Getting Legal : Refugees: Thousands of Salvadorans citywide have applied for permission to live and work for 18 months in the United States.

Marlene Rivera made a decision Friday that went against her survival instincts cultivated during years of civil war in El Salvador and refugee life in Los Angeles.

Rivera went to a crowded legal aid office in North Hollywood and gave her name, address and other information to the government.

She is one of thousands of applicants citywide for a program giving undocumented Salvadoran refugees permission to live and work for 18 months in the United States.

“I decided to take the risk,” said Rivera, who is separated and cleans houses to support her three children. “It’s not a sure thing. I hope they are doing this in good faith.”

Rivera said she came to the United States in 1986 from San Salvador, where one of her brothers was kidnaped and presumably killed by the military.

She does not want to go back.

She has been talking to friends and watching Spanish-language television for any information she can get about the program, known as Temporary Protected Status.

After initial misgivings, immigrants rights advocates are now urging all eligible Salvadorans to apply.

They say a recent court decision lessened the danger that refugees would be deported after 18 months by making it much easier for them to seek political asylum and remain in the country legally for years.

The immediate benefit of Temporary Protected Status is the right to work legally: Rivera and others said it will give them access to many more jobs, hopefully better-paying ones than temporary domestic service or day labor.

Lines have grown at the outreach center in North Hollywood since it opened three weeks ago to help people fill out applications, said Lee O’Connor, a lawyer with San Fernando Neighborhood Legal Services. The applications will be filed with the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

But with the June 30 deadline approaching, the number of applicants in Los Angeles--and especially in the San Fernando Valley--remains small compared with the estimated number of eligible Salvadorans. That is because information has been slow to reach the community, fees are too expensive for many impoverished refugees to afford and suspicion and fear linger, according to immigrant-rights advocates.

“Even though we are being swamped, there is a large population we are not going to reach,” said lawyer Braden Cancilla of San Fernando Neighborhood Legal Services. “For us, it’s very frustrating. We’ve worked for years and years to get this kind of protection for Salvadorans.”

There are at least 50,000 Salvadorans in the Valley--concentrated primarily in the barrios of Van Nuys, North Hollywood and Pacoima--and about a half-million Salvadorans in Los Angeles County, up to 80% of them eligible for Temporary Protected Status, according to Meredith Brown of the Central American Refugee Center in Los Angeles. But there have only been about 2,000 applications in the Valley out of about 30,000 applications countywide, Brown said.

The immigrant community in the Valley is at a disadvantage because it is more dispersed and less organized than the large Central American enclave in the Pico-Union area west of downtown Los Angeles, experts said.

Regardless of where they live, emerging from the shadows is a difficult process for people such as Jose Quintanilla, a day laborer who came to apply Friday with registration money he had borrowed from a friend and a 1989 driver’s license.

The INS requires applicants to prove they have been in the United States since before September, 1990.

O’Connor asked Quintanilla if he had any other documents.

But undocumented life by definition leaves a meager paper trail: Quintanilla had no rent receipts because his apartment is not in his name, no pay stubs because he works jobs that pay cash, no utility bills, no bank account, no car.

“I’ve been finding work on street corners,” said the 32-year-old Quintanilla, who, along with other applicants, was interviewed in Spanish. “I haven’t had a steady job. I really don’t have any kind of paper to show you.”

O’Connor suggested that Quintanilla get a letter from a landlord or an employer to bolster his application.

Once Quintanilla applies, he will be interviewed by the INS in about four weeks.

If accepted, he will have to register again in six months and then in a year.

Quintanilla said one of the reasons he did not apply earlier was because he could not afford it.

Many others have the same problem. The INS responded to criticism last month by lowering fees from $405 to $225 per person.

A federal judge also ordered the agency to grant fee waivers to poor applicants.

Nonetheless, because of the slow response to a significant opportunity, advocate groups are lobbying for a proposal offered in Congress to extend the application deadline until October.

The House of Representatives is expected to vote on the issue next week.