CHICAGO - With lawmakers threatening to bar banks from accepting foreign-government-issued identification cards when opening accounts, the industry is going on the offensive and claiming that the move would drive people from the system.
Bankers also argue that it is wrong to think national security would be enhanced by banning forms of identification like the matricula consular card, which the Mexican government issues to citizens living outside the country.
"To tie it into the security of the country is ludicrous. Are there Mexican terrorists? I don't know of any," said Mark T. Doyle, the president, chief executive, and chairman of Second Federal Savings and Loan Association here.
Since 2001, when the $248 million-asset thrift began accepting matricula cards, more than 1,000 Mexican nationals have used them to open checking and savings accounts at Second National, Mr. Doyle said.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. is pushing to prohibit banks' acceptance of matricula cards. The Wisconsin Republican said in a May letter to the Homeland Security Council that accepting consular cards undermines the USA Patriot Act's goal of "preventing and detecting money laundering and the financing of terrorism."
Rep. Sensenbrenner's letter prompted the Treasury Department to reopen rules implementing the act and to request another round of comments by July 31 on four questions:
- Should financial institutions be barred from relying on certain forms of foreign-government-issued identification cards?
- Should banks be required to get passport numbers from customers who are not U.S. citizens?
- How well do various forms of foreign-government-issued cards verify the identity of the holder?
- What are the ramifications of barring banks from accepting such identification?
Don Cohen, the vice president of community lending at the $1.6 billion-asset North Shore Bank in Brookfield, Wis., said it had opened 350 accounts since October accepting the matricula card, along with individual taxpayer identification numbers that the Internal Revenue Service offers to foreign citizens cleared to work in the United States.North Shore issues each account holder two automated teller machine cards: one to keep and one to send to relatives in Mexico. The card sent to Mexico has a $200-a-day limit on withdrawals, which would make it inconvenient for money launderers.
"These aren't drug dealers, these are everyday, hard-working people," Mr. Cohen said.
Paul J. Lopez, the vice president for business development at the $259 million-asset Park Federal Savings Bank in Chicago, said prohibiting the cards' use would undercut the industry's marketing efforts to Hispanics, because they are what lets many immigrants open accounts.
"Right now we're pushing in these markets and telling people 'if you have that card, you can open an account,' " Mr. Lopez said.
Prohibiting the use of the matricula card could require banks to close accounts and make it impossible to get immigrants into the financial mainstream, Mr. Lopez said. "I don't see that as building any trust in a market that doesn't have much to begin with."
Rep. Sensenbrenner is not the only one in Congress interested in matricula cards, and not all are on the same side of the issue.
Rep. Ruben Hinojosa, D-Texas, has introduced the Twenty-First Century Access to Banking Act, which would make it legal for financial institutions to accept the matricula card.
And Reps. John N. Hostettler, R-Ind., and Elton Gallegly, R-Calif., offered an amendment to the Foreign Relations Reauthorization Act - a bill approved July 16 by the House - that would require the secretary of state to write regulations to ensure that foreign consulates issue identification cards only to bona fide nationals, keep records of all the cards, and make those records available to the U.S. government. It would also require holders of consular identification to inform the government of an address change.
Wells Fargo & Co. accepts the matricula card and the Guatemalan Consular Identification Card as primary forms of identification. Miriam Galicia Duarte, its vice president for Hispanic public relations, said the $372 billion-asset San Francisco company has opened about 80,000 accounts since November 2001 for customers using one of the two cards.
Ms. Duarte said misperceptions about how the cards are used have sparked much of the controversy. At Wells a depositor must also have a Social Security number or an individual taxpayer identification number to open an account. She said the two consular cards it takes meet the same standards as other acceptable forms of identification, including a serial number, a photo, a signature, an expiration date, and a brief description of the holder.
"Wells Fargo's experience with the matricula identification has been no different than that for accounts [opened] with driver's licenses or state identification cards," Ms. Duarte said.
Both Mr. Lopez and Mr. Cohen said they have customers who used a matricula card to open an account while they waited to become citizens.
Mr. Cohen said North Shore is working to turn those depositors into borrowers by building their assets, so a change in the rules would affect future business. "We're talking about mortgage business and everything."
