Bank of America is facing heat for asking customers to reveal their citizenship status — a predicament that illustrates how banks’ efforts to comply with customer identification rules carry higher risk at a time when many immigrants feel threatened by President Trump.
The Charlotte, N.C., company has been inquiring about account holders’ country of citizenship, as well as whether they hold dual citizenship. In
BofA’s questions are setting off alarm bells in Latino communities, where many people fear that any information that noncitizens provide to their banks could later be used against them. Those worries are particularly acute given the Trump administration’s hard-line approach to immigration enforcement.
Hey
@BankofAmerica if you keep harassing customers about their citizenship status I’m going to empty my accounts and switch to a credit union. What’s with that?— John Corgi (@JawnCorgi)
July 30, 2018
Time to
#Boycott @BankofAmerica -- Have YOU gotten a letter asking for verification of citizenship?https://t.co/10kAocIll1 — Left Of Main Street (@LeftOfMainSt)
July 30, 2018
“You’re going into the bank to deposit your weekly earnings, and you could be a legal permanent resident, and you’re being asked to show your citizenship,” said Paulina Gonzalez, executive director of the California Reinvestment Coalition. “That’s concerning to us.”
Though worries about the citizenship questions only made headlines in recent months, as existing Bank of America customers have reported receiving notices for the first time, a bank spokesman said that the firm has been asking questions about citizenship status for many years.
BofA spokesman Christopher Feeney also noted that all banks are required to maintain complete and accurate records for all of their customers.
“Customers are asked to provide information banks need to meet a variety of requirements, including those related to economic sanctions, anti-money-laundering, and other programs administered by the U.S. Treasury and other government agencies,” he said in an email.
“One of the reasons we ask about country of citizenship is to ensure adherence to economic sanctions laws. Because banks must comply with sanctions that restrict or prohibit activity in or with certain sanctioned countries or persons, it is important for banks to know the country of citizenship of its customers,” Feeney added.
Banks are not explicitly required under federal regulations to ask about their customers’ citizenship status, and it is unclear how common that particular question is.
A spokesman for Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network said that banks generally must collect their customers’ names, dates of birth, addresses and tax identification numbers, and that foreign passport numbers can be collected in lieu of a tax ID number.
“We would defer to financial institutions to discuss their specific compliance programs,” the spokesman said in an email.
Banks with large foreign operations may be more likely to ask customers about their citizenship status, due in part to the risks associated with providing banking services to citizens of countries that face U.S. sanctions.
Erich Ferrari, a lawyer who represents financial institutions in connection with sanctions rules, argued that all U.S. banks should be asking their customers about their citizenship status.
As one example of why he believes banks should be asking the citizenship question, Ferrari noted that banks face certain restrictions on doing business with Cuban citizens, regardless of where those people live.
But what makes sense inside of a large financial institution may be hard to understand in an immigrant community. Undocumented immigrants are often fearful about their ability to remain in the U.S., and may be reluctant to provide information that they fear could be used against them.
And at least in some instances, BofA’s response to concerned customers has sown more distrust. Jessica Salazar Collins, the Kansas woman whose husband’s account was temporarily frozen, said that they still have not received an explanation from the bank about why it needs citizenship information.
“Not one person on the phone could get me a reason,” she said. “Nobody from Bank of America has contacted us to explain better why this happened to us.”
