How immigration reform may impact your credit union
by: Henry Meier
President Obama’s decision to grant resident status to more than 4 million undocumented aliens may well have a direct impact on your credit union’s operations and procedures. Specifically, you may want to take a look at your credit union’s BSA customer identification policies and procedures.
The ability of credit unions and banks to open accounts for undocumented aliens is one of the few compliance issues that gets the non-compliance geek fired up. Read this 2007 article from the Wall Street Journal and you’ll see what I mean. Under existing customer identification program requirements, credit unions must have policies and procedures in place to verify a customer’s identity. As explained in a FinCEN guidance, the CIP regulations do not provide a definitive list of the type of documents that banks and credit unions must use to verify the identity of an account holder. Instead, the ultimate requirement is that whatever forms of identification your credit union uses enables it to “form a reasonable belief that it knows the true identity of the customer.” The regulation provides that for a non-U.S Citizen an acceptable form of identification could include a government issued document evidencing nationality or residence so long as it has a photograph. See 31 CFR 1020.220. This flexibility in the regulation is what makes it acceptable for some financial institutions to accept consular identification cards while others do not. My guess is that with the President’s Executive Order you will see many states pass laws requiring financial institutions to accept specific types of identification.
The second stumbling block to opening accounts for undocumented persons involves tax-payer identification numbers. The regulations are unequivocal in requiring that persons opening accounts must either have or be applying for a tax-payer identification number. 31 CFR 1020.220. Since many undocumented aliens work off the books, this has been one of the biggest challenges to opening an account. The President’s Executive Order will allow qualifying individuals to legally have jobs and start paying taxes. I would hope that FinCEN will provide guidance to financial institutions explaining the type of documentation that may be available to individuals eligible for legal protections under the President’s Executive Action.
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