San Francisco Free Press - INS - November 4, 1994

INS named wrong woman as Feinstein's housekeeper

Illegal immigrant identified by officials didn't work for senator

By Susan Yoachum and Pamela Burdman
Special to The Free Press

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 4, 1994 --In a day marked by confusion over the immigration status of a woman who worked for Dianne Feinstein in the early 1980s, the Immigration and Naturalization Service said Thursday night it had made a mistake when it identified the housekeeper as an illegal immigrant at that time.

INS officials said they have discovered that there are two Guatemalan women with similar names, born within a year of each other, who lived in San Francisco during the early 1980s, and that the one they earlier identified as an illegal immigrant was not Feinstein's housekeeper.

They would not immediately release information on the status of the woman who Feinstein employed.

Adding to the confusion was Feinstein's reaction to the initial report, which The Free Press first published on Wednesday morning on the Internet, and a charge by the Huffington campaign that federal officials have been stonewalling them on their efforts to investigate the housekeeper, who they named as Annabella del Rosario Paiz.

Employment of illegal immigrants became a central issue in the costly Senate race between Dianne Feinstein and Michael Huffington after it was disclosed that Huffington violated federal law by employing an undocumented nanny from 1989 to 1993.

"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?"

Last week Feinstein said she had "never employed anyone who was illegal or undocumented." When asked about her former housekeeper earlier this week, she said the woman "did show me work authority." But she did not question the INS' earlier disclosure that the woman did not have work permission.

Feinstein dismissed as "sheer nonsense" the Huffington campaign's claim that the INS and Labor Department had stonewalled their request for information about the housekeeper.

INS spokesman Don Mueller had told The Free Press on Wednesday that a woman named Annabella Paiz, the same name as Feinstein's housekeeper, was not a legal U.S. resident until 1986. Thursday afternoon, however, an INS official told the Los Angeles Times that they instead had searched the name of Isabella Paiz. Then late Thursday afternoon, INS spokesman Ron Rogers gave a different explanation, saying that there is "another Annabella." But they refused to release any information on the Annabella who Feinstein employed.

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, however, worked for her prior to a 1986 federal law that made it illegal to employ undocumented workers.

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

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.

At a news conference Thursday, Feinstein reiterated that she had seen legal documentation for her housekeeper. She confirmed that she cared for the woman's son in 1983, when the woman went back to Guatemala. "I tried to help her come back. I wrote a letter on her behalf," said Feinstein.

Tony Hipchen, a painter who worked at Feinstein's Lyon Street house in 1983-84 said Feinstein told him 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."

The topic 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.

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

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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