Hagel [R-NE]
Sen. Lisa Murkowski [R-AK]
Sen. Richard Santorum [R-PA]
Sen. Jefferson Sessions [R-AL]

In the 2004 election cycle, mortgage bankers and brokers poured nearly $847,000 into Mr. Bush’s re-election campaign, more than triple their contributions in 2000, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. The administration did not finalize the new rules until last month. (See: White House Philosophy Stoked Mortgage Bonfire)

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Partnership for Prosperity (the propaganda):

Fact Sheet: Partnership for Prosperity

Partnership for Prosperity agreement/New Alliance Task Force. (the truth):

Linking International Remittance Flows to Financial Services: Tapping the Latino Immigrant Market

New Alliance Task Force

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Housing Push for Hispanics Spawns Wave of Foreclosures:

Mortgage lenders appear to have regarded Latinos as a largely untapped demographic. Many were first or second-generation U.S. residents who didn't own homes. Many Hispanic families had multiple wage earners working multiple cash jobs, but had no savings or established credit history to allow them to qualify for traditional loans.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus created Hogar in 2003 to work with industry and community groups to increase mortgage lending to Latinos. At that time, the national Latino homeownership rate was 47%, compared with 68% for the overall population. Hogar called the figure "alarming," and said a concerted effort was required to ensure that "by the end of the decade Latinos will share equally in the American Dream of homeownership."

Hogar's backers included many companies that ran into trouble in mortgage markets: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both now under federal control; Countrywide Financial Corp., sold last year to Bank of America Corp.; Washington Mutual Inc., taken over by the government and sold to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.; and New Century Financial Corp. and Ameriquest Mortgage Corp., both now defunct.

Hogar's ties to the subprime industry were substantial. A Washington Mutual vice president served as chairman of its advisory committee. Companies that donated $150,000 a year got the right to place a research fellow who would conduct Hogar's studies, which were used by industry lobbyists. For donations of $100,000 a year, Hogar offered to provide news releases from the Hispanic Caucus promoting a lender's commercial products for the Latino market, according to the group's literature.

Hogar worked with Freddie Mac on a two-year examination of Latino homeownership in 63 congressional districts. The study found Hispanic ownership on the rise thanks to "new flexible mortgage loan products" that the industry was adopting. It recommended further easing of down-payment and underwriting standards.

...

Mortgage lending to Hispanics took off between 2004 and 2007, powered by nonprime loans. The biggest jump occurred in 2005. The 169% increase in nonprime mortgages to Hispanics that year outpaced a 122% gain for blacks, and a 110% increase for whites, according to a Journal analysis of mortgage-industry and federal-housing data. Nonprime mortgages carry high interest rates and are tailored to borrowers with low credit scores or few assets.

Between 2004 and 2007, black borrowers were offered nonprime loans at a slightly higher rate than Hispanics, but the overall number of Hispanic borrowers was much larger. From 2004 to 2005, total nonprime home loans to Hispanics more than tripled to $69 billion from $19 billion, and peaked in 2006 at $73 billion.

...

Regions of the country where the housing bubble grew biggest, such as California, Nevada and Florida, are heavily populated by Latinos, many of whom worked in the construction industry during the housing boom. When these markets began to weaken, bad loans depressed the value of neighboring properties, creating a downward spiral. Neighborhoods are now dotted with vacant homes.

By late 2008, one in every nine households in San Joaquin County, Calif., was in default or foreclosure -- 24,049 of them, according to Federal Reserve data. Banks have already taken back 55 of every 1,000 homes. In Riverside, Calif., 66,838 houses are owned by banks or were headed in that direction as of October. In Prince William County, Va., a Washington suburb, 11,685 homes, or one in 11, was in default or foreclosure.

...

These days, James Scruggs of Northern Virginia Legal Services is swamped with Latino borrowers facing foreclosure. "We see loan applications that are complete fabrications," he says. Typically, he says, everything was marketed to borrowers in Spanish, right up until the closing, which was conducted in English.

"We are not talking about people working for the World Bank or the IMF," he says. "We are talking about day laborers, janitors, people who work in restaurants, people who do babysitting."

Two such borrowers work in Mr. Scrugg's office. Sandra Cardoza, a $28,000-a-year office manager, is now $30,000 in arrears on loans totaling $370,000. "Her loan documents say she makes more than me," says Mr. Scruggs.

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Mortgages to Illegal Immigrants Come Under Fire

...Manuel Lopez came to the U.S. on a tourist visa in 1999 after his bus-driving business in Ecuador failed due to runaway inflation. He stayed here illegally and eventually brought over his wife and son and had another daughter here. He makes about 40-thousand dollars a year working for a downtown Chicago parking garage. Two years ago, he started looking to buy a house but the interest rates his broker quoted him were 8 to 9 percent. Then he heard about a program with much better terms run by Citibank and the non-profit group Acorn Housing.

