The US forced stuff like this - and much more - on other countries, with FATCA.
Just one example: Foreign banks must report all financial activities of Americans to the US. An American official wad asked in an interview if the US would then report financial activities of non-Americans to their home tax authorities. The answer was "lol, no, that would be too much effort".
Not just citizens, it applies to American residents as well. A Swiss citizen friend of mine couldn't open up an account in Switzerland because the banks didn’t want to deal with FACTA and he had an American green card.
> Foreign banks must report all financial activities of Americans to the US. An American official wad asked in an interview if the US would then report
The U.S. predominantly compels banks through FATCA. If a bank wants to do business in America, it has to follow FATCA for Americans abroad. There is, of course, some regulatory co-operation. But to my knowledge, most countries don't directly transmit these data to the U.S.–the banks have to report it instead.
The correct analogy would be a foreign country requiring U.S. banks to send them data on their own citizens abroad. Which, I think, e.g. India could probably do.
> The correct analogy would be a foreign country requiring U.S. banks to send them data on their own citizens abroad. Which, I think, e.g. India could probably do.
India does get information from the US and other countries about Indian residents having accounts (bank, brokerage, etc.) in other countries.
There are agreements across several countries that use CRS (Common Reporting Standard) to report such information to other countries for tax purposes. This is not India or US specific.
>Reporting Mechanism: In countries with Intergovernmental Agreements (IGAs), such as Canada, financial institutions report to local tax authorities, which then share the information with the IRS.
This law is intended to harm immigrants to the US who the administration does not want here by making it harder for them to access US banking services. The ideal outcome here isn't that the US starts reporting financial information of non-Americans to their home countries' banks, it's that those non-Americans leave the US altogether.
Most countries not just "collect citizenship data", they require you to have a valid non-expired ID, valid non-expired residential registration, a fresh digital photo, verified phone number and a valid tax number. All of that without any US interference.
My crude understanding is that in the 90's, the US controlled basically all the world's large-scale financial clearing network, and after 9/11 declared a holy war against anything that didn't provide visibility to US intelligence (like the surviving medieval Middle Eastern 'Hawala' banking system) and the ability for the US to sanction it on a fine-grained basis.
Since that time, we have grabbed on tighter and tighter, and are finding that the world is starting to seek out a less politically volatile patron for a financial system.
It's pretty wild, I work in finance and hawala was specifically called out in my anti money laundering training. Really seems like cultural chauvanism and thinly veiled racism to eschew an entire traditional monetary support system.
> Banks are required to collect information through “know your customer” rules, but have pushed back against this plan. But Bessent told CNBC, “If Treasury and the banking regulators say it’s their job, it’s their job.”
Well I can't see this ending well. It's either more invasive KYC or it's a push towards debanking people out of favor with the government again.
"Well I can't see this ending well. It's either more invasive KYC ..."
I think there is an opportunity here for an elegant solution.
Banks, by definition, know quite a bit about you and aspects of your identity and this is not necessarily problematic nor dangerous.
Further, banks enjoy exorbitant privileges above all other business firms and organizations - privileges that the public rarely receives any upside in exchange.
For these reasons, I think we should consider concentrating KYC responsibilities with the banks such that they do the heavy lifting and the rest of the economy reaps the benefits.
Here is one small example:
A credit or debit card which, by virtue of the card number itself, identifies the user as being over 18 years of age. The bank already knows this information with very high confidence and now smaller, less resourced firms could make use of this to effectively age-gate with almost no investment and no fragmented intrusion into the private lives of their customers.
I don't see any world in which the banks don't have all of this information anyway - why not get some value out of it ?
Perhaps Bessent has forgotten that Chevron Doctrine was overturned and now courts get the final say on this instead of the federal agencies. Double edged sword
Incorrect, banks in other countries require this data solely because the US is the only country that taxes its citizens even outside its borders. Compliance with FATCA is the only reason why most banks literally have a checkbox in their application forms specifically to state that you do not hold US citizenship in any form. Some Swiss banks even outright forbid US clients. Dealing with FATCA is just another logistical nightmare for most banks.
my bank specifically asked me a bunch of questions that they claimed they needed to send to the US. it wasn't just a checkbox that i am not a citizen. it's more complicated than that. non-citizens could have tax obligations to the US if they work there or work for a US company.
They don't need to send your data if you're not working for a US company, or if you're not a US resident/citizen. That is, sending data to the US is not the default. Also yes, the checkbox wasn't just a single box but an entire page just dedicated to FATCA issues i.e. the banks are doing as much as possible to absolve themselves of any FATCA obligations and document it.
Anything remotely connecting a client to the US is kryptonite to banks.
Not just because of either - many countries tax and treat citizen/permanent resident accounts wildly differently than non-citizen and non permanent resident accounts.
India has a whole swath of different account types based on this criteria, with wildly different rules.
NRI accounts are different in that they're localized. You don't have UBS in Switzerland asking me if I'm an Indian citizen or resident, like they do for the US.
Sure, as it is in their purview within India. But does UBS or Santander ask their clients in Europe if they're specifically an Indian citizen or resident? Does RBS send a form to a prospective client asking them to explicitly check off if they're a citizen/resident of India or China or wherever?
My point is that the US gov’t asking US banks to verify citizenship/residency of account holders in the US is not that unusual, if looking at the norm internationally. What is your point?
My point is and always was about US government rules forcing foreign banks in third countries to check for US citizenship and residency specifically. Otherwise citizenship checks have always been a thing everywhere. But in order to comply with the US rules, banks have to maintain a separate documented US FATCA section altogether in their enrollment process, even if they are in some unrelated third country.
It s the sheer horror we have to live with in the EU. The intrusiveness of banks is beyond this world. As soon as you re a little bit off the rails, say you lived in different countries or own real estate in another country, all he'll breaks loose. Endless KYC, banks rejecting you, making pointless snitch reports to the various IRSes you have to respond to (there are several if you live in one country but have revenues from a company or real estate in another), etc.
Endless waste of time, red tape, administratrivia...
See that's the thing people are upset about though - the fact that the documents you need are either an original certified copy of a thin sheet of paper from whatever random backwater you were born in's local government (birth cert), or an expensive time-consuming document that needs to be renewed on top of that (passport).
In general, the people against these kinds of things aren't against the simple extra check of something that's theoretically already true (registered to vote / ID at voting place, citizenship at banks, etc). They're against forcing people to provide arcane, asterisk-ridden (including married women! a large demographic!) documents.
If we just had a normal federal ID system like a normal country, where you just got one mailed to you when your kid was born just like their social security card manages to do, then this would all be much more fine. But noooo god forbid we be normal for once. Much better to keep using random bullshit in place of a national ID.
Having been through this in the UK, what people want is:
- a rigorous secure biometric identity system
- .. but not for citizens, only for immigrants.
(one of the weird consequences of this is that the final stage of naturalization was to send back / destroy your secure ID: https://www.gov.uk/biometric-residence-permits ; we now have a purely online "share code" system, which everyone is much more scared of because you have no way to contradict the computer)
Yeah the US should institute a normal federal ID system like a normal country. It might strictly be necessary to amend the constitution to do this, although plenty of other expansions of what the federal government does have happened without a formal amendment.
Many Americans think mandatory ID is some kind of dystopian measure. It's part of an irrational cultural obsession with "government control" that believe that if something could hypothetically be used for oppressive purposes, then it will be and must be resisted. Never mind that in practice, you very often need to have a state-issued ID of some kind of do things.
Mind you, I am not saying gov'ts cannot misbehave. I am merely saying that this categorical opposition is imprudent and irrational. It's like the idea that you shouldn't leave your basement, because bad things might happen to you outside. What kind of life is that? Yeah, something could, but you aren't living life by remaining cooped up. And news flash: you're going to die eventually.
The US cultural thing is really the opposite of cowering in your basement, at least in my generation and older.
We were steeped in propaganda about the "papers, please" police state in other parts of the world, versus our freedom to travel. It's this idea that you are not allowed to leave your basement without an exit visa which is horrifying.
There is also the religious angle, with some believing that a national ID would be the "mark of the beast" from the bible. Ironically, these days the US religious right seems excited by the prospects of fascist control, rather than rebelling against it. I'm honestly not sure if that is just hypocrisy or if, in their minds, they are gleefully accelerating us towards the "end times" now.
We are actively seeing the current US government shift towards malevolence and fascism. These fears of government control were very rational, evidently, as the government is currently abusing every possible system it can. I mean, a lot of this stuff is really being pushed to its limits and beyond.
And, all of those "unspoken rules" and relationships, due diligence, etc are finally coming home to roost. We have put too many trust-based systems in place.
Also, the US has a long history of abusing government power. The last time we required ID for voting we did it to prevent black people from voting. So now, people are rightfully scared of voter ID. Um... whoops.
I mean one of the uses for something like this is to make it easier to de-bank people. That is, make it impossible for them to function financially. That sounds super dystopian to me and a power the government shouldn't have.
They call it 'collateral damage' so that it fall outside of the constitutional protection/requirement that all punishments need to stem from a conviction and then a judge's determination the punishment is directly proportional to the conviction so it's also un-American.
As a citizen of a small country with decently long democratic traditions, I've always found American attitudes like that weird. From my perspective, if you live in a free country, any government you have by definition reflects the will of the people. If you're afraid of what the government might do, you're really afraid of what your fellow citizens might do. Afraid that your fellow citizens don't share your values, or those of the constitution.
When it comes to de-banking, the bigger threat seems to come from the banks than from the government. Your bank might choose to de-bank you, because it doesn't like you. Because you are too risky or too unpleasant, or because the computer says so. So if you're afraid of de-banking, you might want to pass a law that makes it illegal for a bank to refuse to offer basic services to you, unless one of the exceptions listed in the law applies.
> if you live in a free country, any government you have by definition reflects the will of the people.
There's no such definition, where did you get that from? The only definition is "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance".
> If you're afraid of what the government might do, you're really afraid of what your fellow citizens might do.
In non-fantasy land all power corrupts.
> you might want to pass a law that makes it illegal for a bank to refuse to offer basic services to you
We don't pass laws, our representatives do, we select reps from a pool of candidates but becoming a candidate outside of the established parties is subject to the regulations established by these parties... you get the idea.
> As a citizen of a small country with decently long democratic traditions, I've always found American attitudes like that weird.
There's bliss and then there's reality... which happens to be weird, unfortunately.
Our ancestors came to the US because our neighbors in Europe decided they should die for following the wrong religion, be it catholic irish/germans or non-catholic french/jewish.
So yes, our country is founded on not letting that happen, not letting your neighbors have that kind of power over your life, via the old world/European direct killing/starvation/exile from society or a modern world reimaged debanking that basically strangles you to death with the burden of just existing in the modern world without modern finance/electronic funds/card payment.
In the US there are strict banks and then there are immigrant/human friendly banks like US Bank. I can easily change banks. I can't exist in a right to life/liberty/happiness way with no bank, and the government can't take that right away unless I have been convicted and a judge ruled that in my circumstances specifically it should be taken away.
But what happens if your neighbors no longer believe in that? Does a constitution still matter, if its values are no longer the values of the people? Who will enforce the constitution, if the people who are supposed to do that no longer want to?
If you live in a free country, your neighbors become a problem before the government does. If they become a problem, the government will often follow, and then you may no longer be living in a free country.
> Does a constitution still matter, if its values are no longer the values of the people?
Yes, otherwise the incumbents could pull stunts like opening the borders to flood the nation with foreigners, radically redefining who "the people" are in order to dictate what "our values" are.
The entire point of written law is to outlive the whims of human nature.
How does written law enforce itself if the police and the judges are compromised?
Everything is ultimately enforced by people. If people stop believing in something, the government will eventually follow suit. And not just the handful of top leaders elected or appointed for a few years, but most people from the top to the bottom in every branch of the government. Especially the ones with the power to make a difference.
The written law may say something, but people in power are very good at twisting its purpose and ignoring it. Especially when that's something everyone expects from you.
That is why the US government is designed the way it is, with the electoral college, 2 senators per state, etc.
It is all designed to prevent European style tyranny of the majority or mob rule, yet also create a representational state. It's a tricky balance. But our ancestors were, again, murdered or forced to flee half way around the world, so a core concern/reality we work hard to avoid at the cost of slower government/less direct democracy that like you say can change on a whim or easily be directed as a weapon against ones neighbors. We prefer a slow out of touch government that protects freedom/peoples rights than a government that represents short term opinion happy to trample.
