patrick.net

But the inclusion of illegal immigrants in this mix is merely a factor, not the cause or nexus. The problem is much more systemic than that, and even without a single illegal immigrant mortgage holder there would still be a historically unprecedented real estate price bubble.

Agreed, but if anyone is wondering *why* the bubble is taking so long to deflate in SCAL (or still going strong in some areas), this thread topic is a good illustration.

"We may not have it all together, but together we can have it all"

I'm taking to the streets!

WTF? What kind of message is that? We're as f'd up as the day is long but if enough of us b!tch you'll buckle and give us whatever it is that "we" want? WTF?

My point has very little to do with illegal immigration per se. It has to do with what I see as "business as usual" in America. The source of the problem is *not* illegal immigrants, nor Casey Serin, nor San Francisco socialite Junior Leaguer amateur realtors, nor McMansion SUV NIMBYs. These are all *symptoms* of the problem. The problem is a system which rewards all this behavior, especially for the corporations and institutions which profit from it.

But, in traditional culture-wars fashion, we'll just bury the head of the monster in the sand and instead chase around the tail. But not without much vitriol, hatred, and a comment from Anne Coulter.

Do your friends really feel entitled to a bail-out? If my brother-in-law, a semi-legal immigrant had the mentality, I would report him myself.

I'm very pro-immigrant, but there are a few things that can really generate dis-sympathy among Americans like 1) going on welfare and 2) marching on a communist holiday with a mexican flag.

Mortgage fraud should be a good third.

"We can start with all the natural born mortgage brokers."

The illegal immigrants are also natural born :)

I agree citizen or no citizen, greed is not limited by immigration status or ethnicity.
Lots of mortgage brokers who are Latinos are screwing other Latino immigrants. Actually there was a thread here recently about a couple of fruit picker families getting a 750 K mortgage and their mortgage broker was also a Latino I think.

See what happens when we give stupid people too much self esteem?

(Hmm, my curmudgeonliness is off the chart today...)

PS - that wasn't a comment targeted at anyone in this blog. It's mostly towards FBs.

marching on a communist holiday with a mexican flag.

I suggest you read about the Haymarket Riots. If May Day has become a communist celebration, then we have only ourselves in the US to blame for it.

The “friends” here sound like a pair of red herring strawmen.

Some of my best friends are __________________

x black
x gay
x liberal
x conservative
x realtors
x on MySpace

Funny how no one ever says some of their best friends are us Capitalists.

SQT,

What makes it more depressing is that (as per your previous observations) this was altogether too predictable. Like watching those 1/2 hour "extreme sports" shows where every clip ends with a fire extinguisher and/or an ambulance.

(Some of my closest relatives are racists, like lots and lots of Chinese people)

My sane, nonhypocritical friends all believe in capitalism, though only a few has sufficient assets to qualify as "capitalists."

I don't expect mortgage brokers and realtors to stand up and cheer or warmly embrace the WAVE of regulation they're about to face, (but if they were smart, they should!)

Looking back the only thing I can figure is that REIC henchmen were working the illegals either to go out in a blaze of glory or just until "things returned to normal" where they could go back to previous clients for more sales/re-fi's. How else does it make sense?

My sane, nonhypocritical friends all believe in capitalism, though only a few has sufficient assets to qualify as “capitalists.”

Do they have a shot in becoming Virtual Capitalists (VCs) on the cartoon world?

If my brother-in-law, a semi-legal immigrant had the mentality, I would report him myself.

What is a semi-legal immigrant?

After my pool man bought two houses in Sonoma I would be prepared to believe anything about the real estate market.

Watching the meltdown in the city is like watching paint dry! I have a thought bubble sitting on the top of my head half the time that says "You're griping about the price of gas, how are you paying that $2 million mortgage?" Ah well, Sonoma is in deep doo, and the Press Democrat had the skyrocketing foreclosures and decreasing prices as its lead story on Sunday. I expect the city to follow.

My Parents sold their house at Sunnyvale for $800,000 back in 2005. Personally, it was worth only $200,000. It was old, sketchy neighborhood, and my dad added an addition which he probably didnt get a permit.

A Mexican family bought it, which I wondered how they came up with the down? (Still thinking 30 year fixed mortgage - Old School stuff) Well, I drove by a month later, the house turned into a berryessa flea market. Ton's of cars, a couch, a stove, a table, tons of kids, mexican music blasting in front of the house. This wasn't a party because it was the same old scene whenever I drive by. Looks like it 4 families were living in there. Horrible. I felt sorry for the neighbors.

We should have an informant network to enforce the immigration law and the internal revenue code.

Looks like it 4 families were living in there. Horrible. I felt sorry for the neighbors.

This is why I prefer housing that is completely unfriendly to families.

I am even against street parking. If people want to park more vehicles they should build bigger garages.

Clearly, illegal immigration is not the cause of the current RE situation. But the opportunities presented by our real estate market must be a very enticing lure to those who would abuse it. And news like this travels fast.

As far as "buying a SSN" goes; it may be easier than described above.
When illegal immigrants bear a child on our soil, that child is now a citizen, entitled to all rights afforded as such. Including a SSN. The tradition of naming first born children, especially boys, after the father, works well with SSN fraud.

