Judge Upholds $70 Fee to Renew Green Cards : Residency: Ruling means people granted permanent status before 1978 have until next October to comply.

A federal judge in Sacramento ruled Friday that U.S. immigration officials can carry out a disputed plan that requires permanent residents to renew green cards issued before 1978 by paying a $70 fee.

U.S. District Judge Edward J. Garcia’s decision means that about 1.5 million people who received their permanent status before 1978 have until Oct. 20, 1994, to comply or risk losing the document that gives them legal status to live in the United States.

Virginia Kice, spokeswoman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, said her agency is pleased with the decision that “recognized the validity of the INS green-card replacement program and the legitimacy of the fee.”

The $70-per person fee is “pretty steep fee--especially (for) the poor who have to take time off from work and stand in long lines,” said Charles Wheeler, director of the National Immigration Law Center, which, with four other legal groups, fought the INS in court. “What the ruling does is send a message rewarding agencies for violating a federal statute. Under the statute, federal agencies can charge a filing fee if persons are doing it voluntarily and if they are going to receive a benefit.”

Wheeler said the agency and the judge erred because in this case green-card holders get no additional benefit, and they are not paying the fee voluntarily.

In May, the same judge had barred the INS from continuing the program and ordered it to refund the $70 green-card replacement filing fee to the more than 300,000 who had already applied. He held that the agency had not given sufficient notice.

Immigrant rights attorneys went to court seeking to stop the agency from continuing the program, but INS lawyers asked the court to lift the refund order, arguing that it is too expensive and too big a burden for the agency.

Officials say that the replacement program is a response to widespread document fraud that has interfered with the effectiveness of a 1986 federal law prohibiting the hiring of illegal immigrants.

That law requires employers to verify the immigration status of all new workers. But many undocumented employees have gotten around the requirement by presenting bogus documentation, most notably phony green cards, federal officials say. The fee is needed to offset the costs of providing improved documents, they said.

In siding with the government’s position, the judge apparently accepted the INS argument that it would not be in the public interest to order the agency to refund the application fees.

Wheeler said he and other attorneys have not decided yet whether to appeal the ruling.