My point was that an oppressive government cannot appear out of nowhere in a free country. The citizens must abandon constitutional values first. If an oppressive government remains in power and maintains its popularity long enough, it will infiltrate all levels of the government and compromise checks and balances.
Then, with popular and institutional support, the government can do basically whatever it wants. Regardless of what powers it had before or what the constitution says.
You should not be afraid of giving the government new powers simply because it might go bad later. (There are other valid reasons, but that's not one of them.) If the government does go bad, it can take those powers on its own just fine. You should be afraid of your fellow citizens going bad and starting to think that their personal goals and values are more important than constitutional values. Because that's a prerequisite for the government going bad.
Since others are not saying it, enforcing this will immediately cause havoc as any number of citizens do not have ready access to any document proving citizenship.
(Non-US people note that this is likely a major difference between the US and your country. The US does not compulsorily provide proof of citizenship to its citizens that can be used at places where one is typically asked to prove one's citizenship.)
Bessent notes here that Real ID would not be considered valid ID for this purpose, which sounds like it will have the same problems as the SAVE act. This could mean debanking anyone who has changed their name and does not have a notarized copy of the name change certificate, and most people who do not drive.
(I am not sure how it would handle minors, who generally do not have any photo ID. Would they have to come in to provide ID when they turn 18?)
The underlying idea is fine, but it creates problems when combined with the reluctance to issue any kind of national ID.
I don't even think it's about partisan tilt anymore. This administration's M.O. is raw chaos, havoc, and just this low-level randomized churn that keeps us all conditioned to believe that nothing in government works deterministically anymore.
> If they don't have documentation, are they citizens?
Yes. As OP said, "anyone who has changed their name and does not have a notarized copy of the name change certificate, and most people who do not drive." Note that the first category includes many married women.
> All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
This is part of the US constitution. There's no "if they have proper documentation" qualification.
If the US Constitution is to have force as the core document foundational to the governance of the US, it is important for its clear text to have the force of law.
An executive agency creating new requirements for citizenship has the effect of overriding the Constitution, which brings into question what are the controlling documents for the country.
Yeah I don't think people are really fully appreciating the scope of this, because it means people would essentially have to have a passport to open a bank account.
It's very dark. I tend to be libertarian about these things and feel like it's none of the government's business. Get a warrant and do your investigations if you want to prove someone is a foreigner up to no good. There is no real problem unless you're xenophobic or racist.
So I don't agree the "underlying idea is fine" at all. This is a step further though, by putting an administrative and financial burden on people to have a bank account.
The fact this is normal in other places in the world doesn't make it ok to me either — two wrongs don't make a right. And in any event many other places are more socialized than the US, so there isn't the same kind of burden on many places as there would be in the US. It would be one thing if the administration were bending over backwards to provide public healthcare, expand education and public research, but they're doing the opposite.
> I don't agree the "underlying idea is fine" at all
I gave you a shout out! :-P
> the reluctance to issue any kind of national ID
Americans have tended to resist this kind of surveillance (when done by the government). Honestly, because it's not necessary. It doesn't make sense to tax 350 million people when DOJ usually doesn't even go after the known big fish. Or when companies can openly violate e.g. money transfer laws at vast scale until they get rich enough to get the laws changed in their favor.
This feels like the kind of thing that will blow up if they implement it and then have to be kicked down the road forever, like RealID. Old people know that the initial RealID deadline was before Barack Obama's election.
You are required to prove your citizenship to the government (by proxy of your bank or otherwise). The government lacks a unified document of identity which would by law act as a proof of citizenship, and reserves its right to call any other document it is issuing to be “insufficient”.
Generally will leave as an exercise for the reader.
But immediately one can say that most minors will not have the requisite picture ID because they do not drive and we are not required to carry picture ID (this rollout would be touch more people than the requirement that drivers carry ID). So as of right now, most minors in the US cannot prove citizenship under the criteria Bessent is suggesting (yes, the country should be debating this).
Let's call it all the people under 15 so we don't get the "akshully learner's permit" folks objecting. The US has ~60 million people in the 0-14 age bracket, apply whatever ratio you want to that for citizens/noncitizens and you are still going to end up with a lot, likely millions, of people.
Minors aren’t allowed to open bank accounts without their parents being on the account. Unless their parents are also in that age bracket, but that’s biologically unlikely
You asked who doesn't have the required documentation, I am telling you it's minors. Saying parents are also on the account does not change that as of this moment, those documents do not exist and therefore have to be secured.
> Unless their parents are also in that age bracket
This is irrelevant because the point was to identify a broad population that currently does not have the relevant documentation. That's people 0-14.
> Since others are not saying it, enforcing this will immediately cause havoc as any number of citizens do not have ready access to any document proving citizenship.
I didnt have all the documents available for my Real ID which has quite the requirements. In the limit, at least as many as any other citizenship proofing task. We can assume the greatest difficulty would be for the homeless.
It took me ~15 minutes on the social security admin website to get a card ordered to me because mine is lost somewhere in a safe. I had it sent to my house, a PO box, homeless shelter, or any other location would work too. Can be done via a library if you're homeless. Zero excuse.
It took me ~20 minutes to figure out which hospital I was born at and get a copy of my birth certificate shipped to me. See above. Likely marginally more difficult for a homeless person. Not terrible difficult though if you're not so cracked out you don't remember even the state in which you were born. Again, zero excuse.
It took me ~30 seconds to find a document to prove my current residency. Trivial for a homeless person as well. Zero excuse.
Again, in the limit, the government should provide an easier way to do this. But the pearl clutching over the difficulty is to vastly overstated.
This is simply a fantastic excuse to not require citizenship for yet another thing. Something absolutely unheard of in other western countries. I'm beginning to think all of this avoiding proof of citizenship has an ulterior motive.
The point is that there are hundreds of millions of consumer bank accounts in the US, and it's not clear that Treasury appreciates the turmoil they are proposing. The country has not had a debate over this, it sounds like it might just drop out of the sky one day and create unnecessary chaos.
We can use the rollout of Real ID itself as a gauge. Executives of both parties, and several Congresses, landed on 20 years as an appropriate rollout time to do so smoothly. And that's basically only needed for air travel, which most Americans do not do in a given year.
It's not crazy to ask that a more disruptive change be subject to more scrutiny and deliberation about its rollout.
In your case, everything was straightforward, you already have a license, and your bank is local so you can walk in and show your ID, awesome for you. But over hundreds of millions of people, every edge case will present. (Is it okay for banks to freeze assets of people in hospitals who are unable to perform the necessary steps and present themselves at a bank? Inmates? How are joint accounts handled? What counts as bank account? What happens to money currently held legally here by foreign nationals?)
The one that might affect the most people here: if you have to show ID, presumably the bank has to be able to authenticate it against your person. Which means an in-person visit. This would be bad if you are one of the tens of millions of Americans whose primary bank does not have any branches in their state of residence. I bank at my alma mater's credit union, even though I have not lived in that state for decades. Would I need to travel there to show my ID or have my account frozen?
Again, a bipartisan set of Congresses and Presidents landed on 20 years to rollout when the only real penalty would be some people would not be able to board a plane when they wanted to, without extra scrutiny.
A botched rollout of this could lead to unpredictable financial calamities as rents and other bills go unpaid, etc.
There is simply not an emergency here, we don't have to upend our financial system pretending there is. The ulterior motive here is to preserve the stability of our financial system while making changes.
- can't get a job without a local bank account
- can't get a bank account without a residential address
- can't get a (rented) residential address without proof of employment
- getting a local phone number may also depend on / be required for any of these steps
There's usually "fixer" services which help people get out of this mess, but it can be a real problem even for 100% legitimate professional class immigrant workers.
I don't think exceptions or confined bad side effects make for very good arguments against general policy. You wouldn't ban planes, because sometimes they crash. This isn't math. We're not proving that a rule holds for every element of the domain.
.. unless you're the person to whom the side effects are happening. How many citizens is it acceptable to wrongly deport or debank, potentially without trial?
The US and the UK have the unique situation of backing themselves into national ID requirements without ever actually issuing national ID, which makes for stupid outcomes.
Most HN users aren't even posting during Anglophone hours though [0]. Based on the style of English as well as the type of post content, HN engagement seems to be increasingly filled with DACH and CEE residents during American mornings (which is ironic as YC doesn't follow GDPR and retains full rights to use HN comments as they so wish in perpetuity).
Maybe, but most HNers didn't work in high finance which messes with your sleep cycle :').
I'm still processing the dataset but there is a significant shift in HN usage from aligning with average American hours to non-American hours over the past few years.
Japan is well known in their acceptance of foreigners. Their economy is sputtering, the population is aging, and no matter how many economists tell the politicians they need to invigorate their economy they would rather build shitty robots.
Not just Japan. Stats are pretty miserable across the developed world.
The main reason for demographic decline and low fertility is liberal consumerism. Liberal consumerism is the religion of the developed world, and like all religions, it is a worldview that shapes one's understanding of what life is about. Consumerism's implicit anthropology is hostile to fertility, because fertility is at odds with the consumerist imperative. It also shapes how people view relationships and society. Consumerism is totalizing and produces a culture that smothers everything in the logic of consumerism.
Immigration is just an extractive and parasitic bandage over a gangrenous limb. The solution is to destroy consumerism and replaced with something better and more human. This will happen sooner or later, as consumerist societies will be eradicated through selective pressure (they'll go extinct), but it is better to voluntarily wage a religious, cultural, and political war against consumerism to save these societies.
Japan continues to have an HDI comparable to similarly sized France [0] despite having almost double it's GDP and a median age comparable to both Germany and Italy, and a TFR comparable to other European states [1].
It is also able to field a navy and armed forces that is independently able to hold off against China. Meanwhile, look at Europe and how it's managed the Ukraine Crisis.
America is quite unique in a lot of ways. We became the worlds superpower as a result of being willing and able to share our resources with immigrants seeking a better life, and building it here, free of restrictions like that.
The obvious difference is that the US, more or less by deliberate design, had a remarkably lax approach to visa overstays and illegal border crossings for decades. This resulted in a population of more than 10 million "unauthorized" residents.
Any policy that suddenly pulls the rug on them is notable precisely because we created the problem (or not-a-problem, depending on your leanings) in the first place.
If other innocent people are collateral damage, then yes. Essentially the US "let this" happens and now wants to reverse course, but they're gonna be taking down a lot of good, hard working people with them.
Also, this will negatively affect a TON of citizens, which always sucks ass even if you think immigration is evil.
More accurately, half the country wants a deliberately lax approach to visa overstays and illegal border crossings, and the other half doesn't. Right now radicalized anti-immigrationists are in poltical power and they are going hard in the direction of anti-immigrant policies, under the expectation that the pro-immigration party might win the next election and attempt to reverse those policies.
Other countries also provide free and mandated forms of identification without all of the hassle and bullshit we have to go through in the US.
I spent most of my time in Texas using either my passport or my old forms of ID because my schedule never aligned with the DMV and I didn't have a driver's license to surrender.
There's a large portion of citizens here that would not have valid or current identification in order to open up an account nor the means to immediately obtain it.
Neither of the two countries I’ve opened bank accounts in, the UK and Finland, have a free form of ID available for their citizens (and absolutely not for immigrants!), and yet the banks have certainly wanted to be sure of my citizenship and status.
Yes for the most part Finnish bureaucracy works fairly well but some parts don't make sense. To get a bank account as a non-EU foreigner just follow these simple steps:
- Receive the residence permit card. This is good enough for the men with guns at the airport to let you in to the country, welcome!
- Get municipality of residence. To do this you need an address, to get an address you need a bank account. To get a bank account you need the following ID card. To get the following ID card you need municipality of residence.
- When you find some way to break the above loop, go to the police station and apply and pay for an ID card. Take the first residence card with you.
- Now take this ID card to a bank along with your passport and residence permit.
The data printed on the ID card is effectively less than that printed on the residence card. But as the residence card is not considered an official form of ID, banks won't let you use it. Heck, the corner shop won't let you use it as ID to buy booze and smokes.
The border police in ~20ish other Schengen countries should be fine with it though. Not the ID card of course, that has 'NOT VALID FOR TRAVEL' printed on it in big letters unless you're an actual Finnish citizen.
Having an EU passport means you get to replace the first step with 'register your right of residence at an office at an appointment 3 months in the future' and also means you get to skip the ID card bit, but you can't jump straight to bank account.
