CHICAGO -
Earlier this year, North Side joined forces with Centro Romero, a community-based organization that serves the refugee immigrant population on the northeast side of Chicago, to help the Hispanic community obtain citizenship. Centro Romero does the initial interview, ensuring that the immigrant is eligible for U.S. citizenship. Then if the only thing stopping them is the $675 citizenship fee, they refer them to North Side Community FCU. Once approved, the CU makes the check out directly to the federal government.
“It’s still going well,” said Ed Jacob, president of the credit union. “The feedback has been really positive. We’re probably going to expand in 2008.”
In fact, the credit union has plans to meet with ONE Organization–an organization whose mission is “to build and sustain a successful mixed economic, multi-ethnic community on the north side of Chicago”–to decide on two others of ONE Organization’s community members to work with. Centro Romero is a member of ONE Organization.
“We want to meet with other groups, too,” Jacob said. “It’s pretty likely we are going to expand it to other organizations.”
Jacob said the CU plans to add two more organizations, one in January and the other one in March or April. “We have a lot of immigrants here in Chicago. I would like to move beyond the Hispanic market.”
At present, the credit union has granted 60 citizenship loans, of which 19 have already been paid off. “There are 41 still on our books,” Jacob said. “Only two are delinquent.” The total amount of the loans is approximately $30,000, he added.
In 2008, the credit union plans to measure other loans, in addition to holiday club accounts and savings accounts, to judge if these new members are taking advantage of other perks of being part of the credit union.
“We have to do a good job to let them know we do more than citizenship loans,” Jacob said.
The first person from the credit union earned citizenship in August, Jacob said. “Those are the cool kind of moments,” he said.
