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New Efforts Underway to Combat Immigration
Fraud
 Crime: Focus is on prosecuting phony consultants and helping
victims. Lawmaker proposes tougher financial penalties.
By HUGO
MARTIN, Times Staff Writer
Miguel Cerna, a
factory worker and dishwasher from Anaheim, saved for years to pay an
immigration consultant $7,200 to get legal work permits for himself, his
wife and their daughter.
But the
consultant strung him along, kept the money and never delivered the
permits.
Cerna, an illegal immigrant
from Mexico who came to the United States 10 years ago, reported the
consultant to the Los Angeles County Department of Consumer Affairs. But
he remains nearly broke and in danger of being deported.
"I've got nothing," he said angrily.
"Not a shred of paper."
Such tales of
fraud are all too common in Southern California, the nation's hub both for
illegal immigration and for bogus consultants who prey on unsuspecting
newcomers. Now, however, authorities are launching several new efforts to
prosecute phony immigration consultants and to aid victims like Cerna.
On Jan. 1, a new state law doubled the
bond requirements for consultants from $25,000 to $50,000. A task force of
city and county prosecutors plans to launch a countywide sweep in the next
two months to identify and prosecute consultants who have not submitted
the higher bond or have posted no bond at all.
On Jan. 14, the Mexican Consulate in Los
Angeles assembled a team of private lawyers to offer free legal advice to
immigrants and victims of unethical consultants.
Meanwhile, Assemblywoman Gloria Romero
(D-Los Angeles), who recently hosted a public hearing on fraud perpetrated
against immigrants, said she plans to introduce legislation this month to
increase from $10,000 to $100,000 the civil penalties that victims can
collect from immigration consultants and other professionals who violate
provisions of the state's Business and Professions Code.
Romero said she is considering another
bill that would require immigration attorneys to post their state bar
number in all advertisements to make it easier to identify legitimate
lawyers.
Combined, the efforts are
intended to put fraudulent consultants and lawyers on notice that
authorities are serious about prosecuting fraud against immigrants.
"We want to send a very strong message
that these are people's lives and dreams and futures that are being lost,"
Romero said.
Prosecutors say immigrants
make easy targets because they often don't understand the complexity of
the American citizenship process and are afraid to report fraud for fear
of being deported. Law enforcement officials, who encourage victims to
report scams, stress that they are more interested in prosecuting
fraudulent consultants than in turning over undocumented victims to the
Immigration and Naturalization Service for deportation.
The number of fraud cases "is just
growing every year exponentially," said Judy London, legal director for
the Central American Resource Center.
Kenneth Fong, president of the Southern
California Chinese Lawyers Assn., said the problem is so prevalent that
his group recently launched a community outreach program to warn Chinese
immigrants about consultants who falsely represent themselves as
immigration attorneys in Chinese-language telephone books.
"The problem is just rampant," he said.
No one knows exactly how many fraudulent
immigration consultants and lawyers operate in Southern California, but
authorities believe that the numbers are in the thousands.
London said at least half of the 15,000
immigrants who are served by her agency each year have at some point been
victims of fraud or neglect by bogus consultants.
According to the California secretary of
state's office, 423 consultants have posted a $25,000 consulting bond but
fewer than a dozen have posted the $50,000 bond, which was required as of
Jan. 1.
In the next two months, the task
force plans to launch a "wave of prosecutions" against consultants who
have failed to post the higher bond or any bond at all, said Kathleen
Tuttle, a Los Angeles County deputy district attorney in the consumer
protection division.
Prosecutors
estimate that fraud costs immigrants up to $25,000 each.
But illegal immigrants can lose more
than money. They can lose a chance to legally obtain permanent residency
in the U.S. when consultants mishandle an immigration procedure or file
asylum applications without merit.
That
was the case with Miguel Flores, a Mexican immigrant who works as a
newspaper distributor in Canoga Park. He said he paid an immigration
consultant $2,500 in 1995 to help him apply for permanent residency.
Instead, Flores said the consultant
submitted a political asylum application without notifying him. Flores
knew he didn't qualify for asylum because he came to the U.S. looking for
work, not to escape persecution in Mexico.
The INS rejected the application. The
consultant appealed the decision but failed to tell Flores about a crucial
hearing date for the appeal. Flores missed the hearing and the INS ordered
Flores deported.
Flores has since hired
a licensed immigration attorney who is appealing the ruling on the grounds
that Flores was misled by his consultant.
"I'm not worried about the money. I'm
worried about the problem he put me in," an angry Flores said.
