DHS plans to use credit scores for immigration eligibility

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

https://boingboing.net/2018/11/25/equifax-america.html

The US Department of Homeland Security has published a new proposed rule that would make people ineligible for US citizenship if their credit-scores were poor.

Notionally, the rule-change is meant to prevent immigrants from becoming burdens on the welfare system (migrants do not make disproportionate use of any public welfare system).
However, the credit reporting bureaus are notoriously inaccurate and arbitrary in the credit-scores they assign...

[clearspira]

https://boingboing.net/2018/11/25/equifax-america.html

The US Department of Homeland Security has published a new proposed rule that would make people ineligible for US citizenship if their credit-scores were poor.

Notionally, the rule-change is meant to prevent immigrants from becoming burdens on the welfare system (migrants do not make disproportionate use of any public welfare system).
However, the credit reporting bureaus are notoriously inaccurate and arbitrary in the credit-scores they assign...

I don't understand. Are you saying that this is a bad thing? Why would you want people to bring their debts and unreliability to your country?

[Worffan101]

https://boingboing.net/2018/11/25/equifax-america.html

The US Department of Homeland Security has published a new proposed rule that would make people ineligible for US citizenship if their credit-scores were poor.

Notionally, the rule-change is meant to prevent immigrants from becoming burdens on the welfare system (migrants do not make disproportionate use of any public welfare system).
However, the credit reporting bureaus are notoriously inaccurate and arbitrary in the credit-scores they assign...

I don't understand. Are you saying that this is a bad thing? Why would you want people to bring their debts and unreliability to your country?

...because historically, poor credit scores are strongly associated with lower-income people, and also historically, lower-income immigrants are a MASSIVE boon to the economy because they desperately want work and are willing to do it for less than most citizens, which frees up the citizens to take up higher-income jobs while the menial crap gets done on the cheap until someone notices how badly the capitalists are treating the immigrants and forces the capitalists to actually pay their workers and not be evil bastards. At the times that the US had the greatest economic growth, it was always while there was a flood of lower-class immigrants coming in, first from Western Europe, then Central and Eastern Europe, then Asia. Nativism, ironically enough, stifles economic growth by cutting off this easy supply of cheap labor.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

https://boingboing.net/2018/11/25/equifax-america.html

The US Department of Homeland Security has published a new proposed rule that would make people ineligible for US citizenship if their credit-scores were poor.

Notionally, the rule-change is meant to prevent immigrants from becoming burdens on the welfare system (migrants do not make disproportionate use of any public welfare system).
However, the credit reporting bureaus are notoriously inaccurate and arbitrary in the credit-scores they assign...

I don't understand. Are you saying that this is a bad thing? Why would you want people to bring their debts and unreliability to your country?

However, the credit reporting bureaus are notoriously inaccurate and arbitrary in the credit-scores they assign...

[CmdrKing]

More bluntly, credit scores are based in part on your most recent 7 years of credit history, which is based on things like credit cards, loan payments, home ownership, and that sort of thing. Paradoxically, not racking up debt will tend to tank your credit score. And of course US credit agencies are unlikely to count anything before forming credit lines in the US.

It's a transparent effort to redefine immigration eligibility in a manner that makes all immigration illegal, except at discretion of the government handing out exemptions.
So business as usual for this administration.

[G-Man]

https://boingboing.net/2018/11/25/equifax-america.html

(migrants do not make disproportionate use of any public welfare system).

However, their families do:
https://cis.org/Report/Welfare-Use-Lega ... Households

The claim that immigration does not put a strain on our welfare system is based on looking only at the immigrants themselves and not considering that their children are the consequences of immigration. It's like saying that the coming of the white man did not negatively impact the Native Americans because the white men did not kill most of the Native Americans, diseases did.

Also, low-skilled immigrants tend to have low-skilled descendants, at least into the second generation (i.e. the grandchildren of the original immigrants)
https://www.cis.org/Report/Grandchildre ... d-Earnings

...because historically, poor credit scores are strongly associated with lower-income people, and also historically, lower-income immigrants are a MASSIVE boon to the economy because they desperately want work and are willing to do it for less than most citizens, which frees up the citizens to take up higher-income jobs

No, it means that a lot of citizens don't have jobs, because they do not have the aptitude for the higher-paying jobs. The availability of cheap labor means that the menial jobs stay low-paying.

while the menial crap gets done on the cheap until someone notices how badly the capitalists are treating the immigrants and forces the capitalists to actually pay their workers and not be evil bastards.

Riiiiiight.

There was very little immigration in the 1940s 1950s and first half of the 1960s. Wages skyrocketed from 1948 to 1972. Since 1972 (shortly after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 opened the floodgates), wages have stagnated:

https://www.epi.org/publication/chartin ... tagnation/ (see Figure 2)

Lower-income people willing to work for a pittance are a boon to the 1%.