Of course - Finland being a solid member of SEPA, why do you even need a local account? Just use Wise or whatever. In that case, I hope you like filing everything on paper and in person because the only practical way to identify online here is with a local service provider (bank, mobile phone certificate, or smart ID card). I hear you say eIDAS, but that's not widely adopted by private companies so things like setting up internet or electricity connections are not going to be possible with that.
Basically this. Banks are already deputized into being de facto law enforcement by some of the KYC/AML checks they are mandated to do, and anti-immigrationists want this remit to include checking if someone is in the US illegally trying to use a bank.
People seriously underestimate how much easier it is to open a bank account in the US compared to most other countries. Especially with how many states give out government-issued IDs to non-residents/non-citizens (16 states + Washington DC).
It's estimated that between $250 billion and 500 billion is laundered through US banks every year, though some portion of that is via correspondent banking and not just individual account money muleing.
And this just collects that information. It doesn't actually stop people from opening these accounts or shut them down.
> It's estimated that between $250 billion and 500 billion is laundered through US banks every year, though some portion of that is via correspondent banking and not just individual account money muleing.
The money laundering is not happening through consumer deposit accounts (I've never heard your term money mueling and it's almost definitely not people moving $10,000 at a time if that's what you are suggesting).
It is wanton disingenuity to think that the goal of this rule is prevention of money laundering.
I didn't say that was the goal. I explicitly said that it wouldn't do anything about it. Just that it happens.
And absolutely it happens, particularly with networks of accounts connected to China. Just because you've never heard of it doesn't mean that it doesn't happen. FinCEN has been publicly chasing this down for years. Although hawala networks are also a big source of that not mainly personal banking.
Also you're missing the forest for the trees here. Money laundering will most often happen through business bank accounts but a large number of business account holders also have personal accounts at the same bank and link them out of convenience.
Personal ID is also required to open a business bank account. This requirement will likely apply to those as well.
> Also you're missing the forest for the trees here
I see what you're saying - I am just trying to convey that the $250 billion dollars being laundered is commercial. It's hard to imagine how anyone can come close to those figures by using consumer accounts, linked or not.
Ok agreed. So why? If there is an issue with foreigners then why is anyone exempted from reporting BOI? I have foreigners in my entities, surely the gov wants to know about them?
The money laundering won't go away. It'll just move to administrations-approved money laundering vehicles like crypto. And needlessly disrupt or ruin the lives of millions. Neat.
> But that doesn’t satisfy Bessent. “Why can unknown foreign nationals come and open a bank account?”
To do business obviously. Are you seriously telling me the government, armed with Palantir, can’t already flag money laundering? Why is an “unknown” in the country in the first place given this admin’s extremely hostile view towards immigrants?
The goal is to de-bank any opposition to the government. It starts with an easy out group like immigrants. Then more and more groups will get de-banked or otherwise disenfranchised.
Holy crap, it's been a long time since I saw that dopey Obama/tea-party line. Fox News bullshit from the past seems down right quaint by today's standards
If you still believe that nonsense after all these years nothing I can say that'll change your mind.
This is one of the all time greatest examples of "lying with facts". It's technically correct, the IRS absolutely singled out a bunch of non-profits due to administrative fowl ups, but trying to say Obama "targeted" the Tea Party intentionally was so hilariously stupid I'm amazed anyone bought it.
It starts with an even easier out group like "actual criminals or other groups that are fairly strongly hated by a lot of people".
The groundwork for this crap was laid in the 1870s when they were going after the klan, the 1920s bootleggers, then the 1940s-50s mobsters, 1980s drug traffickers, 2000s terrorists, etc, etc. Every step of the way people cheered.
Of course some people looked at the "hurricane cone" of public policy at the time and said that we were not on a good path. Of course they were ignored.
Personally I think the American banking system is garbage. The technology is awful. But the government requirements are too onerous and potentially unconstitutional. The government doesn't need to know who I am, the bank doesn't need to know the customer.
I think bank's KYC is fine, and I have no issues with making this more strict.
After Equifax hired a music major for their Chief Security Officer and leaked everyone's information for free, I had someone open a bank account in my name. Luckily I caught it and got it shut down. I was not reimbursed by Equifax for the giant pain in the ass this was.
This data collection is not for immigrants. most people they just come, work and leave. Sooner or later all those Maga clowns understand, this is all about controlling them.wait for the results until they integrate everything into Palantir.
Which is how most of the world does it. What is interesting is that in 2023 the CFPB/DOJ started threatening to sue banks if they relied on immigration status/duration of stay to approve loans, which was generally regarded as threatening banks not to consider immigration status for loans. There is a risk that if they use this information the next president in the white house may try to sue them, however if they don't use immigration information then they'll be left stranded with a bunch of bad loans. It's probably better that they have this information but it is a bit of a lose-lose
Don't let commenters convince you this is normal. This is a concerted effort by Republicans to win the midterm elections. It's a very old Republican tactic: disenfranchise poor ethnic communities that would vote Democrat.
> The planned EO is one more plank in President Donald Trump’s broader effort to tie his immigration policy to collection of information in the United States, including for voting and Census efforts.
As usual for a Republican agenda, it hurts the economy in order to achieve its ideological goals.
> In addition to legal questions, some policy experts and banks have warned about damage to the economy if people are denied access to the banking system and deposit accounts, as well as potentially big increases in administrative costs for banks. [...] Allowing noncitizens, including undocumented immigrants, to legally open bank accounts using documentation, such as an ITIN, means they can pay taxes and avoid being part of the “unbanked” existing in a purely cash economy. Being unbanked is often associated with less ability to move up the social ladder and contribute to economic growth.
It turns out that most of the world is not Europe. We have our own system, evolved over a century, responding to events in this country. Abruptly changing that system creates real harm to a gigantic population.
We don't have a national ID system, and we have millions of undocumented immigrants, as well as millions of African Americans who have been systematically oppressed in order to elevate the interests of a white majority. (that's not an opinion, it's a fact; our Supreme Court literally wouldn't let southern states change election laws without checking with them, because southern states wanted to eliminate most black people from voter roles)
21 million adults in this country lack a driver's license. Of those the largest groups are Black and Hispanic populations. 11 million more without IDs are undocumented immigrants. That's 32 million people disenfranchised and unbanked. A larger population than most EU countries, without a vote or a bank account.
IF you introduced a national ID system, and got every single American on it, then this wouldn't be an issue, because everyone could still vote and bank. But that's not what they want. They want 32 million people to suffer. That's why this is wrong, regardless of what's common in Europe.
> 21 million adults in this country lack a driver's license. Of those the largest groups are Black and Hispanic populations. 11 million more without IDs are undocumented immigrants. That's 32 million people disenfranchised and unbanked. A larger population than most EU countries, without a vote or a bank account.
Yes, the entire point of this law is to try to reduce the number of illegal immigrants (11 million is probably an underestimate) physically present in the US by making it harder for them to use banks and by deputizing banks to do some amount of illegal immigration enforcement by way of banking regulations, as we already do for a variety of classes of crime. If they are currently enfranchised at all, it's because they're also voting illegally, and this is a good argument for putting more stringent checks on legal citizenship when people vote.
> IF you introduced a national ID system, and got every single American on it, then this wouldn't be an issue, because everyone could still vote and bank. But that's not what they want. They want 32 million people to suffer. That's why this is wrong, regardless of what's common in Europe.
A huge proportion of that 32 million figure is non-Americans; literally foreigners from other countries who entered or remained in the US in violation of US immigration law. Any of those people voting is a huge problem for actual American citizens. It's not necessarily a problem if foreigners use US banks, just as it's not necessarily a problem if I (an American citizen) use a bank in a foreign country; but if someone avoids using a US bank because they are already present in the US illegally this is a perfectly reasonable outcome because what should be happening to them is that they get arrested and deported.
You're saying you want tens of millions of people to struggle to survive. For what exactly? A principle? What, that they should "not do illegal things" ?
This obsession with people violating the law is extremely one-sided. Nobody's going after the tax-dodging criminal corporations that are actually stealing billions of dollars from the government through tax loopholes and offshore accounts. Conservatives don't say peep about a literal convicted felon in the highest office in government. But they're sure happy to go after poor brown people, who just happen to be propping up the economy.
> If they are currently enfranchised at all, it's because they're also voting illegally
Illegals do not vote. (https://www.npr.org/2024/10/12/nx-s1-5147789/voting-election...) Enfranchisement means the ability to take a paycheck and deposit it in a bank. You know, to pay for baby food, clothes, education. To buy a home. To pay taxes. To pay for gas, to go to a job, and contribute to the economy. To send kids to college, who will grow up and become doctors, lawyers, software developers, business owners.
> if someone avoids using a US bank because they are already present in the US illegally this is a perfectly reasonable outcome because what should be happening to them is that they get arrested and deported
You don't even have a clue how much this would screw you over, do you? You're cutting off your nose to spite your face. And all for what? A principle that you wouldn't apply to others the same way?
America has illegal immigrants because we asked for them. We literally have no way to process all our fruit and vegetable produce without underpaid migrant workers. This was made plainly obvious during COVID, when all the crops rotted in the ground, because we blocked migrant workers from coming in and picking crops. We do not have the labor force to do it. We also use migrant workers for a huge swath of construction, hospitality, kitchen staff, because 1) we don't have an equivalent labor force for these jobs, and 2) their incredibly low pay subsidizes the low prices you pay for the end products.
Furthermore, migrant workers are a boon to the economy. They pay taxes. They purchase goods. They provide cheap labor that we profit from. They enable businesses to stay afloat, and small businesses are critical to the US economy. Nobody works harder than an immigrant. And they're working for the country.
And this all ignores the humanitarian impact of torturing millions of people. This is what happened to the Jews in Germany in the 1940's. Millions of people, minorities, used as scapegoats, to justify an ideological war, completely ignoring the reality and hypocrisy underneath. A lack of empathy creates horrifying ends.
> You're saying you want tens of millions of people to struggle to survive. For what exactly? A principle? What, that they should "not do illegal things" ?
No I want them to physically leave US soil before they have natural-born citizen children on it.
> This obsession with people violating the law is extremely one-sided. Nobody's going after the tax-dodging criminal corporations that are actually stealing billions of dollars from the government through tax loopholes and offshore accounts.
It's not illegal, nor should it be illegal, for a corporation to structure its affairs so that it minimizes the amount of taxes it's legally required to pay; just as it is not illegal for me personally to do this. If there's a specific problem caused by the way tax law is currently structured, the legislature can change it. Honestly though I'm not very worked up about billions of dollars of corporate tax revenue; the US federal budget is multiple trillions of dollars, and I might well be better off if those marginal dollars go to increasing corporate profits (and therefore the value of my stock-market-invested 401k, which is itself a tax dodge) than to the coffers of the US federal government.
> Conservatives don't say peep about a literal convicted felon in the highest office in government. But they're sure happy to go after poor brown people, who just happen to be propping up the economy.
A lot of people who would've self-described as conservatives before the mid-2010s are anti-Trump, and it probably makes sense to retire the term "conservative" as a descriptor in the context of US politics, the environment has changed too much. Poor brown people committing crimes near me - and not just the bare fact of violating US immigration law, I mean murders and robberies and drunk driving and driving big rigs on fraudulent CDLs and the identity theft that many brown illegal immigrants engage in in order to have legitimate-appearing documents - are more of a problem for me than the business records falsification stuff that Trump was convicted of. What it means to "prop up the economy" is pretty ill-defined, but I don't think that poor brown people do so simply by virtue of being on US soil and (sometimes) working jobs illegally.
> Enfranchisement means the ability to take a paycheck and deposit it in a bank. You know, to pay for baby food, clothes, education. To buy a home. To pay taxes. To pay for gas, to go to a job, and contribute to the economy. To send kids to college, who will grow up and become doctors, lawyers, software developers, business owners.
If illegal immigrants really want to use money in the US in violation of US law, they can use bitcoin or monero, money which is specifically designed to be independent of a state with a law-enforcement apparatus. Illegal immigrants paying for goods and services in the US doesn't benefit most American citizens and in some cases it harms them - e.g. illegal immigrants enrolling their children in American schools generally makes those schools work less well for existing American citizens, because being an illegal immigrant is highly correlated with not speaking English well, not sharing American cultural values, and being less cognitively able and therefore requiring more resources to educate.
> You don't even have a clue how much this would screw you over, do you? You're cutting off your nose to spite your face. And all for what? A principle that you wouldn't apply to others the same way?
