City Limits MONTHLY
Date: May 2003

LEAVE HOME WITHOUT IT
Credit card companies cancel on Muslim New Yorkers. > By Hilary Russ

Say that you are one of those fortunate people who manage to pay off 
most of their credit cards every month. Then imagine your surprise when 
one of your cards is cancelled for no apparent reason. You'd be outraged, 
especially if you found out this was only happening to you and your 
friends.  

That's exactly what Farooq Firdous experienced. Last summer, Firdous, 
a Pakistani who got his green card in 1997 after 11 years of legal 
residence in the U.S., received a phone call from an American Express 
representative regarding a credit card he held. The rep requested that 
he send the company a mountain of paperwork: three years of tax returns, 
six months of bank statements and a job verification letter.  

His wife, Yasmin Khan, who is Indian, received a separate phone call 
that same day for her own AmEx credit card. In each case, the rep told 
them they had 15 days to submit the paperwork or their cards would be 
cancelled. Firdous and Khan called back later -- twice -- to ask reps 
if they could send the request in writing. They refused.  

Firdous and Khan were confused, to say the least, because they 
always paid off their AmEx cards on time. After conferring with his 
wife, Firdous called the company back again. "I told them strictly, 
'You're probably discriminating against minorities with Muslim names,'" 
he recalls. He and his wife refused to submit the documentation, which 
on at least three different occasions company reps said they needed for 
"security reasons."  

A few weeks later, each received a letter saying his or her credit card 
was cancelled: "You did not provide the banking information, financial 
statements, income tax return, and/or identification documents 
requested." The letters also stated that the reasons for cancelling 
the account included "information received from a consumer reporting 
agency," hinting that credit problems might be to blame.  

But Firdous' credit is excellent, according to the credit report he 
subsequently obtained. (Indeed, after his AmEx card was cancelled, he 
immediately applied for and received a Citibank Mastercard.) The status 
of his closed AmEx account reads "Paid/Never late."

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Full article at - City Limits ...
http://www.citylimits.org/content/articles/articleView.cfm?articlenumber=988

Cheers, Steve..

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