San Francisco Free Press- Feinstein and Undocumented - November 3, 1994

Feinstein may have employed undocumented housekeeper

INS records don't show work permit for Guatemalan woman; disclosure made just as Feinstein airs TV ads attacking opponent Huffington for hiring an undocumented immigrant

By Susan Yoachum and Pamela Burdman
Special to the Free Press

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 3 -- A Guatemalan woman worked as a housekeeper for Sen. Dianne Feinstein for more than two years in the early 1980s before becoming a legal U.S. resident, the Free Press has learned.

Contrary to Feinstein's statement last week that she has "never employed anyone who was illegal or undocumented," her former housekeeper was not a legal U.S. resident until 1986, according to records at the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Feinstein said Wednesday the woman "did show me work authority," even though employers were not required to check documentation at that time.

In a separate telephone interview, the 43-year-old woman also said she had a work visa from a prior job working for a Guatemalan official in Los Angeles.

But the INS has no record of granting work permission to the woman before 1986, said Don Mueller, an INS spokesman in Washington, D.C. Records show that the woman entered the country using a visitor's visa in 1980 and 1982, Mueller said, but such visas are only valid for a few months and do not allow visitors to work.

The disclosure comes as Feinstein has begun airing television ads attacking Republican challenger Michael Huffington for having employed an illegal immigrant as a nanny for four years before making illegal immigration a centerpiece of his campaign.

"Politician Michael Huffington talks tough about illegal immigrants, but now Huffington admits that for years he employed an illegal immigrant at his home," say Feinstein's new television and radio ads. "And what else don't we Californians know about Michael Huffington?"

INS officials have said they are investigating Huffington's admission that he and his wife employed an undocumented worker to care for his children from 1989 to 1993. Feinstein's housekeeper worked for her prior to a 1986 federal law that made it illegal to employ undocumented workers Mueller said.

However, Feinstein's political advertising and her own statements about employing undocumented workers have called into question whether she is guilty of attacking Huffington for doing what she had done a few years earlier.

"She showed me documentation in the form of a card. I think it's a totally different issue than with Michael Huffington. He supports (Proposition) 187, and has been hypocritical," Feinstein said Wednesday. "All I've said is that illegal immigration is a very complicated picture."

The Guatemalan woman worked for Feinstein during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Neither the housekeeper or Feinstein could recall the exact dates. During that period, she entered the country several times on tourist visas. Her last two tourist visas were issued in 1980 and 1982, and each one allowed her to stay in the United States for only a few months.

Feinstein apparently developed a close relationship with the housekeeper. In 1981, she cracked her elbow while rescuing the woman's 7-year-old son from the swimming pool at her second home in Marin County, according to a San Francisco newspaper account. Three years later, she even cared for the boy while his mother returned to Guatemala. The woman was back in her home country dealing with an "immigration problem," another newspaper report said.

Tony Hipchen, a painter who worked at Feinstein's Lyon Street house in 1983 and 1984, said Feinstein told him that she was raising the boy because "her former housekeeper went back to Guatemala." According to Hipchen, Feinstein told him she had warned the woman that "she didn't have the papers to get back into the country."

"At the time, I thought that was a neat thing she was doing," said Hipchen. He changed his mind, however, when he saw her ads attacking Huffington. "I wonder how can she can be such a hypocrite."

The volatile issue of employing illegal immigrants first became an issue in the Senate campaign last week, when the Los Angeles Times revealed that Huffington had employed an undocumented nanny for four years, despite his strong stand in support of Proposition 187, the immigration control measure.

It was also revealed that Huffington had not paid the nanny's Social Security taxes, as required by federal law. Feinstein said Wednesday, "I believe I did" pay the housekeeper's Social Security taxes.

Reacting to the disclosure, Feinstein said, "I have never employed anyone who was illegal or undocumented."

Wednesday, Feinstein campaign manager Kam Kuwata said, "Dianne says she saw documents. She saw papers. They appeared to be legal -- a work visa or a green card. ... In her mind, the papers were presented."

Copyright 1994 The Free Press

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