Credit History of Immigrants
Credit history usually applies to only one country. Even within the same credit card network, information is not shared between different countries. For example, if a person has been living in Canada for many years and then moves to the United States, when they apply for credit cards or a mortgage in the U.S., they would usually not be approved because of a lack of credit history, even if they had an excellent credit rating in their home country and even if they had a very high salary in their home country.
An immigrant must establish a credit history from scratch in the new country. Therefore, it is usually very difficult for immigrants to obtain credit cards and mortgages until after they have worked in the new country with a stable income for several years.
Some credit card companies (e.g. American Express) can transfer credit cards from one country to another and this way help starting a credit history.
Read more about this topic: Credit History
Famous quotes containing the words credit, history and/or immigrants:
“Laws remain in credit not because they are just, but because they are laws. That is the mystic foundation of their authority; they have no other.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“The admission of Oriental immigrants who cannot be amalgamated with our people has been made the subject either of prohibitory clauses in our treaties and statutes or of strict administrative regulations secured by diplomatic negotiations. I sincerely hope that we may continue to minimize the evils likely to arise from such immigration without unnecessary friction and by mutual concessions between self-respecting governments.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)