The Trump administration has canceled the Biden administration’s rules forcing banks to ignore immigration status for loan applications.
On Monday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Justice Department eliminated the Biden guidelines that ordered lenders not to consider immigration status when evaluating loan and credit applications, a rule that had major implications for mortgages, credit cards, and auto loans, Bloomberg reported.
The Biden administration maintained that considering immigration status would violate anti-racism laws that ensure equal and fair lending practices.
The Biden era rules were intended to help anchor illegal and temporary visa workers into Americans’ communities, for example, by providing funds for homes, autos, and apartment leases.
But the Trump administration now says the rule went too far and was inappropriate and that considering immigration and residency status does not violate the 1974 Equal Credit Opportunity Act.
“We are correcting the last administration’s attempt to ignore these well-accepted and common-sense principles of our nation’s fair lending laws,” acting CFPB Director Russell Vought said on Monday.
The Biden administration warned that “unnecessary or overbroad reliance on immigration status” “may run afoul of ECOA’s antidiscrimination provisions.” But the new Trump interpretation finds that Biden’s proclamation has no regulatory or statutory basis.
“This administration is restoring alignment with established federal civil rights law rather than continuing the prior administration’s ideologically-driven departures,” Harmeet K. Dhillon, Trump’s assistant attorney general for the DOJs Civil Rights Division, said.
Biden’s rules raised many complaints when they were announced in 2023. One came from then-Ohio senator and now-Vice President JD Vance, who, when Biden made the change, said that considering immigration status as part of the loan vetting process is “nothing short of common sense.”
“A borrower’s likelihood of repayment significantly falls if there is no guarantee that they will be residing in the same community, let alone the same country or legal system,” said a Senate letter Vance, along with “every other Republican on the Senate Banking Committee,” signed in November of 2023.
“Financial institutions are right to be concerned that they may never see a return on loans issued to illegal immigrants,” then-Sen. Vance said in a press release.” If someone is deported to their home country, how is a bank in Ohio supposed recoup the loan it was forced to issue? The federal government should be cracking down on illegal immigration — not encouraging more of it.”
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