I already live in a world where I provide legal documentation of my identity to banks and other financial service providers because they are required to ask for it by law. It's already the case that the government can in principle try to screw me over by interfering with my ability to access the legitimate US dollar financial system. I already live in a world where I have been asked to provide proof of legal US residency within several days of starting a job (and I did so because I am in fact a US citizen). I don't think this proposed banking regulation harms me in any way.
> America has illegal immigrants because we asked for them. We literally have no way to process all our fruit and vegetable produce without underpaid migrant workers. This was made plainly obvious during COVID, when all the crops rotted in the ground, because we blocked migrant workers from coming in and picking crops. We do not have the labor force to do it. We also use migrant workers for a huge swath of construction, hospitality, kitchen staff, because 1) we don't have an equivalent labor force for these jobs, and 2) their incredibly low pay subsidizes the low prices you pay for the end products.
No, we have illegal immigrants because a lot of people outside the US see that life in the US is better than it is where they are, and so attempt to gain access to the US. Among US citizens, there is a constituency of people who benefit from being able to hire low-wage illegal immigrant labor or who have other ideological reasons to support loose immigration policy and lax enforcement of existing laws; and other constituencies of people who are harmed by this. Industries that currently hire a lot of illegal labor would either start hiring citizen or legal immigrant labor at higher wages, or invest in more automation. But people, immigrants or citizens, aren't just abstract units of labor; they are human beings who reside in a place, interact with other people living near them, speak a language, have children, etc. and all of these things are relevant to deciding how much the presence of a given immigrant helps or harms existing citizens.
> And this all ignores the humanitarian impact of torturing millions of people. This is what happened to the Jews in Germany in the 1940's. Millions of people, minorities, used as scapegoats, to justify an ideological war, completely ignoring the reality and hypocrisy underneath. A lack of empathy creates horrifying ends.
Imposing a banking regulation that applies to people who are already violating immigration law and who could easily stop violating immigration law by simply returning to their home country isn't torturing people in a way analogous to imprisoning European Jews in concentration camps and using them as slave labor or killing them.
I cannot get to that link, here is another one. The main part to remember is "may". The cost of this process could prevent the order from being issued:
> Dissuading people from banking was "one of the more predictable outcomes," Braunegg said, adding that could include people ... and dual citizens who are "wary of cross-border reporting."
An interesting aspect to changes like this is that they demonstrate the silos and fissures between various government functions. There isn't already a standard intra-government API that for an identify returns the relationship person has to the US government (i.e. citizen, legal resident, visa like student or H1B?
What input would you use? There's no unified government ID.
You could probably look up a name and birth date and establish if a citizen exists with that information, I guess. You could check social security (which I'm not sure definitively indicates status) and see the same for that. But it's a very messy system in general.
My name is actually different in a few government databases - in one I have two middle names, in the other two last names. Just random clerical stuff like that is common.
If there's not a table somewhere maintained by the US government that associates social security number with citizenship status, that's because a choice was made by the government not to do that. It would be a simple enough thing to do.
(yes, checking against name / DOB / ssn always has some inherent messiness to it)
It's definitely a choice, because we've avoided having a real standardized identity system run by the government for so long.
But there are reasons for people to oppose it on both sides of the aisle (states rights, immigration views, anti federalism, libertarians) so it's a pretty hard task. Maybe this admin could try it as an immigration security measure and get some support that way but I have my doubts.
> You could check social security (which I'm not sure definitively indicates status) and see the same for that.
It doesn't. When I naturalized, I had to schedule an in person appointment at the Social Security offices to change my status in their systems. There was a time gap between me being American, me having a passport, me being recorded as American as far as SS was concerned and me having a SS card that didn't have caveats written across it.
The forcing function on my side was to avoid problems when changing jobs. I don't know what problems there might be claiming benefits that you are entitled to, but if you didn't have the change of status registered, that might delay things until you do. If you did change your status but didn't get a card, you can get a replacement one that won't have the text.
One of the things I was concerned for months until I got the new card is the federal government querying the social security database looking for immigrants or discrepancies with any of their other databases and not caring that the discrepancies are of their own making. Being a naturalized citizen with an accent, I keep traveling with my passport for internal trips.
I was curious if a newly naturalized citizen gets a new number when transferring from Individual Taxpayer Identification Number to a Social Security Number–apparently yes, that is the case, and it makes taxes on your year of naturalization more exciting.
The additional 165 dollars to get a passport for the first time is quite steep for a document that seems to become more and more mandatory. Papier, bitte.
Countries with national IDs charge you to replace one if it gets lost, and it usually costs less than 10 USD.
I'm also not quite sure how you get a passport without a bank account. Can you pay in cash? Even if you can, I'm guessing that's only at certain offices, which adds to the hassle and cost.
What people are arguing against is that making having a passport mandatory to participate in society is an unreasonable burden, under the current structures. If you wanted to mail a passport to every American in the mail, at no cost, no questions asked, that would be a very different proposition to what is being discussed.
You can't guarantee every citizen has a passport, so if you were running this as a bank or an employer or so on an API that only took passport information would not be super helpful. When I think of a unified ID I think of a number everyone gets at birth tied to an ID card they can show you. Social security is closest to this but the cards say they're not supposed to be used for identification and it's a cludge.
Well, there isn't a national ID system, partly because the citizens don't want to be on the wrong end of when that API says "no". I'm not sure anywhere has such a fully available live system, rather than relying on people bringing documents in to the bank.
The live update would add an extra element of terror to the system, of course.
> The live update would add an extra element of terror to the system, of course.
Yes, I think I didn't do a good job of placing the question as from the perspective of someone who is not aware of the silos and firewalls within what might otherwise appear to be a monolithic government.
The terror to the system is from the perspective of having lived within the system and not understanding how to operate in the world outside of it. It is a classic sci-fi trope; Brazil and The Minority Report come to mind. It is also a feature of classical Athens where ostracism was a particularly severe punishment.
There's many ways the US is more federated than the EU. The US constitution heavily limits what the federal government can do, especially when a state government could do the same. The only reason there's a federal income tax of individuals is because a constitutional amendment was passed to allow it. Outside of taxes, and the Social Security program that redistributes a lot of that tax income, most individuals have no reason to interact directly with the federal government.
Just because you own a supercar doesn't mean you daily drive it.
That stuff most certainly exists. It's just not for cog #897345673847456 to use in an above the table on the record capacity as part of their run of the mill daily job duties.
We don't really have a standard way to definitively say "I am a citizen" in the US. It's all kinda ad-hoc, like most of the rest of our ID system. Closest thing's a birth certificate[EDIT: or naturalization papers, of course, for immigrants], I guess, but that's a pain in the ass for anyone who's had a name change (lots of married women, notably) because then they need more documents.
Having a social security or other tax-related ID has sufficed for banks so far, which doesn't guarantee the holder is a citizen but does demonstrate enough relevant "status" with the government for banking to probably go smoothly.
Digging ourselves deeper into our already awful decentralized partially-privatized (the CRAs, mostly) identification system by expanding the set of things we have to prove in even more circumstances is not a good thing.
>We don't really have a standard way to definitively say "I am a citizen" in the US.
In most countries of the world, the best way to prove your citizenship is to apply for a visa. That is you world apply for a US visa and get an official rejection, because US citizens don't need/cannot get a visa, and the rejection document would be the proof of citizenship.
.. that seems extremely dangerous, because I wouldn't trust that refusal to not raise red flags for the rest of your life. I've not heard of people routinely doing this or announcing it as a valid method of proof of citizenship which they accept.
> Closest thing's a birth certificate[EDIT: or naturalization papers, of course, for immigrants], I guess, but that's a pain in the ass for anyone who's had a name change (lots of married women, notably) because then they need more documents.
Or a FS-240, Consular Report of Birth Abroad, from the State Department. I was born on a US military base and although I have a birth certificate, the only think I've ever been able to use it for was my REAL ID. I had to use the FS-240 for my passport, SSN, etc.
I've opened several bank accounts for my child. All they needed was the social security number and my photo id (and maybe my social security number too).
This seems to be a debanking scheme. Debanking schemes are just a way to steal peoples savings of course. Deutsche Bank did the same from 1933 to 1945 in Germany.
Banks are cracking down on PO boxes and CMRAs as the residential address for their clients. It's fine as the mailing address, but people who travel abroad full time may not have a permanent residential address.
Right now, you can choose to use a friend/family address, or you can pay a company to provide a residential address for you.
We should be able to say "I have no permanent residential address since I'm travelling, please send all mail to this CRMA.", but that isn't a supported scenario today.
This all gets complicated for full-time US travellers abroad who may spend all year outside of the country, but they still have to have domicile in some state even when they don't have a permanent address in any state.
I looked into some of this stuff when we were moving across the country and temporarily had no actual permanent address (living out of AirBnBs) including no home under contract, and it would have been very nice to set up a PO Box and local bank account.
I couldn't figure out a way to do it. Even looking at services aimed at people living in RVs didn't seem like it was going to work. For one thing, I couldn't get a PO Box without a home address, LOL.
Banks know which addresses are residential and which ones are commercial. Sometimes you can get away with using a mail forwarding service until you get a KYC review. But if you can't provide a real residential address when that happens you'll run into problems (freezes, account closures). I've had it happen.
The US forced stuff like this - and much more - on other countries, with FATCA.
Just one example: Foreign banks must report all financial activities of Americans to the US. An American official wad asked in an interview if the US would then report financial activities of non-Americans to their home tax authorities. The answer was "lol, no, that would be too much effort".
I am having a moment of Schadenfreude...
Not just citizens, it applies to American residents as well. A Swiss citizen friend of mine couldn't open up an account in Switzerland because the banks didn’t want to deal with FACTA and he had an American green card.
> US would then report financial activities of non-Americans to their home tax authorities. The answer was "lol, no, that would be too much effort".
I know for a fact that the US reports financial information about non-US residents to their home countries.
People get into trouble with Indian tax authorities all the time because they neglected reporting their US income and/or holdings.
> Foreign banks must report all financial activities of Americans to the US. An American official wad asked in an interview if the US would then report
The U.S. predominantly compels banks through FATCA. If a bank wants to do business in America, it has to follow FATCA for Americans abroad. There is, of course, some regulatory co-operation. But to my knowledge, most countries don't directly transmit these data to the U.S.–the banks have to report it instead.
The correct analogy would be a foreign country requiring U.S. banks to send them data on their own citizens abroad. Which, I think, e.g. India could probably do.
> The correct analogy would be a foreign country requiring U.S. banks to send them data on their own citizens abroad. Which, I think, e.g. India could probably do.
India does get information from the US and other countries about Indian residents having accounts (bank, brokerage, etc.) in other countries.
There are agreements across several countries that use CRS (Common Reporting Standard) to report such information to other countries for tax purposes. This is not India or US specific.
>Reporting Mechanism: In countries with Intergovernmental Agreements (IGAs), such as Canada, financial institutions report to local tax authorities, which then share the information with the IRS.
This law is intended to harm immigrants to the US who the administration does not want here by making it harder for them to access US banking services. The ideal outcome here isn't that the US starts reporting financial information of non-Americans to their home countries' banks, it's that those non-Americans leave the US altogether.
>US forced
"Forced"?
You're _way_ everestimating US influence.
Most countries not just "collect citizenship data", they require you to have a valid non-expired ID, valid non-expired residential registration, a fresh digital photo, verified phone number and a valid tax number. All of that without any US interference.
My crude understanding is that in the 90's, the US controlled basically all the world's large-scale financial clearing network, and after 9/11 declared a holy war against anything that didn't provide visibility to US intelligence (like the surviving medieval Middle Eastern 'Hawala' banking system) and the ability for the US to sanction it on a fine-grained basis.
Since that time, we have grabbed on tighter and tighter, and are finding that the world is starting to seek out a less politically volatile patron for a financial system.
It's pretty wild, I work in finance and hawala was specifically called out in my anti money laundering training. Really seems like cultural chauvanism and thinly veiled racism to eschew an entire traditional monetary support system.
I'm an immigrant to the US who still has a bank account in my home country.
After I told that bank I'd moved abroad, they required me to fill out paperwork for FATCA and give them my US SSN.
I also have to self-report all foreign accounts and their balances to the IRS. The penalties for not doing so are severe.
> Banks are required to collect information through “know your customer” rules, but have pushed back against this plan. But Bessent told CNBC, “If Treasury and the banking regulators say it’s their job, it’s their job.”
Well I can't see this ending well. It's either more invasive KYC or it's a push towards debanking people out of favor with the government again.
