You're not a citizen, you're a credit score

Recently, my wife took an Uber home from what she claimed was a vitally important meeting (the truth of her nail appointment emerged later, under mild interrogation). Her driver, a chatty middle-aged woman named Victoria, had begun her life story before my wife even sat inside the car. By the time they reached our apartment in Glendale, Victoria was still mid-sentence. Apparently, she was on her own journey to build a better life, or meet a millionaire. Either would do.

When my wife asked how Uber driving might lead to either outcome, Victoria laughed it off. 

“I love Los Angeles,” she said. “Even if I have no money one day, the next day the city gives me a chance to earn some.” 

She was from Moldova and had crossed the Mexican border during Donald Trump’s first presidential term, found cash work in some fast food place and managed to squirrel away a decent nest egg - until US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents (known as ICE) raided her home and took everything. She was later released, but the money was gone, and the lesson was clear: hide your cash better, or better yet, get it into a bank.

Despite being undocumented and not legally allowed to work, Victoria could open a bank account - and even more astonishingly, a credit card. How? Through the miracle of the ITIN, the Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, which legally stands in for a Social Security Number for people like her who, technically, shouldn’t be here at all.

The irony of it all is deeply American. Immigration authorities may not technically want you here, but the economy definitely does. Because in the United States of America, you don’t need to be a citizen, a legal resident, or even particularly welcome, you just need to be a consumer and to do that you need credit.

Even undocumented immigrants are expected to play the credit game. With an ITIN, they can open accounts, apply for secured credit cards, and build up a credit history because that history, reflected in that magical three-digit score, is the golden key to American life.

A recent Financial Times article from January 16, called it what it is: a delusion. “Credit scores are hazardous to your financial health,” it declared, and not without reason. The system doesn’t reward prudence, it rewards participation in debt.

As the article puts it, credit scores manipulate people into perverse financial behaviour. Pay off your loans? Avoid borrowing? Like saving instead of spending? Well, that makes you a bad player. Want a good score? You need to carry debt, keep using credit and absolutely, positively, never miss a payment.

The article compares credit scores to beer on a college campus: unavoidable, addictive and increasingly embedded into everyday life. Lenders, landlords, insurers - even dating apps - use them. The logic is circular: to prove you’re trustworthy with money, you must spend readily, borrow constantly and repay reliably.

According to the three main reporting agencies, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion, your score improves by never missing a payment, keeping credit usage under 30% and maintaining older accounts. Meanwhile, a single “hard inquiry” - when a lender checks your credit - can knock your score down. Meanwhile, juggling 20 or more multiple credit lines is the ideal combination of credit cards, loans and leases - an unbelievable number for a miserly Irishman, not alone someone who gets their nails done unbelievably often, from Ukraine.

When my wife and I moved to L.A., our lease depended on my credit score. Thankfully, I had a few old US credit cards still open from a decade ago. They’d quietly built up my score while I lived in Ireland. A single missed payment from years earlier had conveniently vanished. But it was close. I have since become almost obsessed with using the various credit lines judiciously to maximise benefits and minimise costs, while my wife would rather burn her cards. 

Recently, I noticed my hairdresser offered a small discount for cash payments, but who does that anymore, I thought, as I beeped my phone across the tap-to-pay terminal for my spectacular haircut and then immediately thought that this was NOT a good thing (and no – not the haircut, that buyer’s remorse came later in our kitchen, after my wife vetted my new look).

Now, credit card offers pop up everywhere - online, social media, emails, till receipts or in the old-fashioned mail - for airlines, grocery stores, fast food outlets, you name it: “Sign up now for 5% cashback and points rewards”. Everything is buy now, pay later (BNPL) using Klarna, AfterPay, Affirm or Paypal-in-4. An American banker’s version of the Irish saying “Sure, I’ll see you again for it”, but said in a smiling Marlon Brando Godfather accent and holding a gun.

But as the FT points out, this isn’t just personal. It’s structural. The system doesn’t reward stability, sustainability or personal responsibility, it rewards churn. It’s not enough to be careful; you must be active. Constantly. For people already struggling, that’s like forcing a recovering alcoholic to work the bars of his old haunts, because of the temptation to “misuse” your available credit.

It is easy for almost everyone to get a credit card. Not so easy for many to get out of debt, especially as most Americans don’t have a safety net. According to Bankrate’s 2025 Emergency Savings Report, only 41% could cover a $1,000 emergency cost from savings. Nearly 60% would have to rely on credit or loans. The Federal Reserve found that 37% couldn’t even cover a $400 expense with cash or a card paid off quickly. Thirteen percent had no means to pay at all. These people are vulnerable, being forced to use credit but then punished for using it too much when they have few other options. That’s a huge cohort living pay-check to pay-check, one cracked car-window or child’s doctor’s bill away from disaster. And the system is designed to catch them, not with help, but with high-interest credit.

This is the darker aspect. Credit institutions actually don’t want you to pay off your credit terms as long as you meet your minimum monthly repayments. Banks make the most money when you only pay the minimum on your credit card. That’s because the unpaid balance racks up interest - often at 20% or more - month after month, quietly turning your $200 dinner into a $400 debt over time. Minimum payments are designed to keep you on the hook for years, not to help you out. Add in late fees and the occasional penalty APR, and what you owe becomes far more than what you spent. The system doesn’t want you to pay off your balance, it wants you to revolve it. That’s where the profit is.

Meanwhile, if you’re one of the rare souls who avoids debt, uses cash, pays up front, saves for rainy days and refuses to open store credit cards for 10% off, you’re an eejit by gaming yourself out of a good score, a decent place to live and potentially meeting your life partner on a dating app. Because the machine doesn’t care about responsibility. It wants activity.

Victoria found that hiding cash ‘under her bed’ was not the best idea with the government agents literally entering her home and seizing it. Yet, she may find using credit cards and high interest loans ultimately worse in the long term… And neither a Democrat nor Republican president will change that.

Because in the United States it is all about your credit score.