Credit Cards for Illegal Aliens

The Wall Street Journal reports Bank of America is offering credit cards to customers illegal aliens:

 

The new Bank of America program is open to people who lack both a Social Security number and a credit history, as long as they have held a checking account with the bank for three months without an overdraft. Most adults in the U.S. who don't have a Social Security number are undocumented immigrants.

The Charlotte, N.C., banking giant tested the program last year at five branches in Los Angeles, and last week expanded it to 51 branches in Los Angeles County, home to the largest concentration of illegal immigrants in the U.S. The bank hopes to roll out the program nationally later this year.

There ought to be a law preventing this.

Bank of America says its Credit Cards for Illegal Aliens program complies with U.S. banking and antiterrorism laws. Even if that is true the Bank is knowingly marketing credit cards to people violating U.S. immigration law:

 

"These people are coming here for quality of life, and they deserve somebody to give them a chance to achieve that quality of life," says Brian Tuite, the bank's director of Latin America card operations and one of the architects of the program.

Sounds like aiding and abetting law breakers to me. I was mistaken in my understanding that one could no longer open a financial account without a social security number, at least according to the Journal:

 

Anti-money-laundering regulations passed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks put more pressure on banks to verify customers' identity and watch for suspicious transactions, but they don't require banks to ascertain whether account holders are in the U.S. legally. Most banks require a Social Security number or ITIN to open an account, but regulations also allow them to accept other government-issued forms of identification in some instances, including passport numbers, alien identification numbers or any government-issued document with photo showing nationality or place of residence.

The tide of illegal aliens flooding this country will never be controlled so long as we continue to provide services to the illegals. Whenever an illegal alien is discovered, there must be detention until removal. We can build all the walls Congress might fund, hire even more Border Patrol agents, and create more detention centers, but it won't matter until services and jobs for illegal aliens are no longer available.

As evidenced by Bank of America's Credit Cards for Illegal Aliens program and Citibank's program offering illegal aliens mortgage incentives, not to mention jobs, the biggest obstacle to slowing the numbers of illegals flowing across the Mexican border is business.