How a Nonprofit Lender Is Helping to Make Immigration More Affordable

MIAMI — For Vantanna Tarver — a 37-year-old Tampa resident — the cost of reuniting with her Jamaican boyfriend after he was taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody was high.

$4,000.

That’s the bond amount Tarver had to come up with to get her boyfriend out of detention — a sum she couldn’t afford to pay with the income she earns from two cleaning jobs.

“It was just very expensive,” she said.

To put the money together, Tarver turned to Capital Good Fund, a nonprofit lender that helps members of working-class immigrant communities navigate the expenses and complexities of the U.S. immigration system.

“When I got the loan, it lifted a lot of weight off my shoulders. It was a miracle,” she said. “I don’t think he would have gotten out otherwise unless I sold things at a pawn shop, which I didn’t want to do.”

Now free, Tarver’s boyfriend awaits his next court date, which will determine whether he will be allowed to stay in the U.S.

“It was a huge relief for the both of us when he was able to get out,” Tarver said.Immigration procedures — including petitioning family members abroad and filing green card applications at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) — can easily run up four-digit bills or more, especially when lawyers are called upon for help navigating a notoriously complex legal system.

High costs for high stakes procedures can drive desperate, low-income immigrants to fall prey to fraudulent notary schemes, or to borrow from high-interest payday and title lenders that leave consumers trapped in debt spirals. In Florida, those loans charge an average of 278% annual interest, racking up hundreds of millions of dollars in fees every year.

Capital Good Fund, a Rhode-Island-based nonprofit that offers many types of personal loans, posits itself as a better, non-predatory alternative.

The organization’s immigration loans range from $700 to $20,000, with annual interest rates between 16 and 24 percent.

The money can be used to cover nearly all immigration-related expenses, including USCIS filing fees and the cost of legal representation — a crucial investment for people involved in complex proceedings like deportation defense or family petitions. Borrowers like Tarver can also use loans to pay for immigration detention bonds. These average around $7,700 at the Krome ICE detention center in Miami-Dade.

“The use of the money itself can mean the difference between the terror of being deported and being able to live and work here legally,” said Andy Posner, founder and chief executive of Capital Good Fund. “The immediate benefit is feeling safe in this country. “Immigrants, whether they are documented or not, are loan-eligible.

“We’ll lend regardless of immigration status,” Posner said. “We don’t ask.”

Since its founding in 2009, Capital Good Fund has lent a total of around $9.9 million. Though immigration loans account for a modest portion of that number — about 12% — they are an important part of the nonprofit’s Florida operations, which started in 2017.

Out of the 271 immigration loans Capital Good Fund has financed in its company history, 187 have been granted to Florida clients. The other states immigration loans are available include Rhode Island, Delaware and Illinois.

To qualify, borrowers must visit the nonprofit’s website, available in English and Spanish, and submit two months of bank statements, as well as a referral form from an immigration attorney and a copy of government-issued ID. About 40% of applications are approved.

To further accommodate Spanish-speakers, the company employees are bilingual. Processing takes two business days.

“We are competing with a lot of payday lenders who are a lot more expensive but very fast, so we have to be as quick as possible,” Posner said.

With the Trump administration set to increase the price tag of key immigration benefits — a recent proposal would grow the fees associated with legal permanent residency and citizenship applications by 79 and 83 percent, respectively — immigration financing services like Capital Good Fund’s could soon grow in demand.

To help the immigration loans gain traction inside hard-to-reach immigrant communities, Capital Good Fund has partnered with a network of certified attorneys and legal nonprofits, who introduce the service to clients as a way to help cover the cost of the fees.

Lawyers see the arrangement as a win-win. They receive payment for their services up front, and immigrants secure access to the kind of legal resources that make a successful resolution to their immigration case more likely.

Christian Veras, an immigration lawyer based in Miami Gardens, has worked with Capital Good Fund for the past three years. He says clients who don’t have enough funds to pay upfront for his services make up “a large portion” of his clientele.

“Before, there was really no solution for clients who needed money to retain me, but simply couldn’t come up with it,” Veras said. “So this is just a life-saver for them. Otherwise, it’s a matter of choosing what to do. Are you going to pay rent this month, or are you going to hire an attorney to help your family?”

Immigrants with attorneys like Veras have been proven to fare better at every stage of the court process than those who go without representation.

But affordability concerns can push some away from certified lawyers and toward cheaper “notarios,” scammers unauthorized to dispense legal advice who can, besides steal clients’ money, also seriously compromise their immigration case.

“In South Florida, it’s extremely common to see a lot of issues with filings made by notarios. The real problem is that they are not legal representatives; they often don’t know the legal consequences of what they are filing and a very small mistake could cost you a lot of money to fix,” said Elina Magaly Santana, a Miami-based immigration lawyer who sits on Capital Good Fund’s board. “I always tell people: ‘lo barato sale caro.’”

What makes folks vulnerable to scams is that “there’s really not a lot of viable alternatives when you can’t afford a lawyer,” Santana said. “There’s a lot of horror stories out there.”

Still, Veras and Santana say there’s much work to be done before Capital Good Fund’s loans gain broader acceptance in the immigrant community. The organization’s relatively low approval rate for loans — it’s 40% — discourages some, they explained, as does the fact that a nonprofit lender is a strange concept for many.

“People haven’t quite gotten used to the idea that you could have this type of loan. They’d rather oftentimes borrow from friends and family,” Santana said. “I do wish more of my clients took advantage of this option. … It’s empowering for them to be able to self-finance in this way.”

Sheyla Velazquez, a Venezuelan immigrant now based in Jupiter, agrees.

A little over two years ago, she got a $4,000 loan from Capital Good Fund to cover all the costs associated with applying for a green card. She explained she would have been hard pressed to come up with the needed funds on the income she gets making deliveries on Uber Eats.

“You know, when you come to the U.S., you are starting from scratch,” she said. “You have to work so hard to make rent, car payments, insurance, so many other types of expenses. The fact that there’s a way to make the immigration process faster and easier is a huge advantage for us.”

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