Not Legal but Need a License? No Sweat

You don’t have to find the people selling fake documents on the street near MacArthur Park. They find you.

Green cards, Social Security cards, birth certificates. You name it, they can print it. It’s an open-air bazaar in the City of Angels, where the underground economy sizzles and salesmen known as micaderos spot you from half a block away.

I slowed down at a corner and two men approached my car, asking what I needed. I am a California-born gringo of European descent, and so I had to come up with something to make them think I wasn’t an undercover cop.

In Spanish, I said I was an undocumented Spaniard.

“De Espana,” one guy said to the other.

I need a driver’s license, I said.

Two hundred bucks, they said.

And how long would it take?

Thirty minutes.

I said I’d think about it.

A couple days later, I tried another guy who said he could get me a license for $90.

He led me behind a truck that served as a shield. Police were all over the place, he explained as he considered my undocumented Spaniard story. He asked me to wait there a minute, then disappeared, never to return.

I found another guy who quoted me a price of $300.

No way, I said. I could get one for $90.

OK, he said -- $150.

Deal.

But he wanted me to promise I wasn’t a police officer.

I promised.

Curse the police, he insisted.

I cursed the police to his satisfaction and had the feeling I wasn’t working with the swiftest blokes in criminal history.

I gave them my photo, my ID information and a $20 deposit. It usually takes an hour, they said, but they’d try to rush it.

This activity is no secret in L.A. Underage teens have been buying fake IDs near MacArthur Park for years, but illegal immigrants make up the bulk of the customers in what police call a multimillion-dollar trade.

For me, this exposes the futility of the endless debate on issuing legal driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. Sure, some might take advantage of the chance to come clean. But many others will choose instead to avoid paying for their own background checks and car insurance and easily buy fake licenses. Or none at all.

Now that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has used the national pulpit to invite the entire world to move to the United States, the more useful debate is whether California can accommodate the anticipated population explosion. Good-paying jobs are so scarce, 500,000 people recently applied for 3,000 openings at the harbor.

Maybe those who missed out could apply to help out the micaderos. An hour went by at MacArthur Park, and I still had no license.

I thought about running over to Langer’s Deli for a hot pastrami on rye, but I didn’t want to miss my connection, and I’m trying to drop a few pounds anyway.

My guys kept an eye on the street and an eye on me, too, as I wandered around. I began to think I hadn’t passed their test, after all. Maybe they thought I was a cop, and the license would never arrive.

Capt. Charles L. Beck of the LAPD’s Rampart Division says police are in the midst of cracking down on the MacArthur Park trade with the help of several federal agencies. They include the FBI and Homeland Security, both of which are concerned about the possibility of terrorists getting their hands on fake documents.

Two sellers were arrested last week, Beck said, and police shut down a “printing mill” about a month ago. He said there are several other mills within a few blocks of the park, all with sophisticated machinery churning out documents that look amazingly authentic.

“We’ve had homicides related to the competition,” said the Rampart chief. “Because there’s a lot of money involved, there are a lot of territorial disputes and things like that.”

Police seem to have put a huge dent in the drug trade around the park, so it’s a safe bet they’ll have the same success with fake documents. But bogus papers, like drugs, will always find another venue.

Three hours after I’d placed my order, my contact leaped into action, crossing the street in the direction of a man walking south along the park. The man appeared to put something in a garbage can, and it was retrieved by my contact.

My guy and another man walked into a nearby variety store, nodding for me to follow. They stayed 10 paces in front of me, turned down an aisle, and planted a tiny brown envelope behind some bottles of shampoo.

I picked up the envelope and placed $130 in the same spot.

The license, which I’ve since destroyed, was a beautiful piece of work. A DMV check would prove the number was bogus, but it looked almost exactly like my real license, complete with seals and careful attention to the tiniest details.

Best of all, I ended up a couple of years younger, and I lost nearly 50 pounds. There was only one thing left to do.

I went to Langer’s for the pastrami on rye, and it was so good I almost wanted to call the police and turn myself in.

Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at steve.lopez@latimes.com and read previous columns at latimes.com/lopez.