(April 21) — In a dra­matic bid to end fraud, iden­tity theft and ille­gal immi­gra­tion, Puerto Rico is void­ing all birth cer­tifi­cates issued before July 1, 2010 — forc­ing more than 5 mil­lion peo­ple to apply for new ones.

The move will “pro­tect the iden­tity of all Puerto Ricans born on the island, and at the same time help the fed­eral gov­ern­ment with national secu­rity issues,” Luis Balzac, spokesman for the Puerto Rico Fed­eral Affairs Admin­is­tra­tion, said in a phone inter­view with AOL News.

Accord­ing to the U.S. depart­ments of State and Home­land Secu­rity, Puerto Rican birth cer­tifi­cates account for about 40 per­cent of all cases of pass­port fraud every year, ABC reports.

Under the law, which was passed in Decem­ber, some 4 mil­lion island res­i­dents and another 1.2 Puerto Ricans liv­ing in the United States will lose their cur­rent birth cer­tifi­cates. They must apply for new ones that have been redesigned to be less sus­cep­ti­ble to fraud.

In the law, the Puerto Rican leg­is­la­ture says the island’s birth cer­tifi­cates “facil­i­tate crim­i­nal con­duct of all types,” such as “fraud­u­lently obtain­ing immi­gra­tion ben­e­fits, nar­cotics traf­fick­ing, credit pro­cure­ment, ter­ror­ism and the traf­fick­ing of women and children.”

The fact that Puerto Ricans are U.S. cit­i­zens makes their birth cer­tifi­cates a hot com­mod­ity, espe­cially among res­i­dents of other Spanish-speaking regions who use them via identity-theft schemes as their ticket into the United States. The doc­u­ments some­times sell for tens of thou­sands of dollars.

“There is an enor­mous value increase in Puerto Rican birth cer­tifi­cates because they are a gate­way for a U.S. pass­port for peo­ple who are not enti­tled to one,” Adam Levin, chair­man of a U.S-based identity-theft com­pany, told the Miami Herald.

Ear­lier this year, the New York Daily News reported that Cal­i­for­nia, Ohio and Nevada had all stopped accept­ing Puerto Rican birth cer­tifi­cates as a valid form of ID.

Like other U.S. cit­i­zens, Puerto Ricans use birth cer­tifi­cates to gain access to Med­ic­aid and Social Secu­rity ben­e­fits. But, in a twist that makes the doc­u­ments even eas­ier to use ille­gally, the island’s res­i­dents also use them for every­day activ­i­ties like reli­gious events and sign­ing their chil­dren up for baseball.

“The com­mon prac­tice is that we would pro­vide a cer­ti­fied copy of our birth cer­tifi­cate and leave it behind,” Balzac said. “The result is that a base­ball coach may not have a secure loca­tion to keep these birth cer­tifi­cates, and we end up with a mass amount of cer­ti­fied copies out in the mar­ket. This law will stop that.”

In 2008 the Puerto Rican Office of Vital Sta­tis­tics issued 860,000 birth cer­tifi­cates, but only 45,622 chil­dren were born that year, ABC reports.

U.S. Rep. Jose Ser­rano, D-N.Y., who is Puerto Rican, said the law could prove to be a bureau­cratic night­mare for Puerto Ricans liv­ing in the United States. “My office is being inun­dated with ques­tions about this new pol­icy,” he told ABC. “This could be a major prob­lem for many of my con­stituents’ appli­ca­tions for ben­e­fits, pass­ports and driver’s licenses, among other things.”

Puerto Ricans can apply for a new birth cer­tifi­cate online for $5 on July 1.

From AOL NEWS