Arizona - Drawing a Line in the Sand

Arizona passed SB 1070 and raised a real national ruckus. The media describes it as a "National Firestorm" and are making big dollars selling ad time by keeping it as a top story every night. True, there are many who feel the law is wrong, discriminatory, and opens a door to racial profiling. There are many who believe Arizona cops will be playing like the Gestapo, taking unsuspecting Latinos off the street to an uncertain future. When you read the law you discover that police must have a reason to ask for ID, they cannot just "profile" someone and take them into custody. To date, the President nor our Fearless Leader of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, have read the bill. Here, read the bill for yourself: http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/49leg/2r/bills/sb1070s.pdf

70% of Arizonans believe strongly in this law. Over 50% of Americans support the law. Over the past 8 years, drug related crime has increased in Arizona. Phoenix has become the kidnap capital of the North America. Mexican druglords run raids to kill rivals and other associates as far north as Phoenix. Ranchers on the border live in fear for the lives of their families as drug cartel couriers armed with assault rifles cross their lands constantly. In April in Pinal County, directly south of Phoenix, there were 64 high speed car chases. 100% of the perpetrators were illegal immigrants.

Here is how Sheriff Babeu of Pinal County described it:
"Last month (April) alone, just in one patrol region, we had sixty-four pursuits. That means people who were driving a vehicle, failed to yield, took off like a bat out of hell, running red lights, creating traffic wrecks, numerous people were killed in these wrecks over the last several months, and who are these people? Not one of them was a U.S. citizen."

How did we get here?

Democrats didn’t want to do anything with immigration as many in their party like the open borders concept. Here is Marcella Aviles, the Executive Director of San Jose's Mexican Heritage Plaza’s take on open borders.: http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_14996692 Some Democrats believe it is criminal not to let Latinos into our country. They are so downtrodden in Mexico and Guatemala et al they crave the many freedoms that America has to offer. They have rights as a human being to decide where they wish to live and they wish to live here. America needs to accept the fact that our population growth will come from the south and our nation will become more Hispanic. There are still others who believe that California, Arizona, and Nevada still belong to Mexico and these people crossing the border are only moving into another state of their own country. The Democrats see power coming from across the border. If these folks can be made into citizens, they will become union members, community activists, and serve to grow the democratic voting block.

The Republicans have had no appetite to do anything about the border until now. For many years, illegal labor helped build the homes and downtowns of San Diego, LA, Phoenix, Tucson, the Bay Area. Big business and the Republicans looked the other way. Big Business, more specifically-real estate developers, have spent a lot of time preventing any immigration legislation. You can’t build brick homes in Texas and pay a union wage! You can’t build a 500 home subdivision and pay prevailing wage to all workers. That is not economically feasible. Homes would be way too expensive. The way to make it work is to have a big chunk of your workforce working below prevailing wages. Thus, the defacto rules were to allow illegals into the country with a nod and a wink to border enforcement.

The growth of illegal immigration has been pretty steady since 1986 when Reagan allowed a “path to citizenship.” Crime has increased dramatically as a result. My best friend is a defense attorney in San Mateo County. Most of his business on the public defender side is illegal immigrants. Thus we pay Public Defenders something like $400 per hour to defend people who should not be here. Their crimes cost us more in insurance payments. Heck, California has the highest uninsured drivers’ premiums in the country. We pay more in taxes to pay for the additional corrections personnel and jail improvements and expansions. That’s not to mention the billions in subsidies spent nationwide on welfare, food, housing, and medical treatments for those living here illegally. Annually, there is legislation in the Cal Assembly to officially make our state bilingual. Is everyone ready to force your kids to learn Spanish in school? Well, teachers love it. That’s at least one more teacher per school for which we can all pay.

Legislation I’d like to see: Place the National Guard on the borders. They take all illegal immigrants crossing the border to a concentration station on the border where they can be fingerprinted, photographed and shipped by bus back across the border. If they are caught again, jail time, then back across the border. Caught smuggling people or drugs? You go to immigrant jail. Not a normal federal jail. It’s more like a Mexican jail, but nastier.

No path to citizenship for anyone with a past criminal record either here or in Mexico or in the miserable country they hail from. Back across the border they go and into our criminal database.

Those wishing to become citizens shall pay a substantial fine for living illegally in our country. Hey, they skated on paying taxes for years, they ought to pay up a bit before we welcome them with open arms. After they pay their fine and complete the other legalities of immigration, they get a green card. Now they must take English and civics classes and have a passing grade of 75% or better to be considered for their citizenship tests. I will not stand to have a bunch of radicals here as Reagan allowed in his 1986 Cart Blanche Amnesty. I don’t want a bunch of Sandinistas and other central American radicals given sanctuary here. They don’t like democracy in their country and they don’t like it here.

