Long Lines for Green Cards : Immigrants: Thousands in Orange County, elsewhere are growing more apprehensive as Monday’s cutoff date for obtaining job permits approaches.

“No more tickets,” the red-jacketed official repeated over and over Tuesday morning, stunning a line of hundreds of frustrated men, women and children gathered outside the offices of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service in Downtown Los Angeles.

“How can there be no more tickets?” asked a disbelieving Vicente Fernandez, a computer technician from Newport Beach who had been waiting for three hours. “I can’t miss another day’s work.”

Queues are growing and nerves are fraying in Orange and Los Angeles counties and elsewhere as hundreds of thousands of long-time legal immigrants nationwide face a Monday deadline for replacing green cards.

In recent weeks, a surge of apprehensive green-card holders seeking to beat the impending application cutoff has besieged INS offices in Southern California and elsewhere, lengthening already-legendary delays at INS sites. Many applicants arrive in the pre-dawn darkness and wait for hours, only to be turned away, often losing a day’s work.

Indeed, the daily allotment of about 500 “tickets” for appointments at the bustling INS headquarters in Los Angeles now runs out not long after the office opens at 6 a.m. Some 700 people were there Tuesday morning.

In Westminster, an estimated 350 people were lined up when the office opened at 8 a.m., police said, creating minor traffic problems.

The impending cutoff has generated great anxiety among the up to 1 million immigrants affected nationwide, including many elderly. All are longtime U.S. residents who were issued their green cards, known technically as Form I-151, before 1979.

Their current cards will no longer be valid after Monday; those failing to obtain replacements will lose their all-important proof of legal status, posing problems upon re-entering the United States, applying for employment and seeking Social Security or other public benefits.

Some green-card holders could even theoretically face detention as authorities attempt to verify their status. But officials stress that no one becomes “illegal” because they failed to replace their green cards. There will be no mass arrests or deportations of immigrants whose cards lapse, authorities say.

“They don’t lose their status, and they’re not going to be deported,” said Rico Cabrera, an INS spokesman in Los Angeles.

Nonetheless, at a time when polls show U.S. residents increasingly cool toward immigrants, many long-time green-card holders are feeling singularly apprehensive. Some see a link to what they consider a growing anti-immigrant sentiment in California and nationwide.

“It’s not a crime to be an immigrant,” declared a disgusted Michelle Bruell, a citizen of England who has lived in the United States for almost 20 years and was waiting in an information line Tuesday with her mother. “We pay our taxes. They should have the decency to be a little more respectful, rather than this cattle-call they have there.”

Behind the replacement program is an effort to replace easily counterfeited aging green cards with newer, machine-readable models that contain photographs, fingerprints and signatures of the bearers. No one even knows exactly how many pre-1979 green cards are in circulation.

However, while aimed at cutting off opportunities for illegal arrivals, the burden has fallen on long-time legal immigrants. Only the aged and disabled may file by mail, a safeguard that authorities say is needed to reduce the opportunity for fraud.

To many, the time-consuming, complex process has confirmed long-time criticism that the INS has emphasized enforcement to the detriment of its other principal task--service. Many green-card holders said they learned by chance about the need to replace their documents, although the INS embarked upon the program more than two years ago.

“There’s probably a lot of people out there who weren’t even aware they have to do this,” said Maggie Robinson, a Canadian who arrived at an INS office at 5:30 a.m.--only to be nearly turned away as the tickets for appointments ran out.

Albert Melendrez, 30, of Whittier, who planned to camp Tuesday night outside the INS office in Westminster, said he only learned last weekend that he had to replace his 1979 green card. Returning from a vacation in Mexico, he was detained for three hours by U.S. immigration officials at the border near Tijuana.

“Now, I’m considering applying for U.S. citizenship,” Melendrez said.

He is not alone.

Frustrated, many green-card holders have simply applied for citizenship, motivated in part by a desire never to have to face INS bureaucracy again. Citizenship applications have increased dramatically.

INS administrators say they have done their best to get the word out about the approaching deadline. Overwhelmed by demand, authorities blame green-card holders for not coming forward sooner.

“There are long lines because people waited until the last two weeks,” complained Richard K. Rogers, the INS district director in Los Angeles.

In response to the crush, INS office hours have been extended and personnel has been redeployed. But still the multitudes of applicants keep arriving.

Fernando S. Vazquez, 64, of Anaheim, who emigrated from Guatemala in 1970, had waited in line at the Westminster office since 4:30 a.m. Tuesday and was number 549.

“It was long and tiring,” Vasquez said. “But I had to do it because of the new immigration law.”

In the same line, a woman had staked her spot with a white plastic chair at 9 p.m. Monday. Others slept on the concrete, wrapped in heavy blankets or sleeping bags.

Faced with a similar 11th-hour surge of applicants last year, authorities extended the deadline to this month, the second time an impending cutoff date had been postponed. But federal officials say they have no plan for a similar extension this time.

Meantime, confusion is rampant.

While the INS has set up an automated 800 number to field inquiries, immigrants say that getting information via telephone is at best a frustrating process. Like survivors of some great misfortune, they swap tales of hours of busy signals and continual redialing.

Norma Ballasteros, who is attempting to file on behalf of her 90-year-old, disabled mother, said it took her five hours to get through to a live INS officer.

“My mother’s really worried about this,” said Ballasteros, who is 65 and has a bad back.

In a brown envelope, she carried her mother’s application, including a receipt for the “Alien Head Tax” paid when Carmen Celia Beltran crossed the bridge over the Rio Grande to Laredo, Tex., on Sept. 17, 1925. She received her green card that same day, records show.

Times staff writer Thao Hua and correspondents Mimi Ko and Bert Eljera contributed to this report.