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Your Credit Score Isn't a Reflection of Your Moral Character. But the Department of Homeland Security Seems To Think It Is. (slate.com)
What kind of person racks up debts and doesn't pay them? Your credit score is an attempt to answer this question. A report elaborates: These important three-digit numbers summarize our statistical risk for lenders. The allure of the credit score is its clarity: It cuts through appearances and converts our messy lives into an easily readable metric. The difference between a score of 750 and 600 is obvious. One is an excellent bet for a lender to make; the other is not. On balance, credit scores have made borrowing more convenient, and fairer, for consumers. But the U.S. Department of Homeland Security wants to use credit scores for an entirely different purpose, one they were never built for and are not suited for.
The agency charged with safeguarding the nation would like to make immigrants submit their credit scores when applying for legal resident status. The new rule, contained in a proposal signed by DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, is designed to help immigration officers identify applicants likely to become a "public charge" -- that is, a person primarily dependent on government assistance for food, housing, or medical care. According to the proposal, credit scores and other financial records (including credit reports, the comprehensive individual files from which credit scores are generated) would be reviewed to predict an applicant's chances of "self-sufficiency." The proposal is open for public comment until Dec. 10. Setting aside the proposal's moral abdication when it comes to the needy, we should be troubled by another injustice: its abuse of personal metrics.
The agency charged with safeguarding the nation would like to make immigrants submit their credit scores when applying for legal resident status. The new rule, contained in a proposal signed by DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, is designed to help immigration officers identify applicants likely to become a "public charge" -- that is, a person primarily dependent on government assistance for food, housing, or medical care. According to the proposal, credit scores and other financial records (including credit reports, the comprehensive individual files from which credit scores are generated) would be reviewed to predict an applicant's chances of "self-sufficiency." The proposal is open for public comment until Dec. 10. Setting aside the proposal's moral abdication when it comes to the needy, we should be troubled by another injustice: its abuse of personal metrics.
Does this assume that the country from which the immigrant originates is sophisticated enough to have credit scores? Does it assume that an immigrant already in the US and applying for citizenship already has a work authorization and is building a US credit score?
TFS says nothing about "moral character".
Furthermore, no argument is even being made here that there is no correlation between credit score and likelihood of becoming a public charge. The writer just doesn't like the proposal.
If you were a legal migrant you would know that the DHS (INS) already looks at your self sufficiency before allowing you entrance. That is a process that can take up to a year to complete, making it easier by taking a statistical predictor of success and self-sufficiency makes the process easier.
As a legal migrant, your life is fully vetted before entry, integration into American culture, diseases (you need to submit full birth and medical records and have an American doctor vet you personally), criminal activity predictors and self sufficiency (income, savings and a social network) predictors are some of the biggest things they look at. Hence why illegal immigration is such a big issue (feelings of unfairness) across legal migrant populations (including Hispanics).
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