Your Credit Score Isn't a Reflection of Your Moral Character. But the Department of Homeland Security Seems To Think It Is. (slate.com) 336
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.
Assumtions galore (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Re:Assumtions galore (Score:4, Funny)
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?
Look on the bright side, this only lasts until you become a citizen. Once you are a US citizen the reflection of the content of your character that is your credit history becomes so completely unimportant that even a man who has bankrupted six casinos, welshed on god knows how many loans leading to him being treated as a leper by the entire world banking system except Deutsche bank and Russian Mafia owned money laundering factories masquerading as banks, a man who has been convicted of money laundering, cheating people out of their hard earned money with a fake university and is currently being investigated over his fake charitable foundation can become president. If DJT's credit history was an accurate reflection of the content of his character he should be a cloak wearing Sith lord with, dead eyes, pale wrinkled skin like a Shar-Pei that can lift tanks whit his mind and shoot lighting from his fingertips and not the mere sleazebag hack that he is.
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Ah, the old "my guy's bad but what about yours?" argument. Regardless of Hillary's sins, your guy remains a grifter.
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You're feeding a moronic troll. By NO stretch of the imagination was Hillary ever the demon she was cracked up to be. But the decades of slander, vilification, and demonization finally worked well enough for Putin's puppet to seize the White House.
Only one real reason they hated her so much. Certainly not her policies. It was because she was in the wrong political party. (Ditto Bill, actually.)
At least in Obama's case they could add some good old-fashioned racism into the mix of motivations. That's sort of
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Ah, the old "my guy's bad but what about yours?" argument. Regardless of Hillary's sins, your guy remains a grifter.
Both are corrupt. If you want to MAGA both should be locked up, as well as a great many other politicians. That it came down to these two candidates explains a lot about why America isn't nearly as great as it used to be.
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And yet he's still less corrupt than Hillary. How about that Haiti reconstruction, eh? The Clinton Foundation raised billions for them. And spent millions. And pocketed the difference. Oops.
Say what you want about Hillary but she is not the kind of moron that managed to bankrupt six, that's **SIX**, casinos.
Re:Assumtions galore (Score:5, Insightful)
Many people have no credit scores simply because we don't borrow. I have no credit score because I've never felt like spending more than I have. But that actually does identify me as poor and as a bad consumer -- the middle class and wealthy always have debts for their houses and cars, whereas the responsible poor may never experience debt.
Re:Assumtions galore (Score:5, Insightful)
Never borrowing is not really a good sign of financial responsibility. Aside from the fact that using credit cards that you pay off every month actually gives you money (through rewards programs*), borrowing money for expensive purchases you could not otherwise directly afford can allow increased financial opportunities you'd not otherwise have. Taking out a mortgage to buy a house in an area where prices are rising, then selling it later. Or taking out reasonable amounts of student loan debt to get a degree that allows you to find better paying jobs. Even taking out a loan for a car allows you to take jobs you'd otherwise not be able to get to at all.
*You could argue that if people didn't use credit cards, everything would be cheaper (since merchants wouldn't have to pay credit card fees) and so it's a net negative for consumers. While that may be true, given credit cards do exist and are widely used, not using them yourself to gain rewards is financially irresponsible, since costs are the same to you whether you pay cash or not.
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> Aside from the fact that using credit cards that you pay off every month actually gives you money (through rewards programs*),
That's usually not true. Credit cards are not the only things that influence your credit. Car loans, private loans, etc. There are no rewards programs there either.
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Re:Assumtions galore (Score:5, Insightful)
Never borrowing is not really a good sign of financial responsibility.
It depends on how and why, if you're living in a rented apartment in a big city where your daily needs are met by public transportation there's no inherent reason you should have a loan. Yes, you could try to game credit cards but it's a hassle and the time and effort it takes could probably be spent on other cost cutting measures too like taking advantage of sales, cooking your own food, better maintenance of things you own and so on. Taking out a loan to speculate in property value is certainly possible, but the only guaranteed savings is being your own landlord. Would you really sell your house, even though it fits your needs and you've spent years furnishing and customizing it simply because you think prices have peaked? I doubt that, so the vast majority sit through both the ups and downs.