What I am getting to is, the Democrats and Republicans are equally guilty of allowing this flow of illegal immigrants into this country for different reasons. If our government fails to provide a safe living environment for those living in our border states, then it is up to those states to protect their citizens. The Federal gov has failed us if states are enacting laws like SB 1070. Arizona is standing up for the rights of its citizens to live in a secure environment. The Republicans have grabbed hold of this issue and have a real tiger by the tail. They have captured the imagination of much of the nation. I hope they do something constructive with it.

TARP Supported Banks Blamed for Lack of Lending in Multi-Racial Communities

May 13, 2010
TARP-Supported Banks Reduced Lending Dramatically, New Data Show National report finds re-emerging redlining patterns in seven cities as banks pull out of prime mortgage lending in communities of color May 13, 2010

CHICAGO-A report released today by a multi-state collaboration of regional research, policy and advocacy organizations documents the dramatic decrease in low-cost home loans made between 2006 and 2008, and highlights that communities of color were hardest hit by the drop-off in lending.

The entire release is available below after Otto's comments.
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Otto's comments:
The numbers most of these affordable housing advocates use( BTW-they are referred to as researchers in the press release) are the HMDA (Home Mortgage Disclosure Act) numbers. However, the findings they came up with are basically unreal.



Banks do not abandon neighborhoods of color. CRA (the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977) sees that banks serve each neighborhood's credit needs equally and in a colorblind fashion. What is taking place in these neighborhoods is a result of our current economy. In neighborhoods where home values have dropped and unemployment has increased, it is difficult to refinance loans. Many neighborhoods of color had the value of the homes artificially increased due to the "go go" real estate environment we had from 2003 thru 2007. If a neighborhood had a high turn over in home sales, many homes are now valued less than the mortgage they carry. Thus making it impossible to refi.



Also, there are fewer loan options as sub prime lending has basically gone away. Let's keep in mind that many loans in these neighborhoods were sub prime loans where lenders were willing to accept alternative forms of credit and income verification. These alternatives are no longer viable. New regulations and supervisory oversight have eliminated them. Lenders have learned a hard lesson and will not make subprime loans any longer. Lenders must fully underwrite loans. There are no more stated income or "Liar" loans. Loan to value ratios for purchases and refi's has dropped to 80%. Mortgage insurers are pulling out of entire states. All of these factors make it more difficult for anyone, much less a person of color, to refinance their home.



Overall, the bar for borrowers has been raised pretty dramatically. In 2006, a borrower needed a 680 Fico Credit Score to access a prime home loan. As of 2008 and 2009, due to the increases in foreclosures and consumer defaults, most banks raised the bar to a 740 Fico. This locked out many of the borrowers who had previously been able to access loans.



This report fails to mention the significant drop in lending in all neighborhoods. Refinance lending has dropped ridiculously since 2006. That drop is across the board and for all neighborhoods, not just those of color. Home purchases are up, refi's are nearly non existent.



Let's consider who commissioned the report. The organizations listed at the end of the report are not exactly known for being "bank friendly." These organizations have a partisan and adversarial realtionship with banks and have every reason to manipulate certain information to make banks look bad. If these orgs deemed all banks to be fair lenders and each bank provided loans on an even colorblind basis, they would jeopardize their government and foundation funding and cease to exist. I could more easily accept this report if it came from an org that was well known for its evenhanded treatment of banks.



It wasn't that the TARP funded banks reduced lending. It was a function of our economy. There were simply fewer good loans to go after.
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Here is the full text of the press release:

TARP-Supported Banks Reduced Lending Dramatically, New Data Show National report finds re-emerging redlining patterns in seven cities as banks pull out of prime mortgage lending in communities of color May 13, 2010

CHICAGO-A report released today by a multi-state collaboration of regional research, policy and advocacy organizations documents the dramatic decrease in low-cost home loans made between 2006 and 2008, and highlights that communities of color were hardest hit by the drop-off in lending.

Read the report: http://bit.ly/p4ymre

The report, Paying More for the American Dream IV, examines the mortgage lending patterns of banks, including the nation's four largest financial institutions, in seven metropolitan areas in the United States: Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, New York City, and Rochester, NY.

"After inflicting harm on neighborhoods of color through years of problematic subprime and option ARM loans, banks are now pulling back at a time when communities are most in need of responsible loans and investment," said Geoff Smith, Senior Vice President of Woodstock Institute. "We are concerned that we have gone from a period of reverse redlining to a period of re-redlining."