"Well I can't see this ending well. It's either more invasive KYC ..."
I think there is an opportunity here for an elegant solution.
Banks, by definition, know quite a bit about you and aspects of your identity and this is not necessarily problematic nor dangerous.
Further, banks enjoy exorbitant privileges above all other business firms and organizations - privileges that the public rarely receives any upside in exchange.
For these reasons, I think we should consider concentrating KYC responsibilities with the banks such that they do the heavy lifting and the rest of the economy reaps the benefits.
Here is one small example:
A credit or debit card which, by virtue of the card number itself, identifies the user as being over 18 years of age. The bank already knows this information with very high confidence and now smaller, less resourced firms could make use of this to effectively age-gate with almost no investment and no fragmented intrusion into the private lives of their customers.
I don't see any world in which the banks don't have all of this information anyway - why not get some value out of it ?
I would love to live in a world where I don't have to "send a pin to my cell" and instead this task is deferred to my bank.
Perhaps Bessent has forgotten that Chevron Doctrine was overturned and now courts get the final say on this instead of the federal agencies. Double edged sword
Came here to comment "Loper Bright". Glad you got here first.
A number of countries require this info already - it is a stretch for the US, but relatively common overall.
It’s probably both of what you’re worried about.
Notably, it’s likely a reaction to the original ‘no gun stores, no porn, etc’ rules which banks have defacto had for awhile.
worse they are requiring this data on behalf of the US to assert that they have no obligation to pay US taxes.
Incorrect, banks in other countries require this data solely because the US is the only country that taxes its citizens even outside its borders. Compliance with FATCA is the only reason why most banks literally have a checkbox in their application forms specifically to state that you do not hold US citizenship in any form. Some Swiss banks even outright forbid US clients. Dealing with FATCA is just another logistical nightmare for most banks.
my bank specifically asked me a bunch of questions that they claimed they needed to send to the US. it wasn't just a checkbox that i am not a citizen. it's more complicated than that. non-citizens could have tax obligations to the US if they work there or work for a US company.
They don't need to send your data if you're not working for a US company, or if you're not a US resident/citizen. That is, sending data to the US is not the default. Also yes, the checkbox wasn't just a single box but an entire page just dedicated to FATCA issues i.e. the banks are doing as much as possible to absolve themselves of any FATCA obligations and document it.
Anything remotely connecting a client to the US is kryptonite to banks.
Not just because of either - many countries tax and treat citizen/permanent resident accounts wildly differently than non-citizen and non permanent resident accounts.
India has a whole swath of different account types based on this criteria, with wildly different rules.
China too.
NRI accounts are different in that they're localized. You don't have UBS in Switzerland asking me if I'm an Indian citizen or resident, like they do for the US.
Indian banks will absolutely demand the information we’re talking about.
Sure, as it is in their purview within India. But does UBS or Santander ask their clients in Europe if they're specifically an Indian citizen or resident? Does RBS send a form to a prospective client asking them to explicitly check off if they're a citizen/resident of India or China or wherever?
My point is that the US gov’t asking US banks to verify citizenship/residency of account holders in the US is not that unusual, if looking at the norm internationally. What is your point?
My point is and always was about US government rules forcing foreign banks in third countries to check for US citizenship and residency specifically. Otherwise citizenship checks have always been a thing everywhere. But in order to comply with the US rules, banks have to maintain a separate documented US FATCA section altogether in their enrollment process, even if they are in some unrelated third country.
Then you’re in the wrong thread?
It s the sheer horror we have to live with in the EU. The intrusiveness of banks is beyond this world. As soon as you re a little bit off the rails, say you lived in different countries or own real estate in another country, all he'll breaks loose. Endless KYC, banks rejecting you, making pointless snitch reports to the various IRSes you have to respond to (there are several if you live in one country but have revenues from a company or real estate in another), etc.
Endless waste of time, red tape, administratrivia...
All for exactly nothing.
EU banks mandate similar KYC as well like a passport or national ID (something we do not have but need).
See that's the thing people are upset about though - the fact that the documents you need are either an original certified copy of a thin sheet of paper from whatever random backwater you were born in's local government (birth cert), or an expensive time-consuming document that needs to be renewed on top of that (passport).
In general, the people against these kinds of things aren't against the simple extra check of something that's theoretically already true (registered to vote / ID at voting place, citizenship at banks, etc). They're against forcing people to provide arcane, asterisk-ridden (including married women! a large demographic!) documents.
If we just had a normal federal ID system like a normal country, where you just got one mailed to you when your kid was born just like their social security card manages to do, then this would all be much more fine. But noooo god forbid we be normal for once. Much better to keep using random bullshit in place of a national ID.
Having been through this in the UK, what people want is:
(one of the weird consequences of this is that the final stage of naturalization was to send back / destroy your secure ID: https://www.gov.uk/biometric-residence-permits ; we now have a purely online "share code" system, which everyone is much more scared of because you have no way to contradict the computer)Yeah the US should institute a normal federal ID system like a normal country. It might strictly be necessary to amend the constitution to do this, although plenty of other expansions of what the federal government does have happened without a formal amendment.
Many Americans think mandatory ID is some kind of dystopian measure. It's part of an irrational cultural obsession with "government control" that believe that if something could hypothetically be used for oppressive purposes, then it will be and must be resisted. Never mind that in practice, you very often need to have a state-issued ID of some kind of do things.
Mind you, I am not saying gov'ts cannot misbehave. I am merely saying that this categorical opposition is imprudent and irrational. It's like the idea that you shouldn't leave your basement, because bad things might happen to you outside. What kind of life is that? Yeah, something could, but you aren't living life by remaining cooped up. And news flash: you're going to die eventually.
The US cultural thing is really the opposite of cowering in your basement, at least in my generation and older.
We were steeped in propaganda about the "papers, please" police state in other parts of the world, versus our freedom to travel. It's this idea that you are not allowed to leave your basement without an exit visa which is horrifying.
There is also the religious angle, with some believing that a national ID would be the "mark of the beast" from the bible. Ironically, these days the US religious right seems excited by the prospects of fascist control, rather than rebelling against it. I'm honestly not sure if that is just hypocrisy or if, in their minds, they are gleefully accelerating us towards the "end times" now.
We are actively seeing the current US government shift towards malevolence and fascism. These fears of government control were very rational, evidently, as the government is currently abusing every possible system it can. I mean, a lot of this stuff is really being pushed to its limits and beyond.
And, all of those "unspoken rules" and relationships, due diligence, etc are finally coming home to roost. We have put too many trust-based systems in place.
Also, the US has a long history of abusing government power. The last time we required ID for voting we did it to prevent black people from voting. So now, people are rightfully scared of voter ID. Um... whoops.
I mean one of the uses for something like this is to make it easier to de-bank people. That is, make it impossible for them to function financially. That sounds super dystopian to me and a power the government shouldn't have.
They call it 'collateral damage' so that it fall outside of the constitutional protection/requirement that all punishments need to stem from a conviction and then a judge's determination the punishment is directly proportional to the conviction so it's also un-American.
As a citizen of a small country with decently long democratic traditions, I've always found American attitudes like that weird. From my perspective, if you live in a free country, any government you have by definition reflects the will of the people. If you're afraid of what the government might do, you're really afraid of what your fellow citizens might do. Afraid that your fellow citizens don't share your values, or those of the constitution.
When it comes to de-banking, the bigger threat seems to come from the banks than from the government. Your bank might choose to de-bank you, because it doesn't like you. Because you are too risky or too unpleasant, or because the computer says so. So if you're afraid of de-banking, you might want to pass a law that makes it illegal for a bank to refuse to offer basic services to you, unless one of the exceptions listed in the law applies.
> if you live in a free country, any government you have by definition reflects the will of the people.
There's no such definition, where did you get that from? The only definition is "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance".
> If you're afraid of what the government might do, you're really afraid of what your fellow citizens might do.
In non-fantasy land all power corrupts.
> you might want to pass a law that makes it illegal for a bank to refuse to offer basic services to you
We don't pass laws, our representatives do, we select reps from a pool of candidates but becoming a candidate outside of the established parties is subject to the regulations established by these parties... you get the idea.
> As a citizen of a small country with decently long democratic traditions, I've always found American attitudes like that weird.
There's bliss and then there's reality... which happens to be weird, unfortunately.
Our ancestors came to the US because our neighbors in Europe decided they should die for following the wrong religion, be it catholic irish/germans or non-catholic french/jewish.
So yes, our country is founded on not letting that happen, not letting your neighbors have that kind of power over your life, via the old world/European direct killing/starvation/exile from society or a modern world reimaged debanking that basically strangles you to death with the burden of just existing in the modern world without modern finance/electronic funds/card payment.
In the US there are strict banks and then there are immigrant/human friendly banks like US Bank. I can easily change banks. I can't exist in a right to life/liberty/happiness way with no bank, and the government can't take that right away unless I have been convicted and a judge ruled that in my circumstances specifically it should be taken away.
But what happens if your neighbors no longer believe in that? Does a constitution still matter, if its values are no longer the values of the people? Who will enforce the constitution, if the people who are supposed to do that no longer want to?
If you live in a free country, your neighbors become a problem before the government does. If they become a problem, the government will often follow, and then you may no longer be living in a free country.
> Does a constitution still matter, if its values are no longer the values of the people?
Yes, otherwise the incumbents could pull stunts like opening the borders to flood the nation with foreigners, radically redefining who "the people" are in order to dictate what "our values" are.
The entire point of written law is to outlive the whims of human nature.
How does written law enforce itself if the police and the judges are compromised?
Everything is ultimately enforced by people. If people stop believing in something, the government will eventually follow suit. And not just the handful of top leaders elected or appointed for a few years, but most people from the top to the bottom in every branch of the government. Especially the ones with the power to make a difference.
The written law may say something, but people in power are very good at twisting its purpose and ignoring it. Especially when that's something everyone expects from you.
That is why the US government is designed the way it is, with the electoral college, 2 senators per state, etc.
It is all designed to prevent European style tyranny of the majority or mob rule, yet also create a representational state. It's a tricky balance. But our ancestors were, again, murdered or forced to flee half way around the world, so a core concern/reality we work hard to avoid at the cost of slower government/less direct democracy that like you say can change on a whim or easily be directed as a weapon against ones neighbors. We prefer a slow out of touch government that protects freedom/peoples rights than a government that represents short term opinion happy to trample.
My point was that an oppressive government cannot appear out of nowhere in a free country. The citizens must abandon constitutional values first. If an oppressive government remains in power and maintains its popularity long enough, it will infiltrate all levels of the government and compromise checks and balances.
Then, with popular and institutional support, the government can do basically whatever it wants. Regardless of what powers it had before or what the constitution says.
You should not be afraid of giving the government new powers simply because it might go bad later. (There are other valid reasons, but that's not one of them.) If the government does go bad, it can take those powers on its own just fine. You should be afraid of your fellow citizens going bad and starting to think that their personal goals and values are more important than constitutional values. Because that's a prerequisite for the government going bad.
.. and some also refuse to do business with Americans because of the additional reporting requirements!
That's due to US regulation imposed on them under FATCA in not additional check due to EU rules.
Since others are not saying it, enforcing this will immediately cause havoc as any number of citizens do not have ready access to any document proving citizenship.
(Non-US people note that this is likely a major difference between the US and your country. The US does not compulsorily provide proof of citizenship to its citizens that can be used at places where one is typically asked to prove one's citizenship.)
Bessent notes here that Real ID would not be considered valid ID for this purpose, which sounds like it will have the same problems as the SAVE act. This could mean debanking anyone who has changed their name and does not have a notarized copy of the name change certificate, and most people who do not drive.
(I am not sure how it would handle minors, who generally do not have any photo ID. Would they have to come in to provide ID when they turn 18?)
The underlying idea is fine, but it creates problems when combined with the reluctance to issue any kind of national ID.
> enforcing this will immediately cause havoc as any number of citizens do not have ready access to any document proving citizenship
Yes, that is obviously the intention of this system.
> that is obviously the intention of this system
I'm genuinely unsure which way the partisan tilt would lean on American citizens who get unbanked.
I don't even think it's about partisan tilt anymore. This administration's M.O. is raw chaos, havoc, and just this low-level randomized churn that keeps us all conditioned to believe that nothing in government works deterministically anymore.
> which way the partisan tilt would lean on American citizens who get unbanked.
Obviously the court of Fox public opinion would examine their social media to determine if they're woke or Hispanic before deciding this.
If they don't have documentation, are they citizens?
