Credit card companies cancel on Muslim New Yorkers.

City Limits MONTHLY
Date: May 2003

LEAVE HOME WITHOUT IT
Credit card companies cancel on Muslim New Yorkers. > By Hilary Russ
http://www.citylimits.org/content/articles/articleView.cfm?articlenumber=988

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.