Connecting immigration and the mortgage crisis?

December 24, 2007

There’s shameless right-wing pandering, and then there’s this level of shameless right-wing pandering.

Janice Easley’s fury over illegal immigration boiled over Saturday as she confronted Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson at the Music Man Square museum.

She said she recalled a film about Mexicans who wanted to take over California and New Mexico. Calling illegal immigrants a taxpayer burden, she wondered whether Americans could march in the streets of Mexico and demand welfare. When Iowans call up the power company, she said, “everything is in Spanish; it’s sickening.”

“You are so, so right,” Thompson responded. English should be the national language, he told the retiree, and immigrants bear some of the blame for the home-loan crisis. “A lot of them couldn’t communicate with the people they were getting the mortgage from,” he said.

Yes, Fred Thompson, a credible Republican presidential candidate and former senator, believes Spanish-speaking immigrants to the U.S. deserve “some of the blame” for the mortgage crisis because they don’t speak English well enough.

I’ve seen the Republican field link immigration to national security (terrorist will sneak across the Mexican border), and link immigration to the culture war (Roe v. Wade allegedly made immigration necessary), but linking immigration to mortgages and sub-prime loans? That’s a new one.

Congratulations, Fred, for scraping the bottom of the pander barrel — and then digging down even lower.

Oh, brother…I get the feeling that Fred is so lazy that he latches on to things the – shall we say, less-informed? – people say and decides to add them to his stump speeches – after all , the more he can say to whip the anti-immigration crowd into a frenzy, the better, right? If you can’t blame it on the terrorists or Bill Clinton, then it must be the Mexicans, I guess.

Fred ought to know that you could be an American with family going back to the Mayflower, have a doctorate in English, and still not be able to wade through the double-speak of a determined mortgage broker with a sales quota who’s working on commission, or understand the language of the loan documents without expert legal advice, so he is – once again – just revealing that he must believe that thinking really is a huge waste of time.

Just the quality we need in a president.

  • Republicans, who are so quick to claim climate change and evolution are theories with the overtone that a theory is merely conjecture, can throw out crap like undocumented immigrants helped to cause the lending crisis we’re in and claim it so readily as fact.

    Gullibility and greed are the underpinnings for what’s happening to the credit and housing markets. And the stupidity that fed it can be seen in Iowans that won’t listen to and understand the menu of options on the phone and wind up being turfed into the Spanish language section of the phone service. That retired Iowan should look at his/ her neighbors who are hiring undocumenteds for their primarily agricultural businesses as the source of their woes. The inability of the ag sector to pay living wages to naturalized citizens is what is causing the influx of workers from south of the border in that area.

  • Help me out here please.

    English IS the national language of this country.

    What is the best job you can get in this country without speaking fluent English?

    Yes, you can be a dishwasher is some fancy restaurant. You can be a baseball player where it doesn’t matter what you speak as long as you can hit a curve ball.

    But you can’t get a decent job in this country without speaking English good.

    Seriously, what is the best job you can get without fluent English? My guess is it would be something like selling ad time on a Spanish language station in south Florida. Anyone have a better job in mind???

  • I don’t see what this has to do with the mortgage crisis. The “crisis” was caused by years of anticipated growth schemes by developers. And yes these developers used a lot of illegal labor to cut corners in wages and quality of workmanship by driving out the American tradesman. A glut of homes were constructed that were never needed prompting mortgage brokers to create unrealistic home loans that were guaranteed to fail. Thousands of home mortgages were also fraudulently processed for illegal aliens using fake identities and credit histories. How the writer turned that into a racist political statement using immigration I will never know, for this has nothing to do with immigration.

  • neil wilson said: “But you can’t get a decent job in this country without speaking English good.”

    Neil – you more or less killed your point with this statement; I’ll leave it up to you to figure out why.

  • Anne:

    If I was you, I would wonder if my english ain’t good or if the misteak I made was good English.

    What does the sentence “Hopefully the dog went home” mean?

    We both know what it means but the only reasonable meaning is that someone named their dog ‘Hopefully’ and that is the dog that went home.

