Press Release: Agencies Issue Guidance on Lending to Individuals Not Legally Authorized to Work in the United States

The guidance responds to an executive order and frames immigration status as a proxy for heightened credit risk, yet the enforcement mechanism is entirely documentary: can the institution produce the named underwriter's rationale for each approval, the measurement of income volatility, and the controls that govern exceptions? Institutions that cannot link each loan decision to a documented assessment of willingness and capacity to repay—owner, evidence, rationale—will face criticism not for the lending decision itself but for the absence of the record that proves sound risk management occurred. This is decision governance under regulatory pressure: the artifact protects the institution, and its absence becomes the violation.