Sponsor
Ritchie Torres
Representative · D-NY
Representative · D-NY
The bill makes it easier and more private for immigrants and low-income consumers to access banking, while imposing compliance costs on financial institutions that may be passed to customers and narrowing some supervisory tools for detecting immigration-related illicit activity.
Immigrants (including undocumented individuals) and low-income people can open and use bank accounts without being required to disclose citizenship or immigration status, reducing barriers to basic financial services and improving access to direct deposit, loans, and other banking services.
Consumers—especially immigrants and low-income individuals—gain stronger privacy protections because financial institutions are barred from collecting or transmitting citizenship or immigration status to federal agencies.
Banks, credit unions, and regulators get clearer, uniform expectations because banking agencies are prohibited from encouraging collection of citizenship/immigration data and directed to enforce the prohibition, promoting more consistent treatment across institutions.
Banks and credit unions will face increased compliance complexity and operational costs to remove citizenship/immigration data from intake, systems, policies, and training; those costs could be passed to customers through higher fees or reduced services, affecting small businesses and low-income customers.
Limiting agencies' ability to request citizenship/immigration data may constrain supervisory tools used to identify immigration-related fraud or sanctions risks, potentially complicating enforcement and increasing certain national security or illicit-finance risks.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Stops covered financial institutions and federal banking supervisors from collecting, using, or sharing customers' citizenship or immigration status for account access while preserving AML and sanctions duties.
Official title: To prohibit covered financial institutions from collecting, maintaining, and disclosing information relating to the citizenship status and immigration status of consumers, and for other purposes.
Introduced April 30, 2026 by Ritchie Torres · Last progress April 30, 2026
Prohibits banks, credit unions, consumer reporting agencies, and other covered financial institutions from requesting, collecting, recording, retaining, or disclosing customers' citizenship or immigration status to provide or access accounts or services, and bars transmitting that information to federal or government agencies. It also forbids federal banking regulators from requiring or incentivizing collection of citizenship or immigration information in supervision, and preserves obligations to comply with anti-money laundering and sanctions reporting laws.