    Merry Christmas everyoneq

  • Fred never said anything about native born, (white), citizens needing to have a basic grasp of grammer…goodness, what are you going to expect next? People reading newspapers! or using their common sense and common decency?

  • The people responsible for the subprime mortgage crisis are primarily Republicans, the predators who did their “preying” every day at their desks while they deliberately disinformed people about what was what in buying a house. The other people responsible are 99.9999999% American citizens who fit Barnum’s maxim “there’s a sucker born every minute,” who believed the law of gravity didn’t apply to the real estate market and that you could indeed get something for nothing. While I hate the predators, I also don’t have a lot of pity for the prey – moron stupidity not being a defense. I remember talking to too many who bought houses they clearly couldn’t aford even at the “teaser” rate, who said “it’s not a problem – we’ll sell it in six months and all will be well.” It wasn’t worth even trying to talk to them this past year about being the one left holding the bag of poop.

    As to Thompson, I can’t figure out who was more pathetic, the little old lady rural moron, or him. Actually, she’s probably too far gone in a lifetime of stupidity and insular racism to know any better, but he’s supposed to know better and if he wants to be the leader, he should lead on that by telling her the truth, but that would involve telling her that his fellow Republicans were her real problem…

  • Given the state of Fred’s numbers it’s pretty obvious that he was trying to scapegoat an unpopular group of people for political ends. But are we really going to argue that people who can’t speak, let alone read English haven’t played any part in this problem, that their language weakness wouldn’t be specially targeted by the sub-prime lenders? This gets to the divide between Republicans and Democrats about people being responsible for protecting themselves to some level vs relying on the “nanny state”. If I sign a document that I can’t understand, can I always claim to be a victim no matter what, or is there a point where I have to bear some responsibility?

    I’m pretty sure the mortgage jackals saw the Spanish-only people in the sub-prime market as easier marks, all they needed was a friendly broker/conman who was fluent in Spanish. And how many Spanish speaking regulators are available to keep tabs on this? I’ll bet it’s very, very few, if any. With no cops on the beat, I’ll bet it’s still a big problem.

    BTW, how does a non-english speaking person sign a mortgage? do most finance companies even offer translated mortgages? And who checks the translation for legal accuracy? This goes directly to the question of whether native language documents should be required, and if so, in how many languages. Despite the PC crowd’s best intentions, there are very logical arguments for pressuring people to adapt to a single language, not least of which is sheer cost of compliance. If you ever deal in multiple language documentation you’ll find out how expensive it can be to create and maintain. It is not trivial. If you implement a system which requires these huge investments in language (and legal) services, you will put smaller operations out of business. Of course the bigger operations would love to see that happen.

    That said, all mortgages seem to be designed to be inscrutable, and THAT really needs to change. Maybe this “crisis” can at least have that outcome to help offset the damage done by this BS on the average homebuyer who can’t afford their own personal lawyers. Fred and all the other fatcats don’t worry about this issue (and many others), because their personal lawyers protect them. When you make enough money a personal lawyer becomes a good investment, unfortunately all our laws are written by people who have never had to fend for themselves (despite their rhetoric of “self-reliance”). The rest of us must rely on the state to protect us from all manner of corporate predators, who of course routinely use the money they steal from us to buy off the “cops”.

    So what we need are progressives in power to enact sensible laws, and thereby protect us shlubs from the jackals who like to hire lobbyists like Fred Thompson. Maybe we could have a law that says that mortgages must be written in plain English, and that asking people to sign documents they can’t understand simply voids the agreement.

    The whole problem would be solved if we had a system where randomly selected congresscritters were given sample mortgages and tested on their ability to comprehend them. That would weed out bogus mortgages AND politicians.

    I know, dream on.

  • Sorry, neil – it must be the chaos of Christmas Eve and all that is still on my to-do list; I dashed something off before I thought about it.

    Apologies.

  • I agree with Thompson. How could Illegal’s NOT be involved in the current mortgage crises, with Bank America leading the charge to give credit to Illegal’s and then the banking industry looking for a bail out of the bad loans that have been made???? What is everybody smoking? Send me some!

