Bill Targets Fraud in Immigration Services

Immigrant rights lawyers and prosecutors on Monday endorsed proposed legislation to crack down on Southern California’s lucrative network of unscrupulous immigration consultants.

Assemblywoman Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) announced legislation to increase from $10,000 to $100,000 the civil penalty that victims of such fraud can collect. Romero said crooked consultants routinely charge undocumented immigrants more than $10,000 but do not deliver on promises to obtain permanent legal residency status for them.

Her bill would require immigration lawyers to post their state bar numbers on all advertisements, making it easier for immigrants to identify legitimate attorneys.

The president of the Mexican American Bar Assn., James Blancarte, called the bill “the strongest protection to date against this pervasive and exploitative abuse of recent immigrants.”

But Romero said that unscrupulous consultants are so numerous and earn such huge profits by defrauding immigrants that she can only hope to dent the problem.

“This is a lucrative business,” she said at a news conference at her district office in Monterey Park. “We think we need to do whatever we can to chip away at the problem.”

Edgar Coronado, an attorney for the Los Angeles Center for Law and Justice, a nonprofit legal aid group, said immigrants often lose more than money. They can lose a shot at obtaining permanent residency in the United States when bogus consultants mishandle an immigration procedure, he said.

“Often, there is not much we can do to help the victims after they have been defrauded,” he said.

Romero’s legislation, AB 1858, was introduced last week in the Assembly Rules Committee. Romero said the legislation may come to a vote of the Assembly in late March.

The bill emphasizes restitution for victims but also allows for criminal prosecution, with fines of up to $10,000 and a year in jail for each violation.

The problem has already prompted state, county and local prosecutors to form a task force to target immigration consultants who prey on newcomers. The task force is expected to launch a sweep in the next month or so to identify and prosecute consultants who have failed to post the $50,000 bond required under a separate state law that took effect last month.

In another response to the problem, the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles last month assembled a team of private lawyers to offer free legal advice to immigrants and victims of unethical consultants.

Wei Wong, a representative of the Southern California Chinese Lawyers Assn., said immigration fraud has become a growing problem in the Asian community, where bogus consultants represent themselves as attorneys in Chinese-language telephone books.

In Spanish-speaking communities, consultants often identify themselves as notarios, a term that in Mexico refers to a legal expert, Blancarte said. But in the United States, the term refers to a notary public, a job that requires no legal training.

Although state law forbids immigration consultants from promoting themselves as notarios, Blancarte said many unscrupulous consultants take advantage of the terms to deceive immigrants into thinking they have legal expertise.

“The unauthorized practice of law by some immigration consultants and notaries is one of the largest frauds being perpetrated upon Latinos, Asians and other immigrant communities,” he said.

Romero said her office plans to soon broadcast public service announcements in English, Spanish and Mandarin to help immigrants identify legitimate attorneys.