Washington - U.S. Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) today cited a Washington Post report on the disproportionate amount of Latinos and legal immigrants foreclosing on subprime mortgages as further proof that Congress should act to help prevent future homeowners from entering in to risky loans. The subprime mortgage market has recent plunged into turmoil, causing hundreds of thousands of Americans to foreclose.

The problem is exacerbated for legal immigrants, many of whom are Latino and are unaccustomed to some of the riskier home loans that begin with low initial rates before skyrocketing. The Post cited an estimate from the Center for Responsible Lending that almost 73,000 of the 375,000 Hispanics who took out high-interest loans in 2005 will likely face foreclosure.

"Thousands upon thousands of legal immigrants are seeing the American Dream pulled out from under them," said Menendez. "They are the victims of a lack of financial literacy coupled with lenders looking to make a buck off of them."

"This sad story of immigrant homeowners together with the hundreds of thousands of other Americans caught up in the tsunami of foreclosures paints a bleak and troubling picture. The force with which the Senate Banking Committee has tackled this issue has been appropriate, and I expect that we will continue to work cooperatively on a sensible and strong legislative remedy."

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