  • This article says less about Thompson (the less said, the better), and more about the inherent xenophobia and racism of the immigration debate. This Iowa retiree is “furious” because Mexicans want “to take over California and New Mexico” (according to a movie she saw once) and when she calls the power company “everything is in Spanish; it’s sickening” (as if she can’t get English prompts on the phone). If there was ever a perfect example of the type of attitude that fuels this new Know-Nothingism, I haven’t seen it.

  • FRED THOMPSON is the best person to lead this country. He is a true conservative and has been his entire life. All one has to do is check his record to see this.

    During my time in the Army as an Intelligence Analyst, I served under both Presidents Carter and Reagan (as my commanders in chief). Without argument, President Reagan was the best commander-in-chief a military person could ever have served under. Fred Thompson possesses the same qualities and vision as President Reagan in that he is strong on national defense and sees a dire need to secure our borders and control immigration.

    I can think of no better person to lead this country and fix the problems we have. He is the only candidate from either party who has specific and detailed plans on border security and immigration reform; revitalization of America’s armed forces; saving and protecting Social Security; and tax relief and economic growth. These are detailed on his Web site at http://www.fred08.com . I challenge you to find any other candidate who has laid out specific plans to fix anything.

    Fred Thompson has published his first principles, some of which are mentioned above. In addition to those, he strongly believes in individual liberty, personal responsibility, limited government, federalism, traditional American values, the rule of law and is a strong proponent of the Second Amendment — all concepts established during the birth of our country and documented in our Constitution.

    Again, try to find any candidate who has laid out their plans to “fix” this country. You will find they all speak in vague and abstract terms on their plans.

    For those who have heard Fred Thompson speak, you will usually hear him say that the Fred Thompson you see today is the same Fred Thompson you saw yesterday and is the same Fred Thompson you will see tomorrow. He stands by his principles and values and doesn’t shift his positions based on polls or public opinion; in other words, he doesn’t say what the voters want to hear just to get elected, but remains steadfast on his views and convictions.

    During his time in the Senate he focused on three areas: to lower taxes, strengthen national security and expose waste in the federal government. Fred Thompson has foreign policy experience, having served as member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Senate Intelligence committees.

    As chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, he opened the investigation in 1997 on the Chinese government’s attempt to influence American policies and elections, and this investigation identified connections with the Clinton administration (documented in the committee’s report).

    As a member of the Finance Committee, he worked tirelessly to enact three major tax-cut bills. Fred Thompson remains steadfast and even though a person may not agree with all his views and he understands some may disagree with him, you can count on him to be consistent and unwavering.

    Don’t be fooled by his laid back approach and what critics call his “laziness.” As a former assistant U.S. attorney, he earned a reputation as a tough prosecutor and he possesses the toughness this country needs in order to tackle today’s and tomorrow’s issues.

    I ask that you take a hard look at what this country needs, then take a hard look at all the other candidates’ views, policies, their records and their track record on consistency. Fred Thompson possesses integrity, loyalty, commitment, energy and decisiveness, all traits of an effective leader, and will emerge as the best person to take this country boldly forward.

  • During this blessed holiday season, I am reminded of how Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem and faced extreme difficulties in finding shelter because they were…immigrants. From his birth, my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ could have been considered an illegal alien.

    Later in his life, Jesus upset governments and broke laws as he journeyed through many foreign lands speaking about the goodness of God, and how we should love our brothers and sisters. The Bible should serve as a lesson for all of us when we encounter hateful immigration rhetoric. Those who demagogue the immigration issue should remember Jesus’ life, and be reminded of the challenges He encountered.

    Like Jesus, we need to show compassion and understanding to the people who have risked their lives to build new homes in our wonderful country.

  • Anne:

    It is I who should say I am sorry.

    There is nothing wrong with civil attacks on anyone posting here.

    Their probably isn’t two much wrong with any attack hear.

    I once sent a letter to my father, a professional writer with every misteak I could make. He wasn’t sure if I was joking.