...He bought the house for 230-thousand dollars with a 30-year fixed rate mortgage set at 6 percent. The program required that he pay three percent down. Lopez is just one of about 900 undocumented immigrants who have gotten mortgages from the Citibank Acorn program nationwide in the past few years. And they’re by no means the only ones in the business....

At Second Federal Savings and Loan in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood, tellers count out bills in Spanish to their predominantly Latino customer base....

This savings and loan got its start serving Eastern Europeans but had to adapt – or die – once the neighborhood changed. Mark Doyle is president and CEO of Second Federal. His bank became one of the first to pioneer the practice of making mortgages to undocumented immigrants several years ago.

DOYLE: Loan applications were astounding. I mean, we had 40 million dollars in the pipeline in one four-week period of time. And we did those loans for a good period of 8, 10 months and then we cut it off. We curtailed that activity because we couldn’t handle the volume.

But the bank was soon able to get back into it. What made this whole market possible is that back in 1996 the IRS started offering illegal immigrants a way to pay taxes. The IRS created something called individual taxpayer identification numbers, or ITINs. People without social security numbers who earn money in the U.S. are still obligated to get ITINs and pay tax – whether or not they’re here legally. More than 10 million people have gotten ITINs since the system was created. And now they’re able to show those tax returns to banks as proof of income in order to get mortgages. Still, Doyle says most ITIN holders lack a regular credit history. So Second Federal had to get creative in assessing credit worthiness.

DOYLE: We have to go to local churches to find out if they’re a member of that parish, are they paying weekly. If they’ve borrowed money from an uncle to buy a pickup truck, there’s a paper trail behind that, so we look for the check, we take a look at the title, we make sure they paid him back. If they’re a tenant, you know, we look for receipts, proof they’ve been rent to their landlords. The underwriting on an ITIN loan typically takes at least 6 hours.

And that’s three times as long as a regular loan. He says it’s worth it because the ITIN loans have performed well. But lately, volume has dropped to as few as six applications a month versus 40 a few years ago. Doyle says one reason is competition from other banks. Another is the political climate. The government plans to send so-called no-match letters to employers warning them that they face penalties if their workers are illegal. That could trip up people with ITINs who use fake social security numbers to work. A judge has temporarily blocked the letters, but Doyle says potential borrowers are intimidated.

DOYLE: They’re afraid. If an employer now has to go to their people and say he has five people who don’t have a valid social security number and tell them if you don’t give me a valid social security number in 90 days, I’m going to have to fire you, if enough of that happens. People have two choices – they can go back to Mexico or they’re going to go underground.

And Mari Gallagher, a Chicago-based consultant who’s researched the ITIN mortgage market, says banks are also thinking twice.

GALLAGHER: The big players have other issues right now in the mortgage industry, so they’re not going to be spending their time figuring out the ITIN mortgage. So I think it’s the small banks who will keep pushing the envelope, and then if it looks like it’s a safe area again, banks as other markets dry up might revisit it, but I think with the political current right now, banks are wary.

CHEREE CALABRO: This is about the first home loan, and this is a picture from the coverage of us protesting at the bank in Hammond, this was our first protest.

That’s Cheree Calabro. She heads a group called Indiana Federation for Immigration Reform and Enforcement. She’s pulled out a folder of newspaper clippings documenting her group’s 7-month protest of Bank Calumet after the bank made its first mortgage to an undocumented immigrant. They handed out flyers to bank customers saying the practice is illegal. Calabro says the bank wasn’t happy.

CALABRO: They got pretty upset with us. They didn’t want us to step on their property, so what I did is I bought one of those extendo-rods, it’s for reaching objects on high shelves, and I would put the flyer in it so I could reach across their property and hand it to the people as they sat in the drive-thru.

In other words, pretty much a bank’s worst nightmare. Calabro says they persuaded some people to close their accounts – including one person she says withdrew 100-thousand dollars. When First Midwest Bancorp bought Bank Calumet in spring of 2006, they stopped making ITIN mortgages. Calabro says that’s what she’d like to see happen all across the country.

CALABRO: I mean you shouldn’t be rewarded for your illegal activity, neither the banks nor the illegal aliens should be rewarded for their crimes.

Calabro points to a section of the immigration code that says it’s a crime to aid or abet illegal immigrants for financial gain. But a spokesman for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation says ITIN mortgage lending is legal. Congressman John Doolittle – a Republican from California – introduced a bill earlier this year to make the practice illegal, but it didn’t get to the floor for a vote. Mark Doyle of Second Federal says homeownership should be encouraged – regardless of immigration status.

DOYLE: People are more responsible for their neighborhoods. They’re more attentive to their schools and churches and they take care of their homes.