Confusion of fact to create new truth is an age old ploy. ...and despite this story making sense to me at first, further reflection has convinced me that there is a fair bit of "fact meets fiction" above.

Illegal immigration is a major issue for California. Again, it is a symptom to a bigger issue: the labor market is broken.

I love this thread!

I think a National ID card system combined with a semi-militarized border can stop the problem from growing larger.

Hey Patrick, you should send this thread to Sen. Feinstein.

A bit OT, but alarming just the same...

Anyone read the cover story in Business Week (MAY 7)?
"Hey Buddy, You Wanna Buy a Bridge?"

Basically, "Infrastructure: the new asset class."
The very roads, bridges, airports, and shipping ports of this country are being sold into private control. The current price tag on the Golden Gate Bridge is estimated at $3.4 Billion. Europe and Oz have seen this already, as early as the "80's. Global investors seem very interested.
And why not? The captive customer base virtually guarantees "cash flows as steady as a beating heart."

I'm reading hard copy, but here is a link to the Debat Room:
http://tinyurl.com/2yo4fu

The very roads, bridges, airports, and shipping ports of this country are being sold into private control.

That is encouraging development.

Illegal immigrants can also acquire credit cards, either with a fake SSN or no SSN at all. Though the credit limits are generally low (around $500) the card holders can simply disappear, leaving the bank high-and-dry.

For anyone like Betty who expresses the "can you blame them?" attitude, realize that the bank is not going to just suck up the delinquency out of the kindness of their corporate heart. They're going to pass that delinquency on to someone else, whether it is their customers, shareholders, or the taxpayer.

Same is true for RE fraud.

Now, who among us is feeling sympathetic for her dear, dear friends?

Thanks for sharing Betty. I encourage you to contact Lou Dobb's with your stories. You can write him here:

http://www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form5.html?9

Rob M Says:
May 1st, 2007 at 12:43 pm
"Betty,
You should have discouraged your friend from breaking our law. Or you should have reported them to the authority. Are you now an accomplice?"

Not preventing a crime, and not reporting it does not make someone an accomplice, nor does it make them liable for the crime. Just FYI in case people wanted to run off on that tangent.

Randy H Says:

> Sorry to be a skeptic’s skeptic, but something smells
> wrong in the account. Too many apocryphal coincidences,
> misconceptions and contradictions.

The story makes sense to me. Here in California when most people think of an illegal alien they picture a guy named “Hector Gonzalez” but I personally know a lot of illegal aliens with names like “Sean O’Malley” who have been making good money working in construction with other illegal aliens (and making even more money buying, renovating and selling homes)…

> * How do you know they are buying illegal SSNs? “Undocumented”
> workers have been able to legally obtain so-called non-work
> SSNs since at least 2000. The reason was an attempt to discover
> and better track the number of children and size of families.
> (Also because SSNs are a de facto personal id #).

The guys I know with fake social security numbers have been here for a while and applied for (and got) social security numbers by getting the bona fide birth certificate of an American about their age that died as a child (so they won’t ever ruin anyone’s credit). I have heard that this is harder to do now than it was 10 years ago.

> * If they are indeed buying SSNs, then they are committing
> identity theft at a felony level, perhaps even an Federal felony
> level. As such, most people would (a) feel a very strong ethical
> or moral obligation to inform law enforcement; and/or (b) be
> very afraid of these people and feel too intimidated to report
> them. Nothing in the OP style wise hints at either of those.

I know some Irish born contractors that are actually using the SS# of a live person, but I’m not going to report a hard working guy who goes to church and does everything he can not to cause problems.

> * These people are supposedly “very very good” and dear
> friends. That leaves us as the readers with the uncomfortable
> position of either judging you by the friends you keep and
> hold dear,

I don’t have any illegal aliens that I would call “very very good” and dear
Friends”, but I have worked along side both Irish and Mexican illegal aliens that I would call “very good hard working guys”…

Peter P Says:
May 1st, 2007 at 1:10 pm
"The very roads, bridges, airports, and shipping ports of this country are being sold into private control.
That is encouraging development. "

Yeah, the private airline security screeners did a far better job on Sept 11, 2001 than the TSA has been doing.

Thank God someone else is noticing it is not just Mexicans that are illegal. Those filthy Irish have been causing problems here for 200 years.

Privatizing the Port of Long Beach to Saudi Arabia.........real smart.

Glad that idea got shot down by those of us who "didn't understand the details."

Privatizing the Port of Long Beach to Saudi Arabia………real smart.

That should be fine. In case sh*t happens it can be appropriated.

Ha ha, I even joked on a prior thread that Al Qaeda could have done more damage than knocking down a few buildings if they had got into the subprime game.

appropriated? What do you mean buddy?

I'd rather not have a nuke go off in Long Beach, than knowing who to point the finger to after the fact.

Ooops!

The illegals are just stage 3 of the runup. When the banks ran out of good legal borrowers, they started using bad legal borrowers, when they ran out of bad legal borrowers, they started lending to illegals. When they run out of illegals, what's next? Perhaps the next name that will appear on a mortgage application will be fido.

Allah is right. There is just too much money out there looking for a home. The borrowers are less and less desireable, and as each class of borrower is taken care of, they have to bottom feed in deeper waters.

appropriated? What do you mean buddy?

If the relationship sours it can be taken back for free, pretty much.