> If they don't have documentation, are they citizens?
Yes. As OP said, "anyone who has changed their name and does not have a notarized copy of the name change certificate, and most people who do not drive." Note that the first category includes many married women.
It is very, very important to the national psyche of both the UK and the US that the answer to this question can be "yes".
Can you for an outsider expand on this argument. I’m not saying you’re wrong, but why is that?
> All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
This is part of the US constitution. There's no "if they have proper documentation" qualification.
If the US Constitution is to have force as the core document foundational to the governance of the US, it is important for its clear text to have the force of law.
An executive agency creating new requirements for citizenship has the effect of overriding the Constitution, which brings into question what are the controlling documents for the country.
> “Bessent notes here that Real ID would not be considered valid ID for this purpose…”
The NYS DMV website shows a birth certificate is required (or passport) for a RealID as proof of birth date.
Is it not valid for proof of citizenship because the dmv doesn’t look at the birth certificate expressly for citizenship? A missing checkbox, then?
Yeah I don't think people are really fully appreciating the scope of this, because it means people would essentially have to have a passport to open a bank account.
It's very dark. I tend to be libertarian about these things and feel like it's none of the government's business. Get a warrant and do your investigations if you want to prove someone is a foreigner up to no good. There is no real problem unless you're xenophobic or racist.
So I don't agree the "underlying idea is fine" at all. This is a step further though, by putting an administrative and financial burden on people to have a bank account.
The fact this is normal in other places in the world doesn't make it ok to me either — two wrongs don't make a right. And in any event many other places are more socialized than the US, so there isn't the same kind of burden on many places as there would be in the US. It would be one thing if the administration were bending over backwards to provide public healthcare, expand education and public research, but they're doing the opposite.
> I don't agree the "underlying idea is fine" at all
I gave you a shout out! :-P
> the reluctance to issue any kind of national ID
Americans have tended to resist this kind of surveillance (when done by the government). Honestly, because it's not necessary. It doesn't make sense to tax 350 million people when DOJ usually doesn't even go after the known big fish. Or when companies can openly violate e.g. money transfer laws at vast scale until they get rich enough to get the laws changed in their favor.
This feels like the kind of thing that will blow up if they implement it and then have to be kicked down the road forever, like RealID. Old people know that the initial RealID deadline was before Barack Obama's election.
Catch-22 lives on.
You are required to prove your citizenship to the government (by proxy of your bank or otherwise). The government lacks a unified document of identity which would by law act as a proof of citizenship, and reserves its right to call any other document it is issuing to be “insufficient”.
Generally will leave as an exercise for the reader.
But immediately one can say that most minors will not have the requisite picture ID because they do not drive and we are not required to carry picture ID (this rollout would be touch more people than the requirement that drivers carry ID). So as of right now, most minors in the US cannot prove citizenship under the criteria Bessent is suggesting (yes, the country should be debating this).
Let's call it all the people under 15 so we don't get the "akshully learner's permit" folks objecting. The US has ~60 million people in the 0-14 age bracket, apply whatever ratio you want to that for citizens/noncitizens and you are still going to end up with a lot, likely millions, of people.
Minors aren’t allowed to open bank accounts without their parents being on the account. Unless their parents are also in that age bracket, but that’s biologically unlikely
You asked who doesn't have the required documentation, I am telling you it's minors. Saying parents are also on the account does not change that as of this moment, those documents do not exist and therefore have to be secured.
> Unless their parents are also in that age bracket
This is irrelevant because the point was to identify a broad population that currently does not have the relevant documentation. That's people 0-14.
> Since others are not saying it, enforcing this will immediately cause havoc as any number of citizens do not have ready access to any document proving citizenship.
I didnt have all the documents available for my Real ID which has quite the requirements. In the limit, at least as many as any other citizenship proofing task. We can assume the greatest difficulty would be for the homeless.
It took me ~15 minutes on the social security admin website to get a card ordered to me because mine is lost somewhere in a safe. I had it sent to my house, a PO box, homeless shelter, or any other location would work too. Can be done via a library if you're homeless. Zero excuse.
It took me ~20 minutes to figure out which hospital I was born at and get a copy of my birth certificate shipped to me. See above. Likely marginally more difficult for a homeless person. Not terrible difficult though if you're not so cracked out you don't remember even the state in which you were born. Again, zero excuse.
It took me ~30 seconds to find a document to prove my current residency. Trivial for a homeless person as well. Zero excuse.
Again, in the limit, the government should provide an easier way to do this. But the pearl clutching over the difficulty is to vastly overstated.
This is simply a fantastic excuse to not require citizenship for yet another thing. Something absolutely unheard of in other western countries. I'm beginning to think all of this avoiding proof of citizenship has an ulterior motive.
This is not pearl-clutching.
The point is that there are hundreds of millions of consumer bank accounts in the US, and it's not clear that Treasury appreciates the turmoil they are proposing. The country has not had a debate over this, it sounds like it might just drop out of the sky one day and create unnecessary chaos.
We can use the rollout of Real ID itself as a gauge. Executives of both parties, and several Congresses, landed on 20 years as an appropriate rollout time to do so smoothly. And that's basically only needed for air travel, which most Americans do not do in a given year.
It's not crazy to ask that a more disruptive change be subject to more scrutiny and deliberation about its rollout.
In your case, everything was straightforward, you already have a license, and your bank is local so you can walk in and show your ID, awesome for you. But over hundreds of millions of people, every edge case will present. (Is it okay for banks to freeze assets of people in hospitals who are unable to perform the necessary steps and present themselves at a bank? Inmates? How are joint accounts handled? What counts as bank account? What happens to money currently held legally here by foreign nationals?)
The one that might affect the most people here: if you have to show ID, presumably the bank has to be able to authenticate it against your person. Which means an in-person visit. This would be bad if you are one of the tens of millions of Americans whose primary bank does not have any branches in their state of residence. I bank at my alma mater's credit union, even though I have not lived in that state for decades. Would I need to travel there to show my ID or have my account frozen?
Again, a bipartisan set of Congresses and Presidents landed on 20 years to rollout when the only real penalty would be some people would not be able to board a plane when they wanted to, without extra scrutiny.
A botched rollout of this could lead to unpredictable financial calamities as rents and other bills go unpaid, etc.
There is simply not an emergency here, we don't have to upend our financial system pretending there is. The ulterior motive here is to preserve the stability of our financial system while making changes.
> It took me ~30 seconds to find a document to prove my current residency. Trivial for a homeless person as well. Zero excuse.
Is this satire?
Pretty normal in other places: Most banks in Japan are for Japanese customers. Foreign users have quite a few hoops to jump through.
Several places also have a "hostile loop":
There's usually "fixer" services which help people get out of this mess, but it can be a real problem even for 100% legitimate professional class immigrant workers.I don't think exceptions or confined bad side effects make for very good arguments against general policy. You wouldn't ban planes, because sometimes they crash. This isn't math. We're not proving that a rule holds for every element of the domain.
.. unless you're the person to whom the side effects are happening. How many citizens is it acceptable to wrongly deport or debank, potentially without trial?
Like most things on HN it's only ever a moral panic when the U.S. (or U.K.) does it.
The US and the UK have the unique situation of backing themselves into national ID requirements without ever actually issuing national ID, which makes for stupid outcomes.
Was just reading that headline the other day. Economic darling Japan emerges from the Lost Decades with perfect banking policy.
Compared to the effect of Plaza Accords the influence of banking policy on economic development is within statistical error.
It seems predictable that people on a mostly English-speaking forum will be most concerned with stuff that the US and UK are doing.
Most HN users aren't even posting during Anglophone hours though [0]. Based on the style of English as well as the type of post content, HN engagement seems to be increasingly filled with DACH and CEE residents during American mornings (which is ironic as YC doesn't follow GDPR and retains full rights to use HN comments as they so wish in perpetuity).
[0] - https://huggingface.co/datasets/open-index/hacker-news
> during Anglophone hours though
I suspect I mostly post outside American working hours because I am (a) working then and (b) a night owl.
Maybe, but most HNers didn't work in high finance which messes with your sleep cycle :').
I'm still processing the dataset but there is a significant shift in HN usage from aligning with average American hours to non-American hours over the past few years.
And most HN users bashing the practice will defend the practice when another country does it.
Japan is well known in their acceptance of foreigners. Their economy is sputtering, the population is aging, and no matter how many economists tell the politicians they need to invigorate their economy they would rather build shitty robots.
Not just Japan. Stats are pretty miserable across the developed world.
The main reason for demographic decline and low fertility is liberal consumerism. Liberal consumerism is the religion of the developed world, and like all religions, it is a worldview that shapes one's understanding of what life is about. Consumerism's implicit anthropology is hostile to fertility, because fertility is at odds with the consumerist imperative. It also shapes how people view relationships and society. Consumerism is totalizing and produces a culture that smothers everything in the logic of consumerism.
Immigration is just an extractive and parasitic bandage over a gangrenous limb. The solution is to destroy consumerism and replaced with something better and more human. This will happen sooner or later, as consumerist societies will be eradicated through selective pressure (they'll go extinct), but it is better to voluntarily wage a religious, cultural, and political war against consumerism to save these societies.
Japan continues to have an HDI comparable to similarly sized France [0] despite having almost double it's GDP and a median age comparable to both Germany and Italy, and a TFR comparable to other European states [1].
It is also able to field a navy and armed forces that is independently able to hold off against China. Meanwhile, look at Europe and how it's managed the Ukraine Crisis.
[0] - https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/country-insights#/ranks
[1] - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?most_rec...
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America is quite unique in a lot of ways. We became the worlds superpower as a result of being willing and able to share our resources with immigrants seeking a better life, and building it here, free of restrictions like that.
The obvious difference is that the US, more or less by deliberate design, had a remarkably lax approach to visa overstays and illegal border crossings for decades. This resulted in a population of more than 10 million "unauthorized" residents.
Any policy that suddenly pulls the rug on them is notable precisely because we created the problem (or not-a-problem, depending on your leanings) in the first place.
> Any policy that suddenly pulls the rug on them is notable precisely because we created the problem
Are you saying that it is wrong to ever solve a problem quickly, if you are the one who created it?
If other innocent people are collateral damage, then yes. Essentially the US "let this" happens and now wants to reverse course, but they're gonna be taking down a lot of good, hard working people with them.
Also, this will negatively affect a TON of citizens, which always sucks ass even if you think immigration is evil.
It depends on what problem and how you're "solving" it.
More accurately, half the country wants a deliberately lax approach to visa overstays and illegal border crossings, and the other half doesn't. Right now radicalized anti-immigrationists are in poltical power and they are going hard in the direction of anti-immigrant policies, under the expectation that the pro-immigration party might win the next election and attempt to reverse those policies.
Other countries also provide free and mandated forms of identification without all of the hassle and bullshit we have to go through in the US.
I spent most of my time in Texas using either my passport or my old forms of ID because my schedule never aligned with the DMV and I didn't have a driver's license to surrender.
There's a large portion of citizens here that would not have valid or current identification in order to open up an account nor the means to immediately obtain it.
Neither of the two countries I’ve opened bank accounts in, the UK and Finland, have a free form of ID available for their citizens (and absolutely not for immigrants!), and yet the banks have certainly wanted to be sure of my citizenship and status.
Surprising to see that the cost of a passport is lower than the identity card.
https://poliisi.fi/en/identity-card
Yes for the most part Finnish bureaucracy works fairly well but some parts don't make sense. To get a bank account as a non-EU foreigner just follow these simple steps:
- Receive the residence permit card. This is good enough for the men with guns at the airport to let you in to the country, welcome!
- Get municipality of residence. To do this you need an address, to get an address you need a bank account. To get a bank account you need the following ID card. To get the following ID card you need municipality of residence.
- When you find some way to break the above loop, go to the police station and apply and pay for an ID card. Take the first residence card with you.
- Now take this ID card to a bank along with your passport and residence permit.
The data printed on the ID card is effectively less than that printed on the residence card. But as the residence card is not considered an official form of ID, banks won't let you use it. Heck, the corner shop won't let you use it as ID to buy booze and smokes.
The border police in ~20ish other Schengen countries should be fine with it though. Not the ID card of course, that has 'NOT VALID FOR TRAVEL' printed on it in big letters unless you're an actual Finnish citizen.
Having an EU passport means you get to replace the first step with 'register your right of residence at an office at an appointment 3 months in the future' and also means you get to skip the ID card bit, but you can't jump straight to bank account.