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Social Security Totalization Agreement with Mexico

SOCIAL SECURITY Proposed Totalization Agreement with Mexico Presents Unique Challenges

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More in-depth Totalization information

Costs to US citizens as a result of uncontrolled illegal immigration:

1. $11 billion to $22 billion spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year.
2. $2.2 billion dollars a year spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens.
3. $2.5 billion dollars a year spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens.
4. $12 billion dollars a year spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally.
5. $17 billion dollars a year spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.
6. $3 million dollars a day spent to incarcerate illegal aliens.
7. 29 percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens.
8. $90 billion dollars a year spent on illegal aliens for welfare & social services by the American taxpayers.
9. $200 billion Dollars a year in lost-suppressed American wages caused by the illegal aliens.
10. Illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that's two and a half times that of citizen-taxpayer Americans. Their children make a huge additional crime problem in the United States.
11. During the year of 2005, there were 4 to 10 million illegal aliens that crossed our Southern Border. In addition, as many as 19,500 illegal aliens arrived from terrorist countries. Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroine and marijuana, crossed into the U. S. from the Southern border.
12. In 2006 illegal aliens sent home $45 billion in remittances back to their countries of origin. Obfuscation may have hidden $35 Billion more.
13. "The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One Million Sex Crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants in the United States."
14. Every day (average), 12 Americans are murdered by an illegal alien. Another 13 Americans are killed by uninsured drunk illegal aliens, and Eight American Children are victims of a sex crime committed by an illegal alien each day! Local cops, acting in error, sometimes "forget" to annotate nationality on reports. The numbers may be worse.
15. Today, criminal aliens account for over 29 percent of prisoners in Federal Bureau of Prisons facilities and a higher share of all federal prison inmates. These prisoners represent the fastest growing segment of the federal prison population. Incarceration of criminal aliens cost an estimated $624 million to state prisons (1999) and $891 million to federal prisons (2002), according to the most recent available figure from the U.S. DOJ Bureau of Justice Statistics.
16. "Illegal Aliens and American Medicine," "Many illegal aliens harbor fatal diseases that American Medicine fought and vanquished long ago, such as drug-resistant tuberculosis, malaria, leprosy, plague, polio, dengue and Chagas disease." The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.
17. In 2002, HIV/AIDS was the third leading cause of death among Hispanic men aged 35 to 44 and the fourth leading cause of death among Hispanic women in the same age group. Most Hispanic men were exposed to HIV through sexual contact with other men. Source (U.S. CDC):
18. If enacted, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act (CIRA, S. 2611) would be the most dramatic change in immigration law in 80 years, granting Amnesty to 30 million illegal immigrants, and allowing an estimated 100-203 million persons to legally immigrate to the U.S. over the next 20-40 years – a number equal to fully two-thirds of the current population of the United States.
19. U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) today unveiled an impact analysis that shows the Senate immigration bill – should it become law – would permit up to 217.1 million new legal immigrants into the United States over the next 20 years, a number equal to more than 70 percent of the total current population.
20. The number of illegal immigrants in the United States is at least 20 million, and may be as many as 30 million people, more than triple the official nine million people estimated by the Census Bureau. 03 Jan 2005.
21. Cases of Leprosy on the Rise In The U.S. , The New York Times. "While there were some 900 recorded cases in the United States 40 years ago, today more than 7,000 people have leprosy." Leprosy is an airborne virus; it can also be spread by touching and coughing.

Are you sickened by this movie? This nation needs a 10 year moratorium on all immigration. We need to stop this invasion of our nation and destruction of our future.

Sources for all 21 points:

1, Immigration and welfare
2, High cost of cheap labor
3, High cost of cheap labor
4, Lou Dobbs: The debate over immigration and border security continues
5, Lou Dobbs: The debate over immigration and border security continues
6, Lou Dobbs: The debate over immigration and border security continues
7, Lou Dobbs: The debate over immigration and border security continues
8, Lou Dobbs: Encore presentation: Broken borders
9, Lou Dobbs: The debate over immigration and border security continues
10, President Bush Convenes Two-Day War Summit at Camp David; Will U.S. Troops Soon be Leaving Iraq?
11, Confronting the threat at the southern border
12, Latinos are sending more money home
13, Violent crimes institute and Biting the hands that feed you
14, The criminal alien problem is growing
15, Journal of the American physician and surgeons
16, HIV/AIDS among hispanics in the United States
17, Senate Immigration Bill Would Allow 100 Million New Legal Immigrants over the Next Twenty Years
18, U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions Unveils Massive Numerical Impact Of Senate Immigration Bill
19, The underground labor force is rising to the surface
20, Cases of Leprosy on the Rise in U.S.
21, Leprosy in America: new cause for concern and LEPROSY, HEPATITIS AND TUBERCULOSIS RISING FAST IN THE U.S.