It’s easy to treat this as another immigration enforcement story.

But the signal is in a single policy shift: moving citizenship checks into the banking system.

“require banks to collect citizenship information from customers…”

“ask for… a passport… from both new and pre-existing customers…”

Right now, banks operate under KYC rules focused on identity and fraud, not legal status.

“Those rules don’t include gathering citizenship information…”

That distinction matters.

If citizenship becomes a required input:

• Access to banking becomes conditional
• Existing accounts become reviewable
• Private institutions become enforcement points

I’m not claiming intent.

I’m pointing at the mechanism: when you push compliance into banks, you scale enforcement through infrastructure that already touches everyone.

No new agency needed. No new system built.

Just a new field in the form.

If access to the financial system depends on citizenship status, then banking stops being neutral plumbing and starts acting like a gate.

That’s the shift.