Immigrants

0

The INS is cracking down on illegal workers, but it’s still very easy to come up with phony papers

Last year, Immigration and Naturalization Service agents based locally seized more than 2 million phony identification documents during Operation Fine Print. That’s about twice as many green cards as the INS issues to legal immigrants in a typical year.

Operation Fine Print is emblematic of a new focus by immigration and labor enforcers nationwide. While enforcement actions along the U.S.-Mexico border and at work-site raids grab headlines, enforcement agents over the past five years have focused more of their efforts on preventing undocumented workers from getting jobs.

A 1986 immigration law requires employers to verify that their workers are either legal immigrants or U.S. citizens before they are hired, and to verify the employment status of workers currently on the job. Employers aren’t required to keep copies of employees’ Social Security cards or green cards on file, but many do, just in case they face the scrutiny of immigration authorities.

“No employee will ever say he’s illegal,” says INS Special Agent Brad Thompson. “And no employer will say he’s intentionally trying to skirt the law. But some employers are more careful than others. We have found that if (employers) invest a lot in training their employees and they want to resist high turnover, they’re more likely to check documents and keep good records.”

Between 4 million and 6 million illegal immigrants are year-round residents of the United States. Rand Corp. estimates that at least 10 percent of them live in Los Angeles County. That’s a lot of illegal workers for the police to track down, so the INS is improving the technologies employers can use to detect undocumented workers.

For the past four years, the INS and the Social Security Administration have established verification centers with complete databases in Washington. Employers can enroll in a program that links them link to databases that verify Social Security or green-card numbers. The databases are accessed by phone or modem. (The INS even provides employers the computer software.)

The INS will not disclose how many companies use the verification system but they say it’s not many. As a result, it’s still easy for illegal immigrants or people who might want to conceal their identities (like those with criminal records) to use phony papers to get jobs. And L.A. is the hub of the production and distribution of illegal documents, says INS Special Agent Louis Rodi.

The street price of a fake identity package has held steady in recent years at between $50 to $70, Rodi said. Such packages usually include birth certificates, Social Security cards, passports, green cards and even driver’s licenses.

The documents seized in Operation Fine Print and in other raids have led to changes in legal documents to help agents catch frauds and prevent employers from hiring illegal workers.

For example, on new Social Security cards the signature line isn’t really a line of solid ink. It’s a row of tiny type that repeats the phrase “Social Security Administration” dozens of times. To the naked eye, it still looks like a line. The type can be read with a magnifying glass.

Similarly, the INS is in the process of issuing a new type of green card that has a magnetic strip on the back that could be used to encode identification data.

A row of what appears to be pinpoint-sized dots runs above and below the magnetic strip. But they aren’t dots. One row contains portraits of all 41 U.S. presidents. The other consists of pictures of all the U.S. flags throughout history. Again, the images can be detected with a magnifying glass.

The new green cards will be phased in over the next few years, as a 1989 law that requires resident aliens to renew their cards every 10 years kicks in. While these cards would be difficult and expensive to forge, it will be years before they replace all the older cards and those can be forged quite easily.

“With a personal computer, a scanner and a program like CorelDraw, it’s possible to come up with some pretty good forgeries,” Rodi said. “And if you invest as little as $10,000 in an offset press, you can crank out a lot of them.”

INS agents believe there is one policy change that would make their jobs easier: A requirement for a national identity card. Otherwise, Thompson says, “the technology (counterfeiters can use) will eventually catch up to us.”

But as recently as 1996, civil-liberties groups, allied with immigrant advocates, blocked the government from requiring people to carry tamper-proof ID cards.

Further, some immigration advocates aren’t thrilled about the crackdown against undocumented workers. They note that as the economy continues to boom, these immigrants aren’t likely to go home, even if they can’t get jobs in the formal economy.

“There needs to be a greater acknowledgment of the contribution of immigrant workers to the economy,” said Victor Narro, director of the workers rights project at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA). “There is an economic necessity for this kind of labor that is often ignored by law enforcement officials.”

No posts to display