U.S. Bank Remitance Program Case Essay

U. S. Citizen: Bank Remittance Program I believe it is ethical for U. S. Citizen Bank to continue their remittance program and to continue to allow the matricula consular card as a proper form of identification. My argument will be that it is more ethical for U. S. bank to offer business to immigrants, even if they are illegal immigrants, but I believe that the argument that the matricula card is a valid source of identification is false. The matricula consular card is a source of identification that is issued by the Mexican government to help them keep better track of their citizens who are abroad, mostly for tax purposes.A Mexican citizen can only obtain this card if they provided an original birth certificate, photo identification and proof of residency within the United States, such as a utility bill. In 2001 Wells Fargo began accepting matricula cards as a proper form of identification along with U. S. Bank a month later. It was not long thereafter where U. S. Citizen Bank joine d in with heavy marketing to draw in to the untapped marked of the increasing population of Hispanics in the United States.With the acceptance of these cards the banks were now allowed to offer remittance services to Mexican immigrants where they could send money back to an account in Mexico, which is an issue I will be discussing later. In 2002, thirteen states accepted the matricula as a valid form of identification, including 800 sheriff offices. In my perspective, the idea that not only banks but many states and hundreds of sheriff offices accept a Mexican issued form of identification which proves valid U. S. citizenship just by representation of a utility bill is absolutely ludicrous.In my opinion there is no way that any entity or governmental agency actually thinks that a utility bill presented to a consular office of the Mexican government can prove that you are a United States citizen. If you are a United States Citizen you should have some other source of legal identifica tion on you that is issued by the United States. This proves that banks, states and sheriff offices all know that there are some people who possess this card that are not legal residents of the United States.This shows that with the matricula card being deemed a valid form of identification by banks, it is going to be easier for illegal immigrants who possess the card to get banking services. This leads to the ethical question of is it ethical for banks to knowingly offer banking services to potential illegal immigrants possessing the matricula card? To this question I answer, yes. As questioned in the case, I believe that it U. S. Citizen’s corporate duty to obey the laws of the United States and support the values of our country.This leads to many people arguing that they these banks are going against what the United States wants in keeping illegal immigrants out of our country. It is proven that the United States government spends millions of dollars each year on border pa trol to keep illegal immigrants out of our country. However, once the illegal immigrants get into our country the United States government seems to take a completely different stance and their view almost seems to switch to the complete other side. Once the illegal immigrants hop the border it almost seems like the government is more worried about helping them.We have states accepting illegitimate forms of identification as being valid and in October of 2001, the U. S. PATRIOT act instructed the Secretary of the U. S. Treasury to provide regulations for certain customer identification that banks needed to obtain before they could open an account and they never did. We also have the chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, who was also a former regulator, commenting on the matricula, saying that the banks are doing â€Å"good business† and he mentioned that accepting it as valid identification was â€Å"good policy. The banks are doing their corporate duty to ou r nation by continuing to accept the matricula as proof that these immigrants are U. S. citizens because in my opinion, if they United States government was against it, they would be stopping it! It is also in the banks best interest to do business with these immigrants. They saw a huge untapped opportunity in the market of increasing Hispanics and they decided to pursue it. It has ultimately affected their bottom line showing a substantial amount of profits through their business.I am going to make the assumption that by the banks offering their services to immigrants that the customers are doing more overall good than bad and that there is an extremely low number of customers who are actually using this money to fund drug cartels or to transfer money to terrorist funds and here is why. The profit of banks relies a lot on trust. Banks need to trust the customer that they will pay them back. As mentioned in the article it says that when customer wanted banking services they would of ten go and sit down to with a banker to go through their products. I believe that this face to face interaction weeds out many of the â€Å"terrorists† and â€Å"drug smugglers† of the group. Also, I believe that the banks are truly helping people that are in need. These are immigrants who are coming to America and looking for a better way of life than what they had before. They may have left their family and friends to get away from a terrible way of life in their foreign country.The banks are helping these people understand how to manage their money, and they are giving them the ability to send some of the money they are making back to their foreign country to help support their family or whoever they so please. They no longer have to sit or hide bundles of cash leaving them bigger targets for robbery. Again, making the assumption that the banks customers are doing more harm than good, I believe that this benefits our society as a whole. In society, we want all of ou r people to have a fair chance and that is exactly what the banks and the United States are doing.They are giving the 45-55% of Hispanics who’ve never had a banking relationship a fair chance at success. Where my biggest issue lies in this case is in the hypocrisy of the United States. I believe with the matricula being accepted by many states and sheriffs throughout the United States that it certainly acceptable for U. S. Citizen to accept it as valid identification as well, being that they are looking to make money and that they are certainly helping out a Hispanic population.However, the United States should make a stand on either side of this issue, because you most certainly can’t have both. You can’t set up border patrol to keep Mexicans out than say that a card issued by the Mexican government proves that they are a United States citizen and let them stay in our country. Although they are not forced to pay taxes, and we as American are financially hurt be cause we are forced to pay more taxes on them, this small financial loss to our society is outweighed by what should be our willingness to help people that are in need.Now it is probably true that a few of these banks may be allowing the certain aid of drug cartels or other illegal acts. But who says that if I go to a bank and apply for a loan that they know that I won’t use that money to buy an immense amount of drugs? I work for a bank and we recently had a transaction where we thought we had a legitimate customer and we ended up funding the mob based out of Chicago. It is the banks duty to offer services to those in need if they believe that they are a valid customer and are meeting their compliance guidelines which U.S. Citizen has. The United States should not accept this card as valid identification because for the easy answer, it is not valid identification. We have conflicting agencies, one being the FBI saying that the card is not valid and sheriff offices saying tha t it is. But as long as the United States is accepting it as valid I. D. than the banks should too because they are certainly doing more good than harm by offering their banking services to these immigrants.The United States needs to eliminate this card and come up with a better way and system to make the illegal immigrants citizens of our beautiful country. Right now American are seeing a portion of our taxes going to illegal immigrants so that their kids can go to a public school and that we can provide them with health care. This is not beneficial to our society as a whole and that I believe that if they want to come in to our country that they should have the same duties as Americans to pay taxes and to continue to better this country.In conclusion I believe that U. S. Citizen Bank is doing the right thing by allowing the Mexican immigrants a chance at banking service even with the acceptance of the illegitimate source of identification in the matricula consular card. It is bene fitting not only the bank but it is helping out those that are in need of these services and giving them a chance to help their friends and family at home that may be struggling. The basis of this decision to continue is solely because of the United States government acceptance of the card and not because the card is valid.