On Tue, 26 Mar 1996 jamesd@echeque.com wrote:

This is somewhat off topic for cypherpunks, but alt.forgery is dead, so cypherpunks is probably the nearest group.

On the contrary, I think (undermining) the idea of state-defined identity is pretty essential.

But the thought struck me that this might not work for some one who hypothetically has a foreign appearance and a truly terrible accent.

Now a fake greencard would probably work, but greencards have age and sex etc encoded on them, and conceivably they check them against a database, in which case it would be necessary to obtain the greencard number of a real person of the right age and sex, which is not easy.

Note that the original-style green cards are all going to become invalid any day now. Don't remember exactly when. Hurry! Still, you can get a very good forgery of the new style in, say, New York, Los Angeles, or Redwood City for $100. The problem is, you need to be a part of the community already to be able to find out, in a reasonable amount of time, where to get the good forgeries without getting arrested. If you have the right friends, like if you're a member of certain extended families in Matamoros or New York's ChinaTown, then you can arrange to *borrow* a *real* green card with a similar picture. If this friend could pass for Latin American, you have it easy -- just have him or her fly into Mexico and walk across the border. Unless something major has changed in the last six months, there's such high traffic, and there's so many people with no or *terrible* forgeries, that people with passable forgeries can walk right through without a technological verification. Very low risk, but very high potential cost. Another option, much less commonly forged and somewhat less suspicious than green cards, is a "stateless person travel document." These were given mostly to refugees from the Communist Bloc. They look a lot like a US Passport, are just as easy to forge, do not require a current picture (in fact, they're probably more credible with a 4-year-old picture), and in theory are accepted as equivalent to a US passport. An ex-girlfriend from Czechoslovakia had one. The problem is, most line immigration officials have never seen one, so you're likely to get bumped to a supervisor; but if you have an acceptable ethnic background and decent bullshitting skills in any language, you're in. My ex never had any trouble getting into or out of Mexico, but she finally got fed up with the incompetence of the line officers and became a citizen, which despite her thirteen years in the US, perfect English, a degree in political science from an Ivy-League school, and an internship with the foreign service in DC one summer, was a two-year comedy of incredible errors and incompetence at the INS. Example: once she sent them some forms filled out in duplicate. The INS sent them back two months later, requesting that she resubmit just one copy. They were later proven wrong -- they did need two copies. Understand that these are the people you're dealing with. Finally, I assume your friend can swim. I would recommend avoiding Pacific locales where chumming is commonly practiced. -rich