Immigration Control Lost in Storm of Phony Papers : Fraud: 1986 law is cited as giving rise to a network of counterfeiting and bilking that is beyond regulation.

By ASHLEY DUNN

Dec. 27, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

At the bustling corner of 7th and Alvarado streets, long known for its freewheeling trade in drugs, sex and cut-rate fortunetelling, a dozen entrepreneurs are leaning against a faded wall, hawking what has become the hottest product on the block.

As the crowd flows by, a man opens his hand and displays his wares: forged U.S. residency cards.

“Permanent or temporary?” he asks, pushing to close a deal at $120 or $70, respectively. It will take about an hour, he says. Political asylum takes a bit longer--maybe an hour and half depending on the lines.

Amid the swaying palm trees and passed-out addicts near MacArthur Park, the booming trade in immigration fraud is open, casual, almost a natural part of life. It is only the tip of what has become a multimillion-dollar national industry.

In the past five years, according to immigration officials, the fraud industry has grown into a vast web of counterfeit document mills and shady immigration offices that have flourished in a largely uncontrolled environment. Hobbled by a lack of resources and changing national priorities, law enforcement has largely limited itself to investigating big cases, allowing thousands of small street dealers to operate with relative impunity.

“It’s just rampant,” said William Griffen, fraud section chief for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service in Los Angeles.

The INS has routinely broken up large counterfeiting rings, and recently cracked one of the biggest operations ever--confiscating 250,000 forged documents worth an estimated $8 million from a print shop on Pico Boulevard. But in a world where thousands of forged Social Security cards can be produced on a small printing press, frustrated INS officials concede that success is relative.

“We took a quarter of a million documents off the street,” said John Brechtel, head of INS investigations in Los Angeles. “Have other documents replaced the supply? In all likelihood, yes.”

Local law enforcement has been far less successful in protecting immigrants from the widespread scams of out-of-state attorneys and immigration consultants.

While many lawyers and consultants perform their jobs legally, immigrant rights advocates say the lack of regulation and official attention has made the field an easy mark for con artists who prey on immigrants with a variety of scams that hinge on the twists and turns of U.S. immigration law.

“It really has become a forgotten crime,” said Linda Mitchell, spokeswoman for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. “It’s the whole perception that these are just undocumented immigrants. It’s just not important.”

The rise in immigration fraud was touched off, ironically, by the landmark Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which was intended to curtail illegal immigration.

The law granted legal status to most of those illegal immigrants who had continuously lived in the country since Jan. 1, 1982. Applicants were required to prove their residence in this country by providing the INS with a variety of documents, such as rent receipts, bills or, in some cases, simple affidavits from employers.

To curtail the flow of additional illegal immigrants, the law imposed stiff fines on employers who knowingly hired workers without the proper documentation. The theory was that without the magnet of easy employment, fewer immigrants would travel to this country.

But the law’s reliance on easily forged documents opened a new realm for fraud.

“We knew it was going to be big-time fraud, but it far exceeded anything we could have projected,” said Griffin of the INS. “The numbers were overwhelming. We weren’t talking about a few thousand cases, we were talking about tens of thousands--and that was just in the L.A. office.”

When the bulk of the amnesty application period ended in 1988, it left behind a network of counterfeit document mills and immigration consulting operations ready to service all those who did not qualify for amnesty, but still needed work documents.

As thousands of immigrants discovered, the easiest way to avoid the law was to buy a forged Social Security or permanent resident card.

Since amnesty, the counterfeiting business has evolved into a complex industry organized much like the drug trade, with street-level “runners,” mid-level wholesalers and upper-echelon document printers.

It has become so widespread that on the corner of 7th and Alvarado, no one even bothers to whisper their sales pitch anymore. “Micas! Micas!” they call out, using the Spanish word for permanent resident cards.

The INS has mainly concentrated on large counterfeiting operations.

It has a full-time fraud unit in Los Angeles with a few dozen investigators (the INS will not release the number), bolstered by a corps of paid informants, some of whom make tens of thousands of dollars a year for their information.

At top speed, the unit manages one or two search-and-arrest operations a week. Last year, it made 142 arrests--133 of which were related to document counterfeiting--and has maintained close to a 100% conviction rate.

Agents concede that they barely scratch the surface.

After the September operation that seized 250,000 forged cards, part of a larger consignment that was distributed across the country, Griffen figured street sales were depressed for “a good three to four weeks.”

But, he added, it is only a matter of time before someone with a printing press starts up, reproducing any of 16 types of permanent resident cards now in circulation.

Most of the forgeries are terrible, replete with fuzzy type and wrong colors. But because the law does not require employers to be document experts, even the most obvious forgeries are sometimes accepted.

“Look how tacky this is,” Brechtel said as he held up forgeries of a permanent and a temporary resident card. “But that’s all they need. Fifteen years of congressional work defeated by two documents.”

A particularly disturbing legacy of the Immigration Reform and Control Act has been the creation of a new class of con artist--notaries, immigration consultants and attorneys, some of whom come from out of state and are not regulated by the California Bar Assn. Immigration consultants are so free of regulation that even an illegal immigrant can open an office.

“There are virtually no controls,” said Madeline Janis, executive director of the Central American Refugee Center in Los Angeles (CARECEN). “There is no one protecting hundreds of thousands of immigrants from being cheated, deceived and possibly prejudiced forever in immigrating to this country.”

In many cases, the immigrants realize they are dealing on the fringes of the law, but are enticed by promises of fast service and guaranteed work papers.

