The State : INS Probes Fake Papers

The federal Immigration and Naturalization Service is investigating 129 cases of fraudulent paper work involving the special agricultural worker part of the amnesty program, Regional Commissioner Harold Ezell announced in Fresno. He said forgers receive $200 to $800 for individual forms showing that a worker harvested perishable commodities in the United States for the required 90 days between May 1, 1985, and May 1, 1986. One complete package of amnesty documents sold for $18,000 in San Francisco’s Chinatown, Ezell added. Ezell said there has been only “a limited amount of fraud” among the 450,000 agricultural applicants and vowed that agents will weed out bogus cases. The INS also announced that 1,100 new Border Patrol agents will be hired to work along the U.S.-Mexican border, increasing the number of agents nationwide to 4,200 by the end of the year.