GREEN GOES PINK: The current version of...

GREEN GOES PINK: The current version of the “green card,” the U. S. Immigration and Naturalization Service document issued to legal immigrants, is changing to pink. . . . Whatever the color, it’s essential identification for getting work. And a deadline is coming up fast for holders of the old-style cards, the I-151, issued prior to 1978. They have to be replaced by March 20.

PAPER CHASE: INS officials will accept applications for the new I-551 card Wednesday at the East Valley Multipurpose Senior Center in North Hollywood--the only time the agency’s processors will be in the San Fernando Valley before the deadline. Phone: (818) 766-5165. Miss them there, and you’ll have to trek to an INS office in East Los Angeles. . . . Don’t expect an extension either. “This is the deadline we’re going on,” INS spokesman Rico Cabrera says.

GOLDEN DOOR: A sure way to avoid the hassle of renewing green cards every 10 years: Apply for citizenship. A program directed by Geneva Hyatt at the North Hollywood center offers the citizenship exam the second Saturday of each month. It also helps would-be citizens such as C. J. Wu, 88, navigate U. S. bureaucracy. He and his wife, Connie Lee Wu, 89, (above) fled China in 1988. She became a U. S. citizen Feb. 17; he’s applying. . . . Why now? “I want freedom,” he says.

PHONIES ABOUND: The new I-551 card contains a photo, fingerprint and signature. The old version had only a photo--and as chief INS investigator John Brechtel concedes, it was “very easy to counterfeit.” The going rate for a fake: $40 to $400. With Southern California home to a quarter of the illegal immigrants in the United States, Los Angeles is the nation’s “principal distribution point” for counterfeit documents, Brechtel says. . . . Valley employers report a “large presence” of bogus cards, he says.

TIME-HONORED NAME: So why call it a “green card?” From the time the old I-151 type was introduced in 1946 until 1964, it really was green. . . . Thirty years later, the name still sticks.