Consider the case of Berta Alicia Chavoya-Pimintel, a 34-year-old from El Salvador who entered the United States illegally nine years ago.

At the prodding of her friends, Chavoya sought out a man she often saw on the corner of 7th and Alvarado, who said he could get her legal work documents through a connection inside the INS. “They all told me I wouldn’t regret it,” she said.

Chavoya was nervous, but felt better when the man led her to an office that was filled with other people seeking the same deal. She was even comforted by the high fee the man was charging--$900--assuming it meant she was getting the best.

After a brief interview, the man gave her a set of forms filled out in English. She still has no idea what the forms contain.

It was only months later that Chavoya found out that the man had simply filled out an application for temporary asylum that cost only $75 to file.

“There were so many people in his office and they were all as happy as I was,” she said recently. “I guess it’s all lost money now.” Chavoya has applied for temporary asylum from the INS under a special program for Salvadorans.

Being snared by a scam can mean far more than the loss of hard-earned dollars.

Carlos Esquivel-Sierra left a high-paying job as a shipping clerk in his native Guatemala three years ago after government soldiers killed his niece and his brother was murdered by a group of men believed to be soldiers.

Esquivel wanted to apply for political asylum, and on the advice of friends he sought out an attorney in downtown Los Angeles who charged him $250.

Esquivel, who speaks no English, began telling the attorney the story of his journey, but the attorney stopped him. In a matter of minutes, he handed Esquivel a completed photocopied application that had most of the questions filled in--all in English--stating that Esquivel feared persecution not by government soldiers, but by leftist guerrillas.

At his first interview with the INS, officials laughed at his application. Esquivel, who had no idea what was in the application, was ordered deported.

He appealed his case, intent on telling the judge his real story. Instead, the immigration judge said: “Do you know that in your application for asylum you say that you are afraid the guerrillas will kill you? . . . Do you know, sir, that there is nothing in your application regarding the death of your brother?”

He was again ordered deported, but remains here pending consideration of a new application for political asylum.

Esquivel was only one of several immigrants interviewed for this story who had nearly identical photocopied asylum applications--all stating a fear of leftist guerrillas in El Salvador or Guatemala.

“We see only the tip of the iceberg,” said Andres Mucino, an investigator with the county district attorney’s Consumer Protection Division. “Some of the lies are so outlandish. It never ceases to amaze me.”

The hub of the local enforcement effort was intended to be a task force established by Los Angeles City Atty. James Hahn with much fanfare during the amnesty application period. The task force was designed as a clearing house of fraud reports and included representatives from the INS, immigrant rights groups, the city attorney, the state attorney general, and the district attorneys of Los Angeles, Ventura and Orange counties.

During the amnesty period, the task force met monthly, organized training sessions for police agencies and waged an aggressive education campaign with regular spots on Spanish-language television and radio.

“It was extremely successful,” said Deputy City Atty. Ellen R. Pais, who has staffed the task force since 1988. “We routed cases all over the state.”

But after the amnesty program ended, the task force withered away. There are no more monthly meetings, television spots or training sessions.

In Orange County, a similar task force convened in 1989 to focus on immigration fraud all but disbanded this year.

“At the height of amnesty, we had so much publicity,” said Teresa Mendoza of the Orange County Coalition for Immigrant Rights and Responsibilities, a member of the task force. “We were on the tips of everyone’s tongue. But as our money dried up, we just were not able to do that much. Pretty much now, the entities that grouped together have faded away.”

Pais and other prosecutors conceded that immigration fraud has assumed a lower priority because of scant resources and a frustrating lack of complaints from the defrauded immigrants.

In Los Angeles, Pais said the number of complaints has dropped from hundreds during the amnesty period to “not even one a month,” Pais said.

“There’s a real problem in getting people to come forward when you can’t guarantee that they can stay in this country or even get their money back,” she said. “The incentive to complain is real limited.”

Janis, of the Central American Refugee Center in Los Angeles, said relying on complaints is a misguided policy because of the suspicion that most immigrants have of law enforcement and the complexity of immigration law, which leaves many immigrants unaware they have been taken until it is too late.

Janis said a greater effort has to be made to educate immigrants about the scams, although she conceded it was an uphill battle.

Each day, the Spanish-language newspapers are packed with advertisements from agencies touting easy work papers, political asylum or late amnesty.

In front of CARECEN’s own offices, hawkers congregate to push their services on immigrants with promises of quicker and cheaper service.

One group has even begun calling itself CARECEN in hopes of snaring some unwitting refugees.

“Just walk up and down this street,” Janis said. “It’s open season around here.”

Identifying Documents

Before hiring an employee, a business owner must see proof of a worker’s identity and employment eligibility.

Some documents, such as a U.S. passport, show both identity and eligibility. In other cases, a prospective employee must provide one document proving identity, such as a driver’s license, and one document proving eligibility, such as a Social Security card.

Immigration and Naturalization Service investigators say some of the most commonly counterfeited documents are permanent resident, temporary resident and Social Security cards. The following are selected documents that can be used to show an employee’s identity and work eligibility.

LIST A

Documents that show identity and eligibility:

* U.S. passport

* Certificate of U.S. Citizenship (INS Form N-560 or N-561)

* Certificate of Naturalization (INS Form N-550 or N-570)

* Alien Registration Receipt Card (INS Form I-151) or Resident Alien Card (INS Form I-551), provided that it contains a photograph of the bearer

* Temporary Resident Card (INS Form I-688)

* Employment Authorization Card (INS Form I-688A)

SOURCE: U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service

LIST B

Documents that show identity:

For individuals 16 or older: