Street Hawkers : New Industry Emerges, Aims Pitch at Aliens

Like any good salesman, Kam Santos recognizes the value of a good head start, persistence and a fast pitch. On Tuesday, Santos put those notions into practice on the sidewalk outside the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service’s Hollywood legalization office, hailing every illegal alien who could hear and seemed ready to spend cash.

Santos, a genial, casually dressed man with a bug tattoo on his right hand and a spider web tattoo on his left, showed up early to sell handbooks on “How to Become an American Citizen.”

Almost doubled over from the weight of his red, white and blue manuals, he approached immigrants as they waited in line to get into the office. When they exited, Santos tried again, smiling, with the same lines.

“Everything you need to get your status is here, from filling out forms to the history of the United States,” he said. “It’s got the Star-Spangled Banner, all the presidents, a dictionary of important words, the Constitution and all the amendments--the whole nine yards. And it’s in English and Spanish.”

Business was not exactly booming for Santos on the first day of the nation’s new immigration law, but he was out there hustling, as were dozens of other entrepreneurs who mingled with immigrants at legalization centers throughout Southern California.

With citizenship has come a hardy and sometimes pesky new breed of salesmanship.

Outside the Hollywood legalization office, in an office building in the 1600 block of Wilshire Boulevard, keen-eyed hustlers handed out flyers for medical clinics and fingerprint studios. In the same shopping gallery that houses the East Los Angeles legalization office, hundreds of immigrants lined up at a studio specializing in fast service for snapshots and prints. And a legalization consulting service in Sepulveda was doing a brisk business charging adults up to $300 for amnesty advice.

Immigration officials were not pleased with this latest American growth industry, but said they could do nothing unless outright fraud was committed.

“It’s a free country,” said Western Regional INS Commissioner Harold Ezell. “We don’t want it to seem like we sanction these people, but we don’t own the public sidewalks. We can’t order these people away. It’s buyer beware.”

Santos and his colleagues outside the Hollywood legalization office said they were acting with only the purest of intentions. “This is a public service, what I’m doing here,” he insisted.

Indeed, applicants will be expected to show familiarity with the English language and U.S. laws and history--but not until they seek permanent residence, at the earliest 18 months after filing for legalization.

Santos planted himself firmly in front of each of his potential customers. Flipping through the pages of the his how-to-become-an American manual, Santos told them soothingly that the paperback booklet was “self-explanatory.” He was greeted with impassive stares and a few sales.

Standing near Santos was Carlos Beltran, looking slightly ominous in a pair of dark sunglasses while he handed out flyers for the Clinica de Salud Familia, a health clinic providing medical checkups for immigrants. The clinic has been approved by the INS for giving medical tests to applicants.

“I tell people we are a clinic of service to this community,” he said. “People don’t know which doctors to go to and we are near.”

Salvador Rivera, 40, a Salvadoran refugee, dropped by the Hollywood office on Monday to pick up application forms. He wound up taking a job handing out cards for a nearby fingerprint center. He returned Tuesday, with a shopping bag filled with cards bearing the name and address of his new employer.

“I came here to get application forms and a man came up to me and said he needed someone to work for him,” Rivera said. “He’s paying me $3.50 an hour for eight hours a day.”

Inside the legalization office, INS staffers who were caught up in the chaos of the first day of the new law said they had little time and even less authority to discourage the sidewalk entrepreneurs. One of the INS workers said that last week he had approached a truck advertising fingerprinting services that had parked for several days in a space designated for the handicapped directly in front of the legalization office.

“I informed the gentleman inside that he didn’t appear to be handicapped,” the INS official said. “He hasn’t been back since.”

Competition was not so keen outside the East Los Angeles legalization office. But that may have been because Jimmy Aguilar’s Amnestia studio, which had opened Monday, had all the business it could handle. On Tuesday morning, more than 200 immigrants lined up, in front of a storefront with signs advertising: “Amnestia! Fotos! Pasaport! Inmigracion!” They spilled out into the mall, ready to pay $15 for sets of fingerprints and two glossy color photographs required for processing by the INS.

“People are telling me it’s this way all over the place,” said a satisfied Aguilar.

Even 17 blocks from the San Fernando legalization office in Sepulveda, there was money to be made at Parthenia Amnesty Services, where legalization advice was meted out at a price of $300 for each adult, $200 for teen-agers over the age of 14 and $100 for children.

“Business is beginning to pick up rapidly,” said Ira Kwatcher, manager of the clinic, which opened four months ago to capitalize on the complexity of the immigration law.

Even Santos, who was being turned down more often than he was making sales, was optimistic enough to be selling his $6.95 citizenship manual for $8.

“What I’d really like to do is find some immigration lawyers who’d like to put these books in a package deal for their clients,” Santos said. “Then I wouldn’t even have to hustle. But for now, I’ll take what I can get.”