Of course - Finland being a solid member of SEPA, why do you even need a local account? Just use Wise or whatever. In that case, I hope you like filing everything on paper and in person because the only practical way to identify online here is with a local service provider (bank, mobile phone certificate, or smart ID card). I hear you say eIDAS, but that's not widely adopted by private companies so things like setting up internet or electricity connections are not going to be possible with that.
Having opened accounts in two different European countries, the more surprising thing here for me is that the US banks _didn’t_ already do this.
I don’t really understand this. We already run KYC / AML. Is that not good enough for some reason?
Banks are to be ICE now.
Basically this. Banks are already deputized into being de facto law enforcement by some of the KYC/AML checks they are mandated to do, and anti-immigrationists want this remit to include checking if someone is in the US illegally trying to use a bank.
People seriously underestimate how much easier it is to open a bank account in the US compared to most other countries. Especially with how many states give out government-issued IDs to non-residents/non-citizens (16 states + Washington DC).
It's estimated that between $250 billion and 500 billion is laundered through US banks every year, though some portion of that is via correspondent banking and not just individual account money muleing.
And this just collects that information. It doesn't actually stop people from opening these accounts or shut them down.
> It's estimated that between $250 billion and 500 billion is laundered through US banks every year, though some portion of that is via correspondent banking and not just individual account money muleing.
The money laundering is not happening through consumer deposit accounts (I've never heard your term money mueling and it's almost definitely not people moving $10,000 at a time if that's what you are suggesting).
It is wanton disingenuity to think that the goal of this rule is prevention of money laundering.
I didn't say that was the goal. I explicitly said that it wouldn't do anything about it. Just that it happens.
And absolutely it happens, particularly with networks of accounts connected to China. Just because you've never heard of it doesn't mean that it doesn't happen. FinCEN has been publicly chasing this down for years. Although hawala networks are also a big source of that not mainly personal banking.
Also you're missing the forest for the trees here. Money laundering will most often happen through business bank accounts but a large number of business account holders also have personal accounts at the same bank and link them out of convenience.
Personal ID is also required to open a business bank account. This requirement will likely apply to those as well.
> Also you're missing the forest for the trees here
I see what you're saying - I am just trying to convey that the $250 billion dollars being laundered is commercial. It's hard to imagine how anyone can come close to those figures by using consumer accounts, linked or not.
So why doesn’t existing AML catch this? You also mention FinCen which Trump paused so why not just reinstate that?
He didn't "pause FinCEN", he stopped the reporting requirement of BOI for US Citizens/Companies.
Ok agreed. So why? If there is an issue with foreigners then why is anyone exempted from reporting BOI? I have foreigners in my entities, surely the gov wants to know about them?
The money laundering won't go away. It'll just move to administrations-approved money laundering vehicles like crypto. And needlessly disrupt or ruin the lives of millions. Neat.
What's the solution, no laws? Since laws just shift the venue for the crime in your view?
That's covered in the article
Is it really though?
> But that doesn’t satisfy Bessent. “Why can unknown foreign nationals come and open a bank account?”
To do business obviously. Are you seriously telling me the government, armed with Palantir, can’t already flag money laundering? Why is an “unknown” in the country in the first place given this admin’s extremely hostile view towards immigrants?
The goal is to de-bank any opposition to the government. It starts with an easy out group like immigrants. Then more and more groups will get de-banked or otherwise disenfranchised.
>The goal is to de-bank any opposition to the government. It starts with an easy out group like immigrants.
Or an easy out group like the Freedom Convoy protest truckers.
I did not realize that the number of Freedom Convoy truckers was roughly the same as number of immigrants. That is a big issue!
I did not realize that the number of Romani was roughly the same as number of Jews. That is a big issue!
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Holy crap, it's been a long time since I saw that dopey Obama/tea-party line. Fox News bullshit from the past seems down right quaint by today's standards
It's a fact though, so label it how you like but it happened.
You're gonna want to look into the context and framing. Elements connected to what you claimed are "fact". The framing is very much not.
If you still believe that nonsense after all these years nothing I can say that'll change your mind.
This is one of the all time greatest examples of "lying with facts". It's technically correct, the IRS absolutely singled out a bunch of non-profits due to administrative fowl ups, but trying to say Obama "targeted" the Tea Party intentionally was so hilariously stupid I'm amazed anyone bought it.
It starts with an even easier out group like "actual criminals or other groups that are fairly strongly hated by a lot of people".
The groundwork for this crap was laid in the 1870s when they were going after the klan, the 1920s bootleggers, then the 1940s-50s mobsters, 1980s drug traffickers, 2000s terrorists, etc, etc. Every step of the way people cheered.
Of course some people looked at the "hurricane cone" of public policy at the time and said that we were not on a good path. Of course they were ignored.
It's because certain banks like Bank of America will explicitly take business from undocumented immigrants, knowingly so.
As a quick example, I know for a fact they accept expired visas as ID proof to open an account.
I already have to upload my real ID and had to hop on a video call to show my face + ID for one bank.
Personally I think the American banking system is garbage. The technology is awful. But the government requirements are too onerous and potentially unconstitutional. The government doesn't need to know who I am, the bank doesn't need to know the customer.
I think bank's KYC is fine, and I have no issues with making this more strict.
After Equifax hired a music major for their Chief Security Officer and leaked everyone's information for free, I had someone open a bank account in my name. Luckily I caught it and got it shut down. I was not reimbursed by Equifax for the giant pain in the ass this was.
This data collection is not for immigrants. most people they just come, work and leave. Sooner or later all those Maga clowns understand, this is all about controlling them.wait for the results until they integrate everything into Palantir.
Which is how most of the world does it. What is interesting is that in 2023 the CFPB/DOJ started threatening to sue banks if they relied on immigration status/duration of stay to approve loans, which was generally regarded as threatening banks not to consider immigration status for loans. There is a risk that if they use this information the next president in the white house may try to sue them, however if they don't use immigration information then they'll be left stranded with a bunch of bad loans. It's probably better that they have this information but it is a bit of a lose-lose
> Which is how most of the world does it.
That's not persuasive. America does a lot of things different from most of the world, and they're not inherently wrong for doing so.
The rest of your comment makes an interesting point, though.
Don't let commenters convince you this is normal. This is a concerted effort by Republicans to win the midterm elections. It's a very old Republican tactic: disenfranchise poor ethnic communities that would vote Democrat.
> The planned EO is one more plank in President Donald Trump’s broader effort to tie his immigration policy to collection of information in the United States, including for voting and Census efforts.
As usual for a Republican agenda, it hurts the economy in order to achieve its ideological goals.
> In addition to legal questions, some policy experts and banks have warned about damage to the economy if people are denied access to the banking system and deposit accounts, as well as potentially big increases in administrative costs for banks. [...] Allowing noncitizens, including undocumented immigrants, to legally open bank accounts using documentation, such as an ITIN, means they can pay taxes and avoid being part of the “unbanked” existing in a purely cash economy. Being unbanked is often associated with less ability to move up the social ladder and contribute to economic growth.
How is this not normal? Don't most / all European countries require the same?
It turns out that most of the world is not Europe. We have our own system, evolved over a century, responding to events in this country. Abruptly changing that system creates real harm to a gigantic population.
We don't have a national ID system, and we have millions of undocumented immigrants, as well as millions of African Americans who have been systematically oppressed in order to elevate the interests of a white majority. (that's not an opinion, it's a fact; our Supreme Court literally wouldn't let southern states change election laws without checking with them, because southern states wanted to eliminate most black people from voter roles)
21 million adults in this country lack a driver's license. Of those the largest groups are Black and Hispanic populations. 11 million more without IDs are undocumented immigrants. That's 32 million people disenfranchised and unbanked. A larger population than most EU countries, without a vote or a bank account.
IF you introduced a national ID system, and got every single American on it, then this wouldn't be an issue, because everyone could still vote and bank. But that's not what they want. They want 32 million people to suffer. That's why this is wrong, regardless of what's common in Europe.
> 21 million adults in this country lack a driver's license. Of those the largest groups are Black and Hispanic populations. 11 million more without IDs are undocumented immigrants. That's 32 million people disenfranchised and unbanked. A larger population than most EU countries, without a vote or a bank account.
Yes, the entire point of this law is to try to reduce the number of illegal immigrants (11 million is probably an underestimate) physically present in the US by making it harder for them to use banks and by deputizing banks to do some amount of illegal immigration enforcement by way of banking regulations, as we already do for a variety of classes of crime. If they are currently enfranchised at all, it's because they're also voting illegally, and this is a good argument for putting more stringent checks on legal citizenship when people vote.
> IF you introduced a national ID system, and got every single American on it, then this wouldn't be an issue, because everyone could still vote and bank. But that's not what they want. They want 32 million people to suffer. That's why this is wrong, regardless of what's common in Europe.
A huge proportion of that 32 million figure is non-Americans; literally foreigners from other countries who entered or remained in the US in violation of US immigration law. Any of those people voting is a huge problem for actual American citizens. It's not necessarily a problem if foreigners use US banks, just as it's not necessarily a problem if I (an American citizen) use a bank in a foreign country; but if someone avoids using a US bank because they are already present in the US illegally this is a perfectly reasonable outcome because what should be happening to them is that they get arrested and deported.
You're saying you want tens of millions of people to struggle to survive. For what exactly? A principle? What, that they should "not do illegal things" ?
This obsession with people violating the law is extremely one-sided. Nobody's going after the tax-dodging criminal corporations that are actually stealing billions of dollars from the government through tax loopholes and offshore accounts. Conservatives don't say peep about a literal convicted felon in the highest office in government. But they're sure happy to go after poor brown people, who just happen to be propping up the economy.
> If they are currently enfranchised at all, it's because they're also voting illegally
Illegals do not vote. (https://www.npr.org/2024/10/12/nx-s1-5147789/voting-election...) Enfranchisement means the ability to take a paycheck and deposit it in a bank. You know, to pay for baby food, clothes, education. To buy a home. To pay taxes. To pay for gas, to go to a job, and contribute to the economy. To send kids to college, who will grow up and become doctors, lawyers, software developers, business owners.
> if someone avoids using a US bank because they are already present in the US illegally this is a perfectly reasonable outcome because what should be happening to them is that they get arrested and deported
You don't even have a clue how much this would screw you over, do you? You're cutting off your nose to spite your face. And all for what? A principle that you wouldn't apply to others the same way?
America has illegal immigrants because we asked for them. We literally have no way to process all our fruit and vegetable produce without underpaid migrant workers. This was made plainly obvious during COVID, when all the crops rotted in the ground, because we blocked migrant workers from coming in and picking crops. We do not have the labor force to do it. We also use migrant workers for a huge swath of construction, hospitality, kitchen staff, because 1) we don't have an equivalent labor force for these jobs, and 2) their incredibly low pay subsidizes the low prices you pay for the end products.
Furthermore, migrant workers are a boon to the economy. They pay taxes. They purchase goods. They provide cheap labor that we profit from. They enable businesses to stay afloat, and small businesses are critical to the US economy. Nobody works harder than an immigrant. And they're working for the country.
And this all ignores the humanitarian impact of torturing millions of people. This is what happened to the Jews in Germany in the 1940's. Millions of people, minorities, used as scapegoats, to justify an ideological war, completely ignoring the reality and hypocrisy underneath. A lack of empathy creates horrifying ends.
> You're saying you want tens of millions of people to struggle to survive. For what exactly? A principle? What, that they should "not do illegal things" ?
No I want them to physically leave US soil before they have natural-born citizen children on it.
> This obsession with people violating the law is extremely one-sided. Nobody's going after the tax-dodging criminal corporations that are actually stealing billions of dollars from the government through tax loopholes and offshore accounts.
It's not illegal, nor should it be illegal, for a corporation to structure its affairs so that it minimizes the amount of taxes it's legally required to pay; just as it is not illegal for me personally to do this. If there's a specific problem caused by the way tax law is currently structured, the legislature can change it. Honestly though I'm not very worked up about billions of dollars of corporate tax revenue; the US federal budget is multiple trillions of dollars, and I might well be better off if those marginal dollars go to increasing corporate profits (and therefore the value of my stock-market-invested 401k, which is itself a tax dodge) than to the coffers of the US federal government.
> Conservatives don't say peep about a literal convicted felon in the highest office in government. But they're sure happy to go after poor brown people, who just happen to be propping up the economy.
