Jose Diaz, a 25-year-old Honduran construction worker who has lived in Roanoke for the past five years, already holds a passport from his country, but it's worn, wrinkled and expired.

The photograph it bears is of a significantly younger man, a teenager who had not yet left his home to come to America, and the image has faded over time, gone slightly blue.

A Honduran passport can be used as identification and for setting up bank accounts, and Diaz was one of many who applied for one Saturday at a "mobile" of the Embassy of Honduras at the Blue Ridge Mountains Council of the Boy Scouts of America's Valley View Boulevard center. The mobile was organized by Refugee and Immigration Services, Avencemos Roanoke and local Honduran businesswoman Angelica Quintero.

Applicants must present an original birth certificate and an original Honduran identification card and can get a five-year passport for $145 or a 10-year passport for $160. Staffers check the information against Honduran government databases, and applicants can receive a passport right away or, if further verification is needed, within about three months.

"We've printed approximately 80 passports," said Luis Cordero, the mobile's production supervisor, about 4 p.m. Saturday. By 7 p.m., that number had risen to 140.

"We hope to print 150 today and 150 tomorrow," Cordero said.

"We've had people calling for appointments, somewhere in the vicinity of 250 to 300," said Ramon Custodio, a minister of the Embassy of Honduras. "Most likely it's going to be higher. I never thought it was going to be this high."

Their estimates exceed the turnout at similar Honduran mobiles in Richmond and Virginia Beach a few weeks ago.

"In Richmond, we did 174 in two days," Cordero said. "In Virginia Beach, 134 in one day."

While this would seem to indicate a larger population of Hondurans in Southwest Virginia, actual figures are difficult to calculate.

"I work with over 500 children and their families, and probably 40 percent of those are Honduran," said Vivian Sanchez-Jones, a school liaison for Refugee and Immigration Services, but added, "There are a lot of Hondurans who are single, so that's not a good estimate. And there are people that are coming from Lynchburg, Rocky Mount."

Michel Zajur, president of the Virginia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, helped organize last month's mobile in Richmond and said Friday he believed about 38,000 Hondurans live in the state.

On a larger scale, Custodio said, there are 75,000 Hondurans living and working in America under temporary protected status, but he believes between 600,000 and 800,000 Hondurans live in the United States, three to four times more than the 217,000 reflected by the 2000 United States Census. He estimated the earnings they send back to their country at "$1.7 billion, up from $219 million in 1998.

"The bottom line is we believe that they do not represent any threat to the security of the U.S. because they have demonstrated that they work hard in pursuing the American dream ... and pay taxes at a federal and local level, participate in community events. They are helping the U.S. economy as well as benefiting Honduras by sending remittances back."

To support them, Custodio said, he and counsellor officers from the embassy, are "here voluntarily, working on our own time for the people of Honduras living in Roanoke."

"We do this ... instead of having the people come to D.C. and waste a day's work and transportation," he said. "We come on our own personal time so we can reach out to our community. Because the government of Honduras is interested in providing a passport to citizens living abroad, much like the United States does for citizens living in other countries."

Custodio credits Sindy Benavides, the state's Deputy Director of Constituent Services and Latino Liaison, with making Virginia's Honduran mobiles possible.

Benavides is Honduran but, said Custodio, "to my amazement, she is not only working with Honduras, but also Mexico and El Salvador. So it's not like she's doing this just because she's a descendant, but also because she believes in the cause."

He said similar mobiles would take place in Charlottesville and Harrisonburg, possibly within the next few weeks, adding, "We're trying to set this up, and we've been very aggressive."

The mobile will be open today from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. It's located at the Boy Scouts of America Center, 2131 Valley View Blvd., Roanoke.