REGIONAL REPORT : Green Card: Real-Life Drama Is a Cat-and-Mouse Game : Immigration: INS agents try to root out marriages of convenience. L.A. area has one of highest rates of fraud.

Investigator John Howland stared at the suspect in disbelief, but the young Filipina insisted that she could not remember.

“You mean to tell me you can’t remember where you went or what you had to eat on your first date with your husband?” Howland asked. “What was it? Pizza? Fish? Steak? What?”

The scene was being played out at the Immigration and Naturalization Service marriage fraud division in downtown Los Angeles, a tough question-and-answer session designed to ferret out cases in which immigrants have married U.S. citizens only to win legal residency status.

The INS calls this its version of the “Newlywed Game”--only without the humor. In this case, INS agents suspected the Filipino national of having married an American man so she could obtain a green card--the treasured picture ID that allows an immigrant to live and work legally in the United States.

Agents suspected that the two had met through an intermediary and that the man had agreed to become the woman’s husband on paper for $3,000. The woman, who had been residing in the United States illegally since her student visa expired in 1984, has been awaiting deportation proceedings after the scheme was uncovered more than a year ago.

Recently, the movie “Green Card” depicted the story of an American horticulturist and a French composer who marry for convenience--he for a green card, she to lease a Manhattan apartment only rented to couples.

The phenomenon is not just a figment of Hollywood’s imagination.

Every year, thousands of Americans marry non-U.S. citizens in phony, paper unions designed to circumvent immigration restrictions. According to the INS, the greater Los Angeles area has one of the highest rates of marriage fraud in the country. Here, immigration officials estimate, 15% of the 6,300 marriages last year between U.S. citizens and foreigners occurred solely for citizenship reasons--nearly double the national average. In San Diego, the INS reported a 4% rate of spouse fraud out of 2,100 applications. However, officials said those figures are low because they do not include the many cases that get weeded out later.

“I believe we have seen increasing instances of green card marriages and people are using more and more sophisticated techniques,” said Virginia Kice, spokeswoman at the INS regional office in Laguna Niguel. “There are even rings that have brought people in to serve as intermediaries.”

For a foreigner in search of a piece of the American dream, marriage to a U.S. citizen is the fastest way to immigrate. It takes six months to get a green card based on a marriage to an American, compared to three to five years by other means. Some Americans do it for money; others out of sympathy for the foreigner trying to become a citizen. Still others are duped into marriage by unscrupulous operators who dump them as soon as the ink on their green card dries.

So-called “green card marriages” are not new. They date to the 1940s, when thousands of American servicemen married Japanese and European women after World War II to enable them to immigrate to the United States.

In recent years, the federal government has attempted to close this loophole in the immigration laws. In 1986, Congress passed the Immigration Marriage Fraud Act requiring any foreigner who applies for a green card based on marriage to a U.S. citizen to stay married for at least two years to retain resident alien benefits. The law also states that the couple must live together as man and wife and the marriage must be consummated.

In certain cases, the law allows a resident alien to petition to keep his green card if the marriage breaks up before two years. In those instances, the individual must prove that the relationship began as a legitimate marriage.

Since the law went into effect, the INS has devised a variety of ways to root out phony marriages. These techniques have drawn charges from some quarters that the agency is overstepping its bounds.

Newport Beach immigration attorney Kathryn Terry believes the government is using a double standard by setting an arbitrary two-year time limit--particularly in light of the high divorce rate among the general population in Southern California.

“Why two years?” Terry said. “Who are they to tell someone they have to stay married for two years?”

She said the two-year requirement places undue strain on newlyweds in a legitimate marriage, especially when things begin to sour.

Stu Folinsky, chairman of the Orange County Bar Assn.’s immigration committee, is another critic of the INS policy. “I have a lawsuit on right now where the INS thinks it’s a fraudulent marriage because there is a big age difference and the woman is older than the man,” Folinsky said. “I think the INS thinks it (fraud) happens a lot more often than it does.”

Because of the ethnic diversity of the population and a steady migration of immigrants from the East to the West Coast, Southern California is becoming a hotbed for marriage fraud, INS officials said.

“It’s very prevalent here and you have a history of arrangers in the area actively recruiting and locating potential United States citizens,” said William M. Griffin, supervisory agent in charge of the INS fraud division in Los Angeles. “You’ve also got large military facilities in the area and you’ll find that young military personnel are potential targets for arrangers.”

Ten years ago, the going rate for an arranged marriage was $1,000 to $5,000. Now, INS officials say, buying a spouse can cost anywhere from $5,000 to $50,000.

For the immigrant attempting to obtain a permanent green card, the process begins when the American spouse files a petition requesting an adjustment of status for the individual. The INS then conducts a background investigation, including an FBI fingerprint check to make sure the immigrant does not have a felony record.

Two months later, the couple is scheduled for an interview with INS investigators. If there are no complications, the resident alien can receive a temporary green card the same day.

INS officials say one-fifth of these petitions are set aside for further review.

Such cases can include any request based on a marriage of less than two years; marriages in which there is a large age difference; the husband and wife do not speak the same language; there are vast religious or racial differences; the couple has not established any communal assets; parents and friends are unaware that the couple is married; the foreign spouse is from a country with a high incidence of fraud, or the couple got married in Las Vegas.

In those instances, investigators schedule follow-up interviews with the couple at INS headquarters. At this stage, many couples become frightened and fail to show up, allowing their application to die quietly.