Key findings include:

* Prime mortgage lending in communities of color declined more than twice as much as it did in predominantly white communities. While prime lending decreased between 2006 and 2008 in all seven metropolitan areas, the decline in lending was much greater in neighborhoods where people of color comprised 80% or more of the residents. Neighborhoods of color experienced a 60.3% decrease in lending, compared to a 28.4% decrease in lending in white neighborhoods, where people of color comprised less than 10% of the residents.

* The drop in prime lending for neighborhoods of color was even steeper for refinance loans that allow borrowers to take advantage of lower interest rates or access home equity. Such lending declined by 66.4% in neighborhoods of color, but declined by a mere 13.9% in white neighborhoods.

* Between 2006 and 2008 the share of prime refinance loans made in communities of color dropped 35% whereas the share of these loans made in predominantly white communities increased 11%.

* The nation's four largest banks-Bank of America, Citibank, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo-demonstrated similar lending patterns, targeting white communities for new refinance loans while pulling out of neighborhoods of color. Prime refinance lending by these four banks in white communities increased by 32.2% between 2006 and 2008, but decreased in neighborhoods of color by 33.1%.

"It is troubling that banks that took TARP funds made significantly fewer loans in the very neighborhoods most in need of credit," said Barbara van Kerkhove, Researcher/Policy Analyst at Empire Justice Center. "Part of the rationale for giving taxpayer funds to the banks was so they would lend and invest in our neighborhoods."

Recommendations include:

* Expanding and modernizing the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) so financial institutions cannot evade its goal of increasing lending, investment and services in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, consistent with safety and soundness.

* Creating a strong Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) to protect families and communities from abusive financial products and to prevent a future crisis from further destabilizing already struggling families and their communities.

* Updating the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) to include additional data necessary to keep pace with changes in the financial services industry and to achieve its stated goal of helping to identify discrimination in lending.

* Prioritizing fair lending enforcement in lending and loan modification programs to ensure that historically redlined neighborhoods are not subjected to continuing redlining practices.

* Repairing neighborhoods hard hit by foreclosure by working to keep families in their homes, mitigating the harmful effects of foreclosure, and significantly increasing investment in neighborhoods so that residents, small businesses and community institutions can thrive.

Collaboration:

The Paying More for the American Dream series is a collaborative effort of the California Reinvestment Coalition, Community Reinvestment Association of North Carolina, Empire Justice Center, Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance, Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project, Ohio Fair Lending Coalition, and Woodstock Institute. This is the collaboration's fourth annual report examining systematic inequalities in the housing finance system and their impact on lower-income neighborhoods and communities of color. The first report, released in March 2007, examined disparities in mortgage pricing by several of the country's largest mortgage lenders that offered both prime and subprime loans. The second report, released in March 2008, looked at the geographic lending patterns of a set of defunct subprime lenders whose loans largely fueled the wave of foreclosures that is currently devastating communities across the country and found that these loans were highly concentrated in communities of color and lower-income communities. The third report, released in April 2009, analyzed and compared the lending patterns of lenders that were covered by the Community Reinvestment Act with lenders that were not covered by the CRA.

# # #

For more information or to arrange interviews, please contact one of the following collaborative organizations:

Charles Bromley, Ohio Fair Lending Coalition
(216) 410-3879

Tom Callahan, Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance
(617) 822-9100

Alexis Iwanisziw, Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project
(212) 680-5100

Tram Nguyen or Kevin Stein, California Reinvestment Coalition
(415) 864-3980

Adam Rust, Community Reinvestment Association of North Carolina
(919) 667-1557 x31

Geoff Smith, Woodstock Institute
(312) 368-0310

Barbara van Kerkhove, Empire Justice Center
(585) 295-5815


Katie Buitrago | Policy and Communications Associate Woodstock Institute
29 E Madison Suite 1710 | Chicago, Illinois 60602 T 312/368-0310 x2031 | F 312/368-0316 www.woodstockinst.org | kbuitrago@woodstockinst.org

Advancing Economic Security and Community Prosperity

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It seems our government’s thought police are on high alert but Homeland security is asleep at the switch. Last year, Napolitano said the greater threat to us is not from Muslim extremists but from returning military troops forming militias. Let’s see, Jihad Jane, Nidal Hasan, and Najibullah Zazi…..and now to include our new buddy Faisal—The score is Taliban 4 Militia 1 (and that 1 is questionable. Those Hutaree guys sounded like a bunch of idiots, not trained militants. BTW- I don’t know if you have been following it but, the government’s case in the Hutaree deal is a bit shaky. They may have moved too soon.)