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Comment by mikelward | Hacker News Reader

From an article with some actual information:

> A spokesperson for Bank of America said the bank has to collect that information because they aren’t legally allowed to provide services to people from countries the U.S. has economic sanctions against.

> But the spokesperson said a person who has U.S. citizenship can still use their account even if they are also citizens of a sanctioned country.

http://www.seattleglobalist.com/2018/04/13/bank-asks-about-c...

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This reminds me of the first bullet point here: https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/Pay_for_the_Wall.pdf

In what is known as the most heartless plan imaginable for paying for "the wall."

> On day 2 Mexico will immediately protest. They receive approximately $24 billion a year in remittances from Mexican nationals working in the United States. The majority of that amount comes from illegal aliens. It serves as de facto welfare for poor families in Mexico. There is no significant social safety net provided by the state in Mexico.

I guess it depends on your definition of "significant" but there is a social welfare system in Mexico. There are several programmes, and it's helped millions of people - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Welfare_in_Mexico

Would you expect the author of the linked PDF to know that?

More importantly would the "build a wall" folks care about any facts or arguments against?

From the perspective of impacted Mexican populations I imagine it would seem heartless, but it's not an unprecedented sort of action. Economic sanctions are a common tool of governments and have a similar impact on various populations around the world.

Economic sanctions are not typically enacted specifically to target starving Mexican children.

For reference:

https://sanctionssearch.ofac.treas.gov/

Worked with an Iranian woman outside of the US for a US bank's overseas division. Was mandatory for salary paychecks to be deposited to a bank account held by the employer.

She gave all the account opening paperwork to HR, told them that she would comply once they figured out how to get around the US sanctions against her.

Never got resolved and every so often, some HR bot would harass her all over again for the same issue.

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