Wall Street and Immigration: Financial Services Giants Have Profited from the Beginning

by Peter Cervantes-Gautschi | December 4, 2007

published by the Americas Program, Center for International Policy (CIP), americas.irc-online.org

Life began to get hard for most Americans beginning in the late 1990s due to increased family debt. During the same period, life got a lot harder for most Mexicans for the same reason. The same financial institutions created and profited from much of the family debt in both countries.

According to census reports, 70% of the government unauthorized immigrants in the United States are from Mexico. Most legally unauthorized Mexican immigrants in the United States are economic refugees from the 1995 devastation of Mexico’s economy.

While it is popular among U.S. presidential candidates these days to blame Mexican corruption for our huge undocumented immigrant population, corruption in the United States played a far larger role in compelling millions of Mexicans to cross our southern border with or without legal authorization. U.S. corruption came in the form of politicians implementing and enforcing foreign policies that yielded unprecedented profits for their well-heeled campaign contributors in the financial services industry. They probably didn’t break U.S. law to accomplish this, but they did force Mexico to break its own laws to implement their program.

Led by Wall Street heavies Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Citi, Fidelity, Chase, and others, these finance industry leaders got Congress to permit financial institutions to increase family debt in the United States by enacting legislation friendly to mega-banks (financial holding companies) while thwarting consumer-friendly legislation. The same U.S.-based financial services leaders played a leading role in increasing family debt to unmanageable levels in Mexico in the mid to late 1990s through their influence of the U.S. Congress.
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