A lot of people who would've self-described as conservatives before the mid-2010s are anti-Trump, and it probably makes sense to retire the term "conservative" as a descriptor in the context of US politics, the environment has changed too much. Poor brown people committing crimes near me - and not just the bare fact of violating US immigration law, I mean murders and robberies and drunk driving and driving big rigs on fraudulent CDLs and the identity theft that many brown illegal immigrants engage in in order to have legitimate-appearing documents - are more of a problem for me than the business records falsification stuff that Trump was convicted of. What it means to "prop up the economy" is pretty ill-defined, but I don't think that poor brown people do so simply by virtue of being on US soil and (sometimes) working jobs illegally.
> Enfranchisement means the ability to take a paycheck and deposit it in a bank. You know, to pay for baby food, clothes, education. To buy a home. To pay taxes. To pay for gas, to go to a job, and contribute to the economy. To send kids to college, who will grow up and become doctors, lawyers, software developers, business owners.
If illegal immigrants really want to use money in the US in violation of US law, they can use bitcoin or monero, money which is specifically designed to be independent of a state with a law-enforcement apparatus. Illegal immigrants paying for goods and services in the US doesn't benefit most American citizens and in some cases it harms them - e.g. illegal immigrants enrolling their children in American schools generally makes those schools work less well for existing American citizens, because being an illegal immigrant is highly correlated with not speaking English well, not sharing American cultural values, and being less cognitively able and therefore requiring more resources to educate.
> You don't even have a clue how much this would screw you over, do you? You're cutting off your nose to spite your face. And all for what? A principle that you wouldn't apply to others the same way?
I already live in a world where I provide legal documentation of my identity to banks and other financial service providers because they are required to ask for it by law. It's already the case that the government can in principle try to screw me over by interfering with my ability to access the legitimate US dollar financial system. I already live in a world where I have been asked to provide proof of legal US residency within several days of starting a job (and I did so because I am in fact a US citizen). I don't think this proposed banking regulation harms me in any way.
> America has illegal immigrants because we asked for them. We literally have no way to process all our fruit and vegetable produce without underpaid migrant workers. This was made plainly obvious during COVID, when all the crops rotted in the ground, because we blocked migrant workers from coming in and picking crops. We do not have the labor force to do it. We also use migrant workers for a huge swath of construction, hospitality, kitchen staff, because 1) we don't have an equivalent labor force for these jobs, and 2) their incredibly low pay subsidizes the low prices you pay for the end products.
No, we have illegal immigrants because a lot of people outside the US see that life in the US is better than it is where they are, and so attempt to gain access to the US. Among US citizens, there is a constituency of people who benefit from being able to hire low-wage illegal immigrant labor or who have other ideological reasons to support loose immigration policy and lax enforcement of existing laws; and other constituencies of people who are harmed by this. Industries that currently hire a lot of illegal labor would either start hiring citizen or legal immigrant labor at higher wages, or invest in more automation. But people, immigrants or citizens, aren't just abstract units of labor; they are human beings who reside in a place, interact with other people living near them, speak a language, have children, etc. and all of these things are relevant to deciding how much the presence of a given immigrant helps or harms existing citizens.
> And this all ignores the humanitarian impact of torturing millions of people. This is what happened to the Jews in Germany in the 1940's. Millions of people, minorities, used as scapegoats, to justify an ideological war, completely ignoring the reality and hypocrisy underneath. A lack of empathy creates horrifying ends.
Imposing a banking regulation that applies to people who are already violating immigration law and who could easily stop violating immigration law by simply returning to their home country isn't torturing people in a way analogous to imprisoning European Jews in concentration camps and using them as slave labor or killing them.
Apparently, European ID practices are racist, contemptuous of the poor, etc...
Yes. "Other people do it" does not make it any less anti-foreigner.
I cannot get to that link, here is another one. The main part to remember is "may". The cost of this process could prevent the order from being issued:
https://www.businessinsider.com/banks-requirement-citizenshi...
An interesting quote:
> Dissuading people from banking was "one of the more predictable outcomes," Braunegg said, adding that could include people ... and dual citizens who are "wary of cross-border reporting."
An interesting aspect to changes like this is that they demonstrate the silos and fissures between various government functions. There isn't already a standard intra-government API that for an identify returns the relationship person has to the US government (i.e. citizen, legal resident, visa like student or H1B?
What input would you use? There's no unified government ID.
You could probably look up a name and birth date and establish if a citizen exists with that information, I guess. You could check social security (which I'm not sure definitively indicates status) and see the same for that. But it's a very messy system in general.
My name is actually different in a few government databases - in one I have two middle names, in the other two last names. Just random clerical stuff like that is common.
If there's not a table somewhere maintained by the US government that associates social security number with citizenship status, that's because a choice was made by the government not to do that. It would be a simple enough thing to do.
(yes, checking against name / DOB / ssn always has some inherent messiness to it)
It's definitely a choice, because we've avoided having a real standardized identity system run by the government for so long.
But there are reasons for people to oppose it on both sides of the aisle (states rights, immigration views, anti federalism, libertarians) so it's a pretty hard task. Maybe this admin could try it as an immigration security measure and get some support that way but I have my doubts.
> You could check social security (which I'm not sure definitively indicates status) and see the same for that.
It doesn't. When I naturalized, I had to schedule an in person appointment at the Social Security offices to change my status in their systems. There was a time gap between me being American, me having a passport, me being recorded as American as far as SS was concerned and me having a SS card that didn't have caveats written across it.
> me being recorded as American as far as SS was concerned and me having a SS card that didn't have caveats written across it
I naturalized over a decade ago and just realised this is still on my social-security card.
Do I actually have to do anything about it before I go to claim benefits?
The forcing function on my side was to avoid problems when changing jobs. I don't know what problems there might be claiming benefits that you are entitled to, but if you didn't have the change of status registered, that might delay things until you do. If you did change your status but didn't get a card, you can get a replacement one that won't have the text.
One of the things I was concerned for months until I got the new card is the federal government querying the social security database looking for immigrants or discrepancies with any of their other databases and not caring that the discrepancies are of their own making. Being a naturalized citizen with an accent, I keep traveling with my passport for internal trips.
I was curious if a newly naturalized citizen gets a new number when transferring from Individual Taxpayer Identification Number to a Social Security Number–apparently yes, that is the case, and it makes taxes on your year of naturalization more exciting.
https://www.irs.gov/individuals/additional-itin-information
> What input would you use? There's no unified government ID.
Isn't a passport a unified government ID?
The additional 165 dollars to get a passport for the first time is quite steep for a document that seems to become more and more mandatory. Papier, bitte.
Countries with national IDs charge you to replace one if it gets lost, and it usually costs less than 10 USD.
I'm also not quite sure how you get a passport without a bank account. Can you pay in cash? Even if you can, I'm guessing that's only at certain offices, which adds to the hassle and cost.
So, it is in fact a national government ID, you agree?
Is anyone disputing that?
What people are arguing against is that making having a passport mandatory to participate in society is an unreasonable burden, under the current structures. If you wanted to mail a passport to every American in the mail, at no cost, no questions asked, that would be a very different proposition to what is being discussed.
You can't guarantee every citizen has a passport, so if you were running this as a bank or an employer or so on an API that only took passport information would not be super helpful. When I think of a unified ID I think of a number everyone gets at birth tied to an ID card they can show you. Social security is closest to this but the cards say they're not supposed to be used for identification and it's a cludge.
Well, there isn't a national ID system, partly because the citizens don't want to be on the wrong end of when that API says "no". I'm not sure anywhere has such a fully available live system, rather than relying on people bringing documents in to the bank.
The live update would add an extra element of terror to the system, of course.
Edit: actually the UK system is pretty much this, except it's a token rather than an API, presumably to prevent you looking up random people without their consent: https://www.gov.uk/prove-right-to-work/get-a-share-code-onli...
Note that is for right to work, not right to reside, neither of which is the same thing as eligible for a bank account.
> The live update would add an extra element of terror to the system, of course.
Yes, I think I didn't do a good job of placing the question as from the perspective of someone who is not aware of the silos and firewalls within what might otherwise appear to be a monolithic government.
The terror to the system is from the perspective of having lived within the system and not understanding how to operate in the world outside of it. It is a classic sci-fi trope; Brazil and The Minority Report come to mind. It is also a feature of classical Athens where ostracism was a particularly severe punishment.
There's many ways the US is more federated than the EU. The US constitution heavily limits what the federal government can do, especially when a state government could do the same. The only reason there's a federal income tax of individuals is because a constitutional amendment was passed to allow it. Outside of taxes, and the Social Security program that redistributes a lot of that tax income, most individuals have no reason to interact directly with the federal government.
Just because you own a supercar doesn't mean you daily drive it.
That stuff most certainly exists. It's just not for cog #897345673847456 to use in an above the table on the record capacity as part of their run of the mill daily job duties.
avoiding this is one of the use cases for cryptocurrencies
I am surprised that this isn't already part of KYC.
We don't really have a standard way to definitively say "I am a citizen" in the US. It's all kinda ad-hoc, like most of the rest of our ID system. Closest thing's a birth certificate[EDIT: or naturalization papers, of course, for immigrants], I guess, but that's a pain in the ass for anyone who's had a name change (lots of married women, notably) because then they need more documents.
Having a social security or other tax-related ID has sufficed for banks so far, which doesn't guarantee the holder is a citizen but does demonstrate enough relevant "status" with the government for banking to probably go smoothly.
Digging ourselves deeper into our already awful decentralized partially-privatized (the CRAs, mostly) identification system by expanding the set of things we have to prove in even more circumstances is not a good thing.
>We don't really have a standard way to definitively say "I am a citizen" in the US.
In most countries of the world, the best way to prove your citizenship is to apply for a visa. That is you world apply for a US visa and get an official rejection, because US citizens don't need/cannot get a visa, and the rejection document would be the proof of citizenship.
.. that seems extremely dangerous, because I wouldn't trust that refusal to not raise red flags for the rest of your life. I've not heard of people routinely doing this or announcing it as a valid method of proof of citizenship which they accept.
Agreed, that seems like exactly the thing that would get you pulled aside at the border, and/or give ICE a reason to not trust your American passport.
> Closest thing's a birth certificate[EDIT: or naturalization papers, of course, for immigrants], I guess, but that's a pain in the ass for anyone who's had a name change (lots of married women, notably) because then they need more documents.
Or a FS-240, Consular Report of Birth Abroad, from the State Department. I was born on a US military base and although I have a birth certificate, the only think I've ever been able to use it for was my REAL ID. I had to use the FS-240 for my passport, SSN, etc.
I needed my birth certificate to open my first bank account. Although that's because I was a minor.
I've opened several bank accounts for my child. All they needed was the social security number and my photo id (and maybe my social security number too).
You're trying to correlate events that are decades apart, in a thread where we're literally discussing a single administration's change in policy...
This seems to be a debanking scheme. Debanking schemes are just a way to steal peoples savings of course. Deutsche Bank did the same from 1933 to 1945 in Germany.
Minus points? We would all be wise to learn from history. https://www.ushmm.org/m/pdfs/Publication_OP_2003-01.pdf
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So can they stop being so anal about “home addresses” so people traveling abroad for a few months don’t have to stress?
> can they stop being so anal about “home addresses” so people traveling abroad for a few months don’t have to stress?
P.O. or private mail box.
I'm not who you replied to.
Banks are cracking down on PO boxes and CMRAs as the residential address for their clients. It's fine as the mailing address, but people who travel abroad full time may not have a permanent residential address.
Right now, you can choose to use a friend/family address, or you can pay a company to provide a residential address for you.
We should be able to say "I have no permanent residential address since I'm travelling, please send all mail to this CRMA.", but that isn't a supported scenario today.
This all gets complicated for full-time US travellers abroad who may spend all year outside of the country, but they still have to have domicile in some state even when they don't have a permanent address in any state.
I looked into some of this stuff when we were moving across the country and temporarily had no actual permanent address (living out of AirBnBs) including no home under contract, and it would have been very nice to set up a PO Box and local bank account.
I couldn't figure out a way to do it. Even looking at services aimed at people living in RVs didn't seem like it was going to work. For one thing, I couldn't get a PO Box without a home address, LOL.
I've lived abroad for 15 years.
Banks know which addresses are residential and which ones are commercial. Sometimes you can get away with using a mail forwarding service until you get a KYC review. But if you can't provide a real residential address when that happens you'll run into problems (freezes, account closures). I've had it happen.
That's a great way to get your bank account shut down and your balance mailed to your last known residential address.
Patriot act paranoia.