The nation’s five biggest banks signed a settlement in February with the Department of Justice and most of the nation’s state attorneys general that allowed the banks to avoid going to court for their role in the foreclosure fraud scandal. Under the terms of the settlement, the banks agreed to pay $25 billion and end certain abusive practices.

However, a new report from the California Monitor, an office overseeing the settlement, found that the banks continued at least one pernicious practice until the last possible moment:

The Settlement provided banks with an implementation period to change their practices. Banks agreed to make all changes by one of three deadlines: 60 days, 90 days, or 180 days. While some changes, such as implementation of a single point of contact for borrower communication, occurred quickly, the banks have taken the full 180 days (six months) to stop dual tracking. This is permissible under the Settlement.

But this waiting has been painful for homeowners, whose fate is uncertain under the dual track regime. To date, dual tracking has continued. As the graph illustrates, the California Monitor Program has received dozens of requests for help each month from families who have submitted loan modification applications but fear that foreclosure will occur, despite their hard work. In August, 25% of complaints received by the California Monitor stated a dual tracking problem.

“Dual-tracking” is the practice of continuing the foreclosure process even as a homeowner is being evaluated for a mortgage modification. It has caused problems for borrowers with several large banks, and results in borrowers faithfully making payments while awaiting a permanent mortgage modification, but seeing their homes foreclosed upon and sold out from under them anyway.

California outlawed dual-tracking entirely in its recent Homeowner’s Bill of Rights. And as this report from the California Monitor shows, banks aren’t willing to end dual-tracking until the law forces them to do so. (HT: Ben Hallman)

A new study from the Kauffman Foundation found that in 2011, one-fourth of tech start-ups were founded by immigrants. In Silicon Valley, 43.9 percent had at least one immigrant founder. As the authors of the study wrote, “high-skilled immigrants will remain a critical asset for maintaining U.S. competitiveness in the global economy.”

This is nothing new. As ThinkProgress has noted in the past that “immigrants founded almost half of the U.S.’s top 50 start-up companies and are vital management or development employees at roughly 75 percent of the nation’s leading cutting-edge companies.”

However, Forbes notes that — for the first time in decades — these numbers are actually in decline. The change was especially dramatic in Silicon Valley, where “the percent of companies with at least one immigrant founder fell from 52.4 percent to 43.9 percent.” Tougher immigration policies put in place since 9/11 have made it more difficult for high-skilled immigrants to be successful in the United States, and this is causing reverse “brain drain.” That is, highly skilled and US-educated immigrants are going to India and China, where more economic opportunities exist for them.

This is a serious problem because the economic contribution immigrants make is disproportionately large: immigrants started 28 percent of all US business in 2011, but account for just 12.9 percent of the population. In addition, twenty-nine members of the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans are immigrants.

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