    Anyway, happy holidays

  • Thompson is right that illegals have contributed IN PART to the mortgage crisis. I’m sure many of them are caught up with the ARM’s or balloon payments, just as other legal citizens are. My first thought was how can an illegal get a mortgage anyway, but then I remembered the greedy banks and mortgage companies. They saw $ signs in their eyes by offering sub-prime mortgages to people who should not have been eligible. They could care less who they take as customers, as long as they get their money. Well, now we know the price for those wise decisions. Thompson seems to have the best immigration plan of any candidate so far. The Dems Hillary, Obama (for the DREAM Act) and Edwards won’t even consider any tough measures, so they are all out as viable candidates in my book. Huckabee plan sounds good but is unrealisitic and will not work. He also has advocated some perks for illegals in the past. Romney HAD to know he had illegals working on his mansion, so that just makes him a liar for stating otherwise and shows he does not care about enforcement of our immigration laws or care that illegals are right under his nose. McCain was all the for “amnesty” bill so he is out too. Guiliani made NY a santuary city and was damned proud of it. Tancredo was the only one with the guts to speak the truth about illegal immigration but he’s out now. I say whoever becomes pres should hire him as the head of Immigration. So who is left then?? Nobody !! I am amazed that none of the remaining candidates see the negative impact that illegal immigration is having on our country. It should be one of our top concerns. If we do nothing, in decades to come, America will look far different from what we know now and not in a good way. Get serious, candidates !!

  • Just wait till all those Mexicans in your area go back to Mexico, so there’ll be fewer households requiring shelter! Guess what that will do to the value of *your* home, lady.

    Sheesh. What a bunch of maroons.

  • Pingback: Scholars and Rogues » Blog Archive » Grampa Fred connects immigration and the housing slump–but gets the wrong answer

  • First of all, someone trying to reside in the United States with no status, as an illegal alien should not be permitted to buy residential property, period. That should be reserved only for legal immigrants, and citizens!
    Secondly, no doubt illegal aliens were compromised and did contribute to the mortgage crisis, but the mortgage loan industry thirst for loan accounts, and their own exploitive greed caused most of the problem. They stupidly relaxed the loan verification procedures which would have revealed the applicants citizenship status and ability to re-pay, thus paving the way for illegal aliens to qualify for a mortgage loan!
    That backfired, so now we all pay for the foolishness of a few… This kind of thing is a disaster when we allow a few to ignore Title 8 of U.S. Immigration Law.
    We are reaping what we’ve sown…
    Deport illegal aliens. Give the nation back to citizens. Regulate financial institutions and parties that conduct business here which is not in the best interests of the U. S. Citizen!

  • “Yes, Fred Thompson, a credible Republican presidential candidate and former senator, believes Spanish-speaking immigrants to the U.S. deserve “some of the blame” for the mortgage crisis because they don’t speak English well enough.

    Have you read the verbiage on most mortgage documents lately? I doubt that a fully fluent individual could parse it all correctly.

    Fortunately, if you’re a homeowner, here is something that you will understand:

    More and more folks are using a Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) as an interest cancellation account to accelerate their home equity and payoff their home *years* sooner than listed on their mortgage amortization schedule.

    Unfortunately, today’s Real Estate market means that folks can no longer count on appreciation to build home equity. Those who realize that they need to pay down their current mortgage debt are looking for alternate ways to aggressively (yet safely) build equity.

    And they’ve discovered a perfect online system to do that; they can focus on their wealth accumulation goals while accelerating their equity simply by using a Home Equity Line of Credit to ‘power’ the Money Merge Account™ financial solutions program.

    A typical 30 year loan (of whatever type) can be paid down in 1/3 to 1/2 the time — it’s a great way to save *huge* amounts of income by eliminating a mortgage amortization front-end interest load. (On a million-plus dollar home, I’ve personally seen where the Money Merge Account™ program will save the homeowner $750,000 in interest charges!)

    And the best thing – homeowners don’t have to refinance their existing mortgage or, in most cases, make any adjustments to their lifestyle.

    It is unfortunate that most of us were never taught to follow three essential principles: (1) Avoid paying interest, whenever possible, (2) Use other people’s money, whenever possible and (3) Find and use a financial system that will guide you, especially if you have the tendency to go off-track. The Money Merge Account™ software and the program’s counselors use these principles to keep each homeowner focused on their wealth accumulation goals.

    I’d be happy to provide further details…

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