For those who do show up, agents interview the husband and wife separately, asking each spouse questions about the other’s personal habits. What kind of toothpaste does he use? What side of the bed does she sleep on? Where did you spend your first night together as a married couple? What kind of food does he like? The sessions are usually videotaped and kept for evidence.

It was during a taped session more than a year ago that investigators unraveled the case involving the Filipino woman.

The wife lived in Los Angeles and her husband had a Tennessee address. Furthermore, the details of their whirlwind courtship did not match.

“I asked each of them where they had spent their first night together. He said it was in Washington, D.C., and she said it was at his house in Memphis,” he said. “That’s when I knew I had them.”

INS officials said the woman is now awaiting deportation proceedings. There are no charges pending against her husband.

“It’s how they answer the questions as much as what they say,” Howland said. “You can tell when someone is using canned preparation as opposed to when they are really using their memories and they have to dig around and think.”

If authorities suspect fraud after the initial interviews, agents conduct a surprise home visit, known in INS lingo as a “door knock.” During these visits, the agents inspect the couple’s home, peeping in closets, examining the contents of drawers and searching other personal belongings.

“It’s really comical sometimes the things that you will find,” Griffin said. “You’ll go to a home, look in the closet and find one dress and one woman’s shoe.”

The INS has wide legal authority to carry out its mission, allowing the agency to conduct the surprise interviews at a couple’s home.

On a recent morning just after 6, special agents Norman Lau and D.L. Perez-Martinez knocked unexpectedly at the door of a Burbank apartment.

Moments later, a bleary-eyed woman peeked from a second-floor window at the nattily dressed pair below. “What do you want?” she asked, rubbing her eyes.

“U.S. Department of Justice Immigration and Naturalization Service,” said Lau, flashing a gold-colored badge as Perez-Martinez followed suit.

The agents were on the trail of a newly married couple whom they suspected of having wed so the woman, a Thai national, could obtain a green card. The agents’ suspicions appeared to be well-founded when the woman who answered the door informed them that she was the man’s fiancee. She also told the agents that the wife had moved in with a former boyfriend.

The agents suspect that the woman married the man to get a green card, then filed for divorce once she thought she was in the clear. “I think he (the American husband) had feelings for this woman but he was just used for citizenship and doesn’t want to admit that he was that stupid,” Lau said.

Next, the agents headed to the woman’s former boyfriend’s house where he told them she had stayed with him several weeks but no longer lived there. Lau asked if he could take a look around. When the man agreed, Lau and Perez-Martinez headed down a narrow corridor to the bedroom. Suddenly, Lau threw open the bedroom closet.

“I thought you said she doesn’t live here,” said Lau, gesturing toward a closet full of neatly arranged women’s shirts, dresses, pants and undergarments. “Who does this belong to?” The boyfriend told the INS agent that the woman had left her clothes with him before she went to Thailand on vacation. The case, INS officials said, is pending.

During another recent field investigation in Stanton, INS agents learned that a man other than an immigrant woman’s husband had been present with her in the hospital delivery room when she recently gave birth. The man, agents learned, was the woman’s ex-husband, the man they suspect is the father of her child. Although she is married to a U.S. citizen, investigators believe it is only a marriage of convenience. The outcome of that case is pending.

In San Diego, INS agents once happened upon a personal ad in an alternative magazine. Gay Asian male seeking American lesbian female for marriage for citizenship purposes, it read, adding: “Will consider financial arrangement.” Later, when the man’s new wife petitioned for his green card, the INS was waiting. The couple withdrew their application.

In most cases of suspected fraud, the agents recommend that the agency suspend the green card. The couple has 10 days to appeal.

Finally, the immigrant is ordered to appear before an immigration judge for deportation proceedings.

However, those suspected of fraud are rarely deported.

“The process can take a long time so there is nothing to stop them from being petitioned by a second spouse, third spouse, etc.,” said Howland, the INS investigator. “I’ve seen aliens who have been married four or five times to U.S. citizens.”

There are also laws on the books that enable the courts to fine and imprison U.S. citizens convicted of marriage fraud, but the INS rarely prosecutes because such cases are nearly impossible to prove.

Sometimes, INS officials said, the scenarios are mind-boggling.

“I had one case where the woman was married in the Philippines, went to Las Vegas, met someone there and decided to get divorced from her husband in the Philippines,” Perez-Martinez said. “The next day she married the man she had just met. Later, I got a petition from her for a green card for her ex-husband in the Philippines. They had remarried.”

For Perez-Martinez and her partner Lau, theirs is a never-ending contest of cat and mouse.

“I think of it as a psychological game,” Lau said. “Sometimes you win some, other times you lose some.”

MARRIAGE FRAUD

Southern California has one of the highest rates of marriage fraud in the United States. Here are the most recent statistics available:

Los Angeles region

(Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Kern counties) for Oct. 1, 1989, through Sept. 30, 1990:

* Total number of applications requesting an adjustment of residency status--20,139 (spouse, relative and amnesty petitions).

* Number of these applications that are based upon marriage to an American--6,302.

* Number of applications that were denied or terminated--2,049.

San Diego Region

(San Diego and Imperial counties) for Oct. 1, 1989, through Sept. 30, 1990:

* Total number of applications requesting an adjustment of residency status--4,091 (spouse, relative and amnesty petitions).

* Number of these applications that are based upon marriage to an American--2,099.

* Number denied--81.

Source: U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.