Scams Victimize Mexicans Who Seek U.S. Work Permits : Immigrants: Thousands have been duped by consultants who promise employment papers but actually submit bogus political asylum claims.

Four years ago, Gregorio’s quest was to travel 1,000 miles from his home in central Mexico to the United States, find a job and save a little money for his family. His struggle now is simply to avoid being deported.

Desperate to work here legally, Gregorio last year sought out an immigration consultant, who assured him he could get proper work papers for $500. But to get the work papers for Gregorio, the consultant filed an application for U.S. political asylum on his behalf--without Gregorio knowing it.

Gregorio, officials said, is one of thousands of illegal Mexican immigrants in this country who have been duped by immigration consultants who promise them work authorization papers but actually submit bogus claims for political asylum.

Asylum applications from Mexican nationals jumped tenfold nationwide in the last fiscal year and officials say questionable applications are largely responsible for the increase. Only one of 6,205 Mexican applicants actually received political asylum status during the fiscal year that ended in October.

The national asylum system is so overloaded that it is ripe for abuse by unscrupulous consultants who file the deceptive applications.

For many clients, the requests for political asylum result in interim work papers if the Immigration and Naturalization Service cannot interview them within 90 days. But months later, when the government finally processes the forms and denies most of the requests, immigrants lose their work permits and can face deportation, or they can file appeals to stay in the United States.

Others, however, are interviewed within the required time limit and ordered out of the country, especially if officials quickly determine that their requests for asylum are bogus.

“Asylum applications being filed on behalf of Mexicans is the absolute No. 1 scam being perpetrated right now,” said Susan Alva, coordinator of the immigration and citizenship project of CHIRLA, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.

The exact number of questionable cases is difficult to determine because illegal immigrants fear coming forward to report them. “Immigration fraud is just out of control,” said Jose Vargas, Hispanic affairs officer in the Santa Ana Police Department, who tries to educate immigrants about scams.

A Los Angeles-based immigration consultant “never told me I was applying for political asylum,” said Gregorio, of Lynwood, who did not want his last name revealed because of his immigration status. “If they’d told me it was political asylum, I would never have given away my money.”

Immigrant rights advocates, lawyers and INS officials hear similar stories more often these days, and the problem seems to be growing. More than 1,000 Mexican nationals have filed asylum applications each month recently through asylum offices in Anaheim, San Francisco and other cities, INS officials said.

To get legal residency through political asylum in the United States, immigrants must show that they have suffered persecution or have a well-founded fear of harm in their country of origin because of race, religion, nationality, membership in a social group or political opinion.

INS asylum corps officers check asylum claims to see if they are consistent with a country’s conditions as reported to the INS by human rights groups, and verify them if stories seem true.

The consultants who file such applications “know perfectly well that in (Mexico) there’s no recognized political persecution,” said Javier Valenzuela, consul in charge of protective services at the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles.

Ellen Lutz, California director of Human Rights Watch, said that persecution cases from Mexico are rare but possible. Mexico in 1993 is not “post-Tian An Men Square China or El Salvador at the height of the civil war,” Lutz said, but “there are a handful of people rubbing people the wrong way there.”

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Amnesty International workers said leaders of indigenous peoples in southern Mexico, labor organizers, political opposition party members and human rights activists may have legitimate claims to asylum.

But most of those familiar with the asylum system acknowledge that most of the asylum claims in this country by Mexican nationals are groundless.

Undocumented residents are often easy prey for counselors, notaries public or lawyers who advertise in Spanish-language media that they can get work permits for clients. The illegal immigrants are desperate for work permits in this country but do not know that the vast majority of illegal immigrants are not eligible for them.

Other Mexican immigrants find out early on in the process that they are applying for political asylum, but go along with it anyway, thinking it is the only way to get paperwork and unaware of the consequences of filing groundless applications.

“A lot of people don’t want to hear . . . that they don’t qualify,” said Jaime Vega, of the nonprofit One-Stop Immigration and Educational Center in Santa Ana.

Consultants commit no crime when they file for asylum for their clients, INS officials said, because anyone may apply for it. But advocates object to consultants sending in unfounded claims.