Loans that are proper investments with a ROI or long lasting items you essentially "write off" in your own bookkeeping make sense, like you're buying a car to drive for the next ten years but it has to be paid today. A mortgage in the "safe zone" of the property value (<60% around here) for a low risk customer should have a <1% post-inflation interest, that's a small price for having the money now rather than later. What I don't understand are the people who owe like 1-2 paychecks, zero safety buffer and pay >10% interest. In all but the most dire circumstances I'd cut back enough to get out of that red zone, both for my own peace of mind and the savings. But I've got a friend who's constantly living on credit and he's got this huge urgency of things he'd like to spend money on and is only waiting for the paycheck to come in. I simply think he doesn't worry, tomorrow's problems can be fixed tomorrow.
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I simply think he doesn't worry, tomorrow's problems can be fixed tomorrow.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Ummm, you realize you've got your answer in your own tagline, right?
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I have no credit score ...
Yes you do. You may not know what it is, but if you are an adult in America, you likely have a credit rating.
... because I've never felt like spending more than I have.
That is NOT the only reason to have credit. You should apply for credit and establish a track record of handing it responsibly. Otherwise, someday you are going to want to borrow to buy a house or pay for your kid's college, and the answer is going to be "no".
Get a credit card with a $500 limit. Use it. Set auto-pay from your bank account so you never miss a payment and never pay a cent in inte
Re: Assumtions galore (Score:4, Funny)
I disagree Noah.
In essence with loans and credit cards you are borrowing money from your future self to use now.
Seeing as we don't have a time machine to collect payments from you-in-the-future to give to you-right-now as a lump sum, we have banks and such to help facilitate this, and yes, they take their cut because they provide a service.
The test of character is between future-you and you-right-now. Right now, you hope that future-you will pay up so that you can buy that house, or whatever. If future-you doesn't pay up, you're being dishonest to yourself because they made an agreement with you-right-now. Because we don't have that time machine, there will also be a whole mess of trouble with banks and so on, who also trusted future-you to pay up.
So, can you trust future-you to pay up, given the amount you're borrowing and your current and possible future circumstances? That's the question you need to ask when you borrow from your future self, and the answer depends on how well you know and trust yourself and very little else.
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For a long time I had no score. Nothing. When soft credit reports were pulled on me, it returned no data at all, because I had no hard queries done for more than seven years.
"No data" is not the same as "no score". If they have a record of you existing, you have a score.
If you have ever had a bank account, you have a score. If you have paid for utilities in your own name, you have a score. If you have a non-prepaid cell phone, you have a score. If you have ever had a hard query, such as applying to rent an apartment, then you have a score.
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I have no credit score because I've never felt like spending more than I have.
I have a credit score - a rather good one - but I've never spent more than I have. One does not have to carry debt to have a credit history.
Remember that a person is also being extended short-term credit even when they are paying off their balance in full every statement period. And that's not just the case with use of credit cards (which remain the easiest - and sometimes only - way to make purchases or payments in some situations). Thing about utilities like gas, water, electricity, cable, telephone,
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The fact you don't borrow does not mean you have no credit score. It just means you don't have a record of borrowing and repayment. Presumably other elements, like actual car/house ownership, holding a job, etc, contribute portions to the credit score.
from here [time.com]:
Your credit score is generated based on the information in your credit report. Fair Isaac, the makers of the FICO score, is tight-lipped about exactly how the scores are calculated. But they do give the weights of various criteria that they look at: 35% payment history, 30% amount owed, 15% length of history, 10% new credit, 10% types of credit used.
Percentage of available credit in use is a factor, so with 100% credit available... :)
Personally, I also avoid borrowing whenever possible. The one time I had a store credit card, I cancelled it after getting a $50 late fee on a $20 charge that wa
Even if you don't borrow (Score:2)
Re: Even if you don't borrow (Score:2)
Schufa is not a credit score. It is unpaid debt tracking. The difference is that having absolutely no data in Schufa is the best possible score. In a credit scoring system you first have to prove yourself an irresponsible consumer taking loans all the time to get a credit score. That is why it is so retarded. It is just measuring how good (read wasteful) a costumer your are to banks, not how responsible you are.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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It is probably just "we have failed spectacularly at our job and inconvenienced and assaulted (children being groped, for example) a lot of people, but we now have this one great idea, so please let us continue for a while".
