{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.tillis.senate.gov/2023/11/tillis-colleagues-urge-biden-administration-to-reverse-guidance-requiring-loans-for-illegal-immigrants", "Tillis, Colleagues Urge Biden Administration to Reverse Guidance Requiring Loans for Illegal Immigrants", "2023-11-01", "2023", "2023-11", "Republican", "Senate", "NC", "Thom Tillis", "T000476", "www.tillis.senate.gov", "tillis", "https://www.tillis.senate.gov/press-releases", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 Senator Thom Tillis and his colleagues recently penned a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Director Rohit Chopra urging them to reconsider their October 12 joint statement on lending discrimination against \u201cnoncitizen borrowers.\u201d\n\nThrough the statement, which dramatically upends decades of guidance from the CFPB and the Federal Reserve, theDepartment of Justice (DOJ) and CFPB aim to force American financial institutions to extend loans to illegal immigrants. This practice contradicts longstanding legal interpretations from federal regulators and could create situations where lenders are unable to recoup loan payments from deported illegal immigrants.\n\n\u201cWe write today to express our concerns regarding the October 12, 2023 joint statement by the CFPB and the DOJ warning financial institutions that the consideration of immigration status in loan applications may be a violation of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA),\u201d the senators wrote.\n\n\u201cWhile the CFPB and DOJ note that financial institutions are permitted to consider immigration status under the ECOA, they claim that unnecessary or overbroad reliance on immigration status \u2018may run afoul of the law,\u2019 and that all borrowers, regardless of immigration status, are protected from discrimination. Specifically, your agencies claim that if a creditor has a \u2018blanket policy\u2019 on immigration status, then they risk violating fair lending laws. The joint statement also suggests that as long as an applicant for credit has a good credit score and other credit qualifications, then his or her immigration status should not matter,\u201d the senators continued.\n\n\u201cWhile the CFPB and DOJ\u2019s joint statement conflicts with decades of immigration status-related guidance from the CFPB and the Fed, it also poses serious risks to financial stability\u2014 encouraging financial institutions to ignore critical dispositive factors in their calculation of risk. Additionally, the fact that your agencies moved forward with this guidance outside of the APA rulemaking process, and without any advanced communication or feedback from industry, raises even more concerns. As members of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, we urge you to retract your agencies\u2019 irresponsible joint statement and instead endorse risk-based lending practices that promote safety and soundness in the bank sector,\u201d the senators concluded.\n\nRead the full letter HERE.\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-08T01:01:09Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.tillis.senate.gov/2023/11/tillis-colleagues-urge-biden-administration-to-reverse-guidance-requiring-loans-for-illegal-immigrants"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.6961210165172815, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}