Only citizens, documented residents or those with valid work visas may be employed legally in this country. Illegal immigrants opt either to buy fake green cards, make do without them, or dive into the asylum process to get a temporary work permit.

Asylum applicants are well on their way to getting work papers once their applications clear the first hurdle: a brief examination by INS officials who decide if the applications are glaringly false.

Those rejected in that phase face deportation proceedings. The rest get work papers if they are not interviewed in 90 days, whether their claims are valid or not.

The process provides authorizations for most who apply, said Gregg Beyer, head of the INS Asylum Corps, because spiraling asylum claims mean some applicants hang in bureaucratic limbo for years.

“We’re able to interview only 30% of all the folks who apply for asylum,” Beyer said. “The other 70% go into the backlog, and that’s where the incentives for abuse come in.” Under the law, he said, “we have to give all those who file non-frivolous claims work authorizations.”

Asylum applications filed in 1980 and 1981 are still languishing among the nearly 330,000 cases in the system’s backlog, Beyer said.

More than 700 Mexican asylum claims were awaiting investigation nationwide one year ago, INS statistics indicate. The logjam of Mexican cases now has grown to more than 5,500 because there are too few asylum officers to hear all cases, officials said.

Beyer said abuse of the asylum system illustrates the need to streamline it and to remove incentives for abuse.

Some observers are distressed about the potential for mistakes in the system when so many Mexicans are rejected. “My biggest concern is that the handful of people that deserve asylum should get asylum,” Lutz said. “The flood of cases will sweep the real asylum cases along with them.”

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Gregorio, a 39-year-old former fry cook, said he regrets responding to an ad on a Spanish-language radio station for the immigration consulting firm.

After giving one of the consultants a few personal documents and information in mid-1992, Gregorio said, he waited patiently for an INS letter about his work permit. He did not keep a copy of his application, he said.

A day before his INS interview, Gregorio said, a representative from the consulting company read over the application with him again to make sure he had his facts straight. The contents of his application came as a complete surprise, he said.

“When they asked me what party I belonged to, I said ‘the PRI,’ ” Mexico’s ruling party, Gregorio said. “They insisted, though, that my application said I was in the PAN,” an opposition party, he alleged.

The papers read “I was being persecuted,” claimed Gregorio, who never got a work permit. “But I’m not here because I’m running away” from political repression.

Maria, a 23-year-old applicant from Baldwin Park, wrote letters to the Better Business Bureau complaining about experiences at another center operated by the same consultants, but she said the letters did not accomplish much. She motioned to a copy of a letter the consultants wrote to the bureau in their defense.

“A political asylum application has the benefit of a work permit, it is not a guarantee,” the letter read. “In no circumstances have we taken any illegal procedures.”

Several immigrant advocates and lawyers said that about half a dozen consultants in Southern California are involved in the schemes, although immigration consultants seldom sign the applications they submit.

Frustrated and uncertain how to maneuver through the system, Gregorio and Maria turned to the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles for help.

“We’re trying to protect those people who’ve been hurt in these scams,” said Valenzuela, of the Mexican consulate. “We’re trying to intercede so they won’t be deported.”

INS officials said various cases, including those of Gregorio and Maria, are under investigation.

Though some illegal immigrants may have been fooled into applying for asylum, they cannot be allowed to stay here because of it, Beyer said.

Orange County Dist. Atty. Michael Capizzi, member of a now-defunct county immigration fraud task force, agreed. “They’re here illegally and we can’t deny that,” he said.

Some advocates find fault with investigators and prosecutors who they say stand with arms crossed as illegal immigrants are duped.

Illegal immigrants seldom complain about fraudulent consultants because they fear cooperating with the INS and police, encounter language barriers or cannot afford to file lawsuits, advocates say.

Although rejected applicants are usually ordered to voluntarily leave, Beyer said, many slip between the cracks and the INS cannot devote time to searching for them.

Gregorio, however, said he will not risk toying with the U.S. system if he’s deported. “You don’t play with the law here,” he said seriously.

Maria, like Gregorio, said she fears the law. But she also hopes that by coming forward with her complaint, the law will somehow rectify the fraud she believes was committed against her.

“When I first got here, I got stepped on because I didn’t understand the system,” said Maria, who crossed the border by bus in 1989. “Now I’m not going to let it happen to me.”