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Re: Assumtions galore (Score:2)
Sophisticated design enough? Lol, most civilizated countries in West does not have credit scores. That is entirely an American and Israeli concept (and possibly Chinese, good company)
Re: Assumtions galore (Score:5, Insightful)
Except the founders of some of our best tech companies came from welfare or refugee families. In other words, if say we didnt allow Steve Jobs biological dad into the country because he was muslim we wouldnt have Apple. If we didnâ(TM)t like muslims from dirt poor third world countries like Bangladesh one of the parents of Youtubeâ(TM)s cofounders wouldnâ(TM)t have been in. If we didnt like refugees we wouldnt have allowed Sergey Brinâ(TM)s family in. If we didnt like people whose family would go on foodstamps we wouldnâ(TM)t have allowed one of Whatsappâ(TM)s cofounders into the country. And these are just the ones I know about offhand.
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Second, they are immigrants. This means that things have gotten bad enough for them where they live they are willing to give up their homes, which may be anc
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Re:Assumtions galore (Score:4, Informative)
Hmm, I read the AC's comment as satire, along the lines of "A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift. In other words, I think he may have been agreeing with you. No matter, since it's the internet, proceed immediately to the verbal evisceration phase.
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"I can't believe my ears!" --Ross Perot.
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Here, we have immigration via family, and immigration sponsorship. My accountant sponsored his brother to come to Canada, and his brother? Turned out to be a deadbeat. On welfare for years, and what happened? My accountant sponsored, so now the province is taking every penny of welfare back from him.
It's the same in the US; if you sponsor someone for a family visa, you're financially responsible for them for 10 years or until they become naturalised (or leave the country), whichever comes first. I know this because as part of bringing my wife to the US earlier this year, I had to sign a contract with the US government to this effect.
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So, like Japan? Not organized? Japan is the epitome of "organized".You're a fool.
What are you babbling about? Japanese consumers do not have a unified credit score like the US but they definitely do have credit reporting with the bank and similar financial institutions they use.
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I wonder how California would score, based on this criteria...
It’s a wealthy place. There are over three people in the state who can still afford a residential down payment.
Mod headline flaimbate (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Yep, total flamebait (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed, total flamebait.
The proposal (which may be bad or good, that's for another post) is:
Try to estimate the likelihood that the person will becime financially dependent on the taxpayers, by looking at their finances.
It's nothing about moral character. THIS proposal is about the financial cost to tax payers. How many financially dependent people we want to bring in is a related, though different, discussion.
Financial dependence isn't "moral character". My daughter is 100% dependent on me financially*. She has high moral character. She's four. The headline is crap.
I suppose someone *could* make the argument that having a habit of borrowing money and not paying it back is a moral weakness, but the authors of the proposal make no such statement. They argue that people who are financially a mess are more likely to become a drain on the tax payer.
* My four year old daughter regularly asks for jobs she can do to earn money for extra toys.
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You mean those organisations that have fully repaid the emergency loans, making the government a significant profit?
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/0... [nytimes.com]
and especially remember that Lehman Brothers has paid all its debts
https://uk.reuters.com/article... [reuters.com]
The decision to fail to support Lehman Brothers was driven by ignorant politicians and caused major problems for no good reason.
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They argue that people who are financially a mess are more likely to become a drain on the tax payer.
And yet Wall Street bankers are still allowed to roam free.
This, precisely.
That's why the look at overall finances, not thing (Score:2)
> you could take in an immigrant with a poor credit score who works like crazy, starts his own business and becomes a millionaire
And if you really even the summary you'd know such a person would pass the financial means test, because:
--
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."
--
I don't expect people to r
Mod headline profiling. (Score:2)
A form of profiling.
China vs US (Score:2, Insightful)
Yesterday, we saw an article about China's "social credit" policy, and there was much outrage and gnashing of teeth and moral superiority. People were all like, "why do we do business with China?" and so forth.
Someone please tell me how this is different from China's social credit policies.
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Someone please tell me how this is different from China's social credit policies.
