http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nort ... fakes.html

By Leslie Berestein
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

February 19, 2006

In the pre-dawn hours one late-November morning, federal agents with search warrants raided the Oceanside and Riverside offices of Golden State Fence Co., carting out boxes filled with payroll documents.

It was the second time in a year and a half that the Riverside-based fencing company was busted for hiring undocumented workers. During that period, federal investigators auditing the company's payroll records had found that 157 of its employees – close to one-third of the workers at the Oceanside and Riverside locations – were in the country illegally.

To get those jobs, nearly all of them had presented phony identification: Investigators found counterfeit green cards, Social Security cards and California identification cards. A criminal investigation into the company's hiring practices continues.

As politicians and activists raise the pitch of their arguments to stop illegal immigration at the border, scant attention has been paid to the legal loopholes that make it easy for employers to hire undocumented immigrants, creating an irresistible economic pull that undermines border enforcement.

Providing an easy in to the job market for these workers – and an easy out for most employers caught hiring them – are counterfeit documents.

While places such as Tijuana and Los Angeles remain hubs for phony-document manufacturers, San Diego is seeing a proliferation of counterfeiters. Last year, federal agents here discovered more than half a dozen document mills, compared with only one in 2004.

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Agents say improved technology has made it easier to set up mom-and-pop counterfeiting operations, while a growing service sector in San Diego has attracted low-wage workers.

“They're staying in San Diego, and there is a demand, and suppliers are trying to meet that demand,â€