According to INS officials, Flores'
consultant was relying on a common tactic among fraudulent consultants.
Before 1995, immigrants who applied for political asylum with the INS were
given a work permit pending an application review. Many consultants
responded by filing thousands of false and frivolous asylum requests.
In 1995, the law changed and the INS
limited the work permits to extreme cases. Still, many consultants
continued to file frivolous asylum applications in hopes of getting work
permits.
"It makes immigration judges
distrust the ones that really need asylum protection," London said.
Consultants Are Not Regulated
In 1998, state, federal and Los Angeles
prosecutors formed the Los Angeles Fraudulent Immigration Legal Services
Task Force. The team investigated hundreds of reports of fraud and
prosecuted more than two dozen immigration consultants. Most of the
consultants were convicted of failing to obtain a consulting bond, which
is a misdemeanor punishable by a year in jail and a fine of up to $10,000.
Atty. Gen. Janet Reno created a similar
federal task force in San Diego.
Last
year, at the request of the Los Angeles County district attorney's office,
the state Legislature adopted a bill by Assemblyman Robert Pacheco
(R-Walnut) to increase the consultants' bond from $25,000 to $50,000.
Under the legislation, victims of immigration fraud can collect damages
against the bond by filing a request with the California secretary of
state.
The law also makes it a
misdemeanor to post misleading advertising or provide services without a
written disclosure.
Otherwise,
immigration consultants in California are largely unregulated and are not
required to have any special training.
Fraudulent consultants often gain the
confidence of illegal immigrants by offering friendly services in their
native tongue. Consultants sometimes suggest that they have inside
connections with the INS or some other federal agency.
For more than five years, Carlos
Quintanilla, an El Salvadoran national, worked as a consultant in the
Mid-Wilshire district, where he alternately represented himself as an
attorney and as an INS official. He was neither.
Georgina Escobedo, a Mexican homemaker
from San Diego, said Quintanilla told her he was an attorney who had
access to INS computers.
Escobedo paid
Quintanilla $800 to get her a work permit. But she said Quintanilla
instead filed an asylum application with false information and persuaded
her to lie to INS officials about being persecuted in Mexico for her
father's political ties.
The asylum
application was rejected and the INS ordered Escobedo deported. She has
since married an American citizen and has applied for permanent residency.
"I suffered a lot because I was afraid,"
she said.
In 1998, Quintanilla was
convicted of seven felony counts of grand theft and was sentenced to a
year in jail and three years' probation. He could not be reached last week
for comment.
Prosecutors say a
fraudulent consultant will often identify himself as a notario, a term
that in Mexico refers to a legal expert. In the United States, the term
refers to a notary public, a job that requires no legal training. In
California, anyone without a criminal record who pays $72 a year and
passes a short exam can obtain a notary commission.
A 1977 state law prohibits immigration
consultants from advertising themselves as notarios because it gives a
false impression that they can dispense legal advice. But the law is
rarely enforced, as shown by dozens of street signs that advertise
notarios in such communities as Pico-Union, East Los Angeles and
South-Central Los Angeles.
Cerna, the
Anaheim man, said he was swindled in 1997 by an immigration consultant who
used the term notario on his advertisements and his business cards.
'There Is No Easy Solution'
Cerna said the consultant, who works out
of offices on Vermont Avenue near downtown Los Angeles, promised to obtain
him, his wife and his daughter work permits for $3,000 per person. Cerna
said he paid the consultant a $4,000 deposit in July 1997.
After waiting a year without hearing any
word about the permits, Cerna said, he confronted the consultant, who told
him that the laws had changed and that Cerna and his family no longer
qualified for work permits. Cerna said the consultant then promised to get
Social Security numbers for Cerna's family members for $15,000. Cerna paid
the consultant a $2,000 down payment and three monthly payments of $400.
But Cerna eventually realized he was
being conned and reported the consultant to the county Department of
Consumer Affairs, which is investigating the complaint. Friends convinced
Cerna that he would not be turned over to the INS for filing the
complaint.
Cerna has considered suing
the consultant, but said he can't afford to hire a lawyer.
"I wanted to talk to a lawyer, but I'm
almost broke," he said.
Officials at the
Mexican Consulate say Cerna and other victims of immigration fraud can now
get free legal advice every weekday at the consulate between 9:30 a.m. and
noon.
"There is no easy solution," said
Antonio Rodriguez, a civil rights lawyer who provides pro bono legal
advice at the consulate. "We need public education and help from the
government to protect immigrants."
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