This number is generated by corporations who don't give a shit about you and would happily kill you and sell your organs instead of by a government that doesn't give a shit about you and does happily kill people and sell their organs already. Toe-MAY-toe, toe-MAH-toe.
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Re: China vs US (Score:2)
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Paying the electricity bill? Yes, the power plant would kill you any moment if they could.
Guess you missed Erin Brockovich [wikipedia.org].
An extremely good reason to own guns.
I do own guns, son. I own several.
Re:China vs US (Score:5, Informative)
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We've already seen what happens when credit scores and the like are ignored and money is just lent out to anyone regardless of their ability to ever pay it back... just because "it's the right thing to do."
Nope. Banks lent money to people they shouldn't have in order to resell those loans to other banks as AAA first class debts. It was a scam run by thieves that we are all still paying for. Well, everyone except the bankers are still paying for it.
IIRC, banks didn't merely lend money to such people, they actively encouraged them to borrow. Weren't there even incentives for bank personnel to lend as much as possible?
Not exactly (Score:3)
The real trouble is that people couldn't afford to buy a house that'd been flipped 7 times and had $100k added to it's original, $200k actual
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Most of the rest of the world never had phone service contracts anyway, why would you want one? I haven't the faintest clue why you would want landline phone service either. I'm 30 years old and I've never had it.
As for th
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China isn't giving the gift of permanent resident status in return for maintaining good social credit.
People have a human right to live and pursue happiness in their homeland. Entry and permanent residence in someone else’s homeland is a gift, not a right.
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Where is that "human right" limited to, "in their homeland"?
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Where is that "human right" limited to, "in their homeland"?
In reality.
Re:China vs US (Score:5, Interesting)
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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The agreement is more or less the same. I signed one earlier this year.
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Yesterday, we saw an article about China's "social credit" policy, and there was much outrage and gnashing of teeth and moral superiority. People were all like, "why do we do business with China?" and so forth.
Someone please tell me how this is different from China's social credit policies.
OK. Let''s see now...
The US system is based upon the financial state and behavior of the individual, and is used to evaluate the likelihood that an individual will repay a debt. High debt/income ratio? Bad. Bankruptcies? Bad. Late credit card payments? Bad. Does this system discriminate against the poor, or those who have fallen on hard times through no fault of their own? You bet it does - it doesn' care why you're a poor credit risk; only that you are
The Chinese system is more social than financial, and
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They are both used to shape individual behavior and they are both involuntary.
Also, you skipped "only using cash and not using credit? Bad"
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They are both used to shape individual behavior and they are both involuntary.
Also, you skipped "only using cash and not using credit? Bad"
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They are both used to shape individual behavior and they are both involuntary.
Also, you skipped "only using cash and not using credit? Bad"
Wow. Not using credit is bad for your credit score? Who could have possibly predicted that?
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Why should not needing credit indicate a lack of credit-worthiness?
I don't think you've thought this through.
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Being punished for not paying back a loan is a lot different from being punished for writing "N" to your friend.
THAT is why China's social credit is a lot worse than credit scores in the US.
Another thing is that China being totally appalling leaves plenty of room for everywhere else to be bad, while still being less appalling than China.
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You are also punished for not getting a loan in the first place. It's a game you must play or not be free to travel, get jobs, etc.
Sure I'll help you out there (Score:2)
In China, if you have a low score you can't get money from anywhere, and will probably end up under a bridge or something - maybe a work camp?
In the U.S., if you have a low credit score you can get money from any one of a thousand predatory lending outfits that exist to suck dry those on the bottom rung of the economic ladder.
So, it is pretty different despite similar measurement, Which is better? Harder to say.
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Unless they want to run for Congress. It seems to be a requirement to be terrible with money to be in the US government nowadays.
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"*I* didn't run over that little kid in the crosswalk.
The car I was driving did!"
Re: China vs US (Score:2)
Thanks man. Slashdot wouldn't be Slashdot without a shitty car analogy.
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Nor would it be the same without dorks attempting to make points with irrelevant technicalities.
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One person lives off the dole, works on the sly and has enough to get by. He never borrows anything because he doesn't need to.
Another goes into debt for good reasons - say getting training or starting a business - but through no fault of his own it doesn't pan out.
Which will have the better credit score? Which is less of a burden on the public finances?
(protip: it's not the same answer each time).
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You're way off the mark. The Chinese "social credit" system is nothing more than the American credit score model. And whether one is the government and one is private business doesn't matter one bit, because you have no say in the matter either way.
Are you a willing customer of Experian? Did you agree to any of it?
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The Chinese social credit system punishes you for posting a picture of Winnie the Pooh. The American credit score punishes you for not consuming financial services in the way that benefits the banks the most.
Both are bad, but I am much more worried about my freedom to post Winnie the Pooh than I am about my freedom to use a debit card instead of a credit card.
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You don't see how those two things are exactly alike? A credit score in the US can keep you from traveling (can't pay with cash), can keep you from housing, can keep you from working.
But your big worry is Winnie the Pooh?
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That's utter bullshit. The US credit rating system is not defined, managed, or widely used by the US government. Having a low credit score does not mean your travel is restricted, which is how the Chinese system made news recently. It isn't based on your political behavior or social speech. It doesn't keep your children out of top schools, it isn't planned to be shown on social media services, and won't determine your eligibility for jobs or Internet speeds or any of the other things Wikipedia lists [wikipedia.org]. Y
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Having a low credit score -- or even no credit history -- will not prevent you from buying plane or train or bus tickets in the US. It will only prevent you from getting a credit card to buy a ticket on credit.
Having a low social credit score -- and having none is not an option -- can prevent you from buying those tickets in China.
If you're going to spout such garbage, you should at least make it obscure enough that it isn't immediately obvious as garbage.
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Did you vote for Experian? For Trans-Union?
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I'm talking about our credit score system more generally.
Do you believe your credit score is voluntary? Can you choose whether or not to be listed with Experian? Can you do so practically?
No they don't (Score:2, Troll)
Your credit score (vaguely) indicates whether you earn a paycheck, are self sufficient and pay your bills. It answers: How likely are you to become somebody else's expensive problem?
Homeland Security doesn't want people coming to the US to become America's expensive problem.
Re:No they don't (Score:5, Insightful)
Your credit score (vaguely) indicates whether you earn a paycheck, are self sufficient and pay your bills.
Not exactly. Your credit score indicates how likely you are to pay back what you borrow -- that's it. It's perfectly possible (and sadly common) for people that make a lot of money to be terrible borrowers and default on loans, or declare bankruptcy, etc. Conversely, it's also possible to make a rather modest paycheck but have a high credit score -- those are usually the people who never forget to pay a monthly bill, don't run a credit card balance, etc. Finally, you have to actually borrow money every once in awhile and pay it back to really build your credit score. That's how you "prove" that you'll actually pay back what you want to borrow, and why banks look very carefully at your credit card payment histories, etc. They literally have this stuff (managing financial risk) down to a science.
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well, they have it down to some number that they think makes it a science. If it was really a science, the banks wouldn't have a bailout due to poor risk management
The problem wasn't with the science, it was with the banks, which blatantly ignored the science and lent money to lots of people who were demonstrably poor credit risks. It's even likely that a lot of those people didn't know they were poor credit risks - they weren't financially clued in, and assumed that if the banks lent them money then said banks thought the borrowers would be able to pay it back. Many of the borrowers who brought on the crisis weren't your typical deadbeats - they got in over their hea
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It's still an indication, even if it is incorrect in a small minority of cases.
Moral character? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there a correlation between credit score and being dependent on welfare? Yes, there is a negative correlation. As the credit score decreases, the likelihood that the person is on welfare increases.
So if as a matter of policy a country wants to take in fewer people who will be dependent on welfare, then credit score is a reasonable data point which could help with that.
I could understand a country making policy that they don't care whether the people they take in are dependent on welfare, in which case credit score perhaps shouldn't factor into their equation, but that's just a matter of policy; there's nothing wrong with using credit score or any other data point to achieve whatever policy goal you want.
In other words, argue the policy. Should we or should we not care about immigrants getting dependent on public welfare?
There are interesting moral and financial arguments here. But zeroing in on credit score specifically is a waste of time.
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What about polite, hard-core, criminals? (Score:2)
I suspect the most hard-core criminals are outwardly polite.
I suspect ... (Score:2)
would like to make immigrants submit their credit scores
If this is the case, it's not that big a deal. DHS (and other US agencies) have been rooting through foreigners record
Wrong Source for Fair, Wrong Topic for Slashdot (Score:3)
1. Slate is for open borders and pretty much every far left cause, only bested by Salon in bias of major outlets. Of course they'll object to anything designed to filter, restrict or vet immigrants. Especially on merit, despite the strict rules Canada has doing precisely that.
Take this sentence opening: Setting aside the proposal’s moral abdication when it comes to the needy. That's not about technology or misuse; the author is advocating specifically for taking in the immigrants least likely to have decent credit scores.
2. This seems more appropriate for reddit than Slashdot. It's not really a nerds- or a tech-focused issue. The focus of the article (other than that our obligation should be to provide unlimited access to those who may become a burden) is that any metrics are wrong because they de-humanize the situation. Which is precisely the point of the metrics, and allows us to handle larger volumes than otherwise, but Slate considers everyone a special case, so metrics are just wrong donchaknow.
Let's not overly politicize /.
Shylock calls Antionio a "good man" (Score:2)
In the play Shylock opines that Antonio is a "good man." Bassino, who he is talking to (or maybe talking to himself in front of) bridles at this, returning: "Have you heard any imputation to the contrary?"
The exchange reveals a fundamental difference in how the world is viewed. Those hundreds of years ago and now.
To the Trumpers, Republicans and Shylock a "good man" is someone who has the assets to cover his debts. If he can't he is by definition "not good."
To everyone else (as depicted by Bassino'
Go away (Score:2)
Crap like this (Score:2)
Is exactly why one should first and foremost be a libertarian.
if ( Big Government == Big Problems ) then
{
becomeALibertarian ( you );
}
else
{
beTheIdiot ( you );
}
In other news (Score:2)
Identity theft of those with stellar credit scores are on the rise. :|
News at eleven.
How to select good immigrants (Score:2)
Can the person speak and write some English? Yes.
Was the person wanting to move to the USA able to pass some educational exams in their own nation? Yes.
Any police record in their own nation? Any police record in another nation?
Did they pay tax in their own nation?
Have they been to the USA in the past? Any problems when they stayed in the USA in the past?
Do they have a bank account to pay their way to the USA and then h
Reminds me of Chris Rock (Score:2)
This reminds me of Chris Rock, when the news about Marion Berry smoking crack came out. âoeWhat are mothers going to say, âDonâ(TM)t smoke crack, you wonâ(TM)t be anything?â(TM) The kid will be like, âI could be mayorâ(TM).â DHS is like âoeDonâ(TM)t be a deadbeat, you cannot be a trustworthy person.â The deadbeat is like âoeI could be presidentâ
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There's a big green thing in NYC wearing a spiky tiara and holding up an ice-cream cone.
Remind me, what does the caption on that say?
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Poor people don't make good immigration numbers. It ends up a net negative overall. You can link your usual cherry-picked bullshit stats on how "immigrants totally pay more taxes!!" all you want. Doesn't change the actual facts.
I'm not trying to be antagonistic now, but do you know of any studies that support what you're claiming? I'm genuinely curious what the numbers show.
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Hmm, I found this article that references the 70% number, which also points to "figures from CBS:"
https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]
...but I couldn't find any such figures in their data that you linked. Maybe my search terms are just off or not politically correct enough, but why can't people ever cite their sources? Geez.
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Credit scores exist without having a credit card. Open a bank account and you have a credit history which is practically global (banks operate these metrics across continents) except for some third world countries.
If you have no bank account it will be pretty hard to get legal immigration into the US; it's a rather expensive process and US Embassies don't necessarily accept those amounts in cash.
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Credit scores exist without having a credit card. Open a bank account and you have a credit history which is practically global (banks operate these metrics across continents) except for some third world countries.
Pretty sure that's not true, at least a friend of mine who emigrated to America from Norway said he had no credit score there despite having both bank accounts and loans here. But what he did was get all the credit cards he could find, live on credit for a month then paid it off. Apparently that was enough to establish a decent credit score, he had an income that more than justified the mortgage so it wasn't that. They just hit a divide by zero when he had no credit history at all.