Huffington Admits Fault in Hiring Illegal Immigrant

SANTA BARBARA —  In an emotional confession of wrongdoing, Republican Senate candidate Mike Huffington and his wife, Arianna, told reporters at a news conference Thursday that they violated federal law by employing an illegal immigrant at their home for more than four years and did not pay the required taxes on her salary for about a year.

Huffington said that against his own advice, the couple retained the woman as a nanny for their children because their children had grown so close to her. They said they tried to obtain federal approval for the woman to work in the country legally, but she remained undocumented throughout her employment.

Huffington said the woman’s job ended in the summer of 1993, more than six months after Huffington was sworn in as a freshman congressman and shortly before Huffington announced his challenge to Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

The GOP candidate blamed his wife for hiring the woman and said he had not been involved in the decision, but added that he took full responsibility for the action. Although he said he would pay a fine for the violation if he is cited by authorities, he downplayed the seriousness of the infractions.

“We have made a mistake, there is no question about it,” he said. “(But) who among us has not broken the law? Who among us has not rolled through a stop sign? Who among us has not gone past 55 miles an hour? . . . We are all human . . . and if we make a mistake . . . we should own up to it. Which I have done and Arianna has done.”

The Immigration and Naturalization Service said Thursday that based on the news reports, investigators will begin an inquiry to determine whether laws were broken. Officials declined to elaborate on what the scope or focus of the probe would be. It is a violation of federal law to hire an illegal immigrant.

“The only information we have at this point is what we’ve seen attributed to Mr. Huffington in the news media,” said Virginia Kice, spokeswoman for the INS western regional headquarters in Laguna Niguel. “Based on that, we are going to look into the matter.”

Political experts said the revelation comes at a crucial time in the Senate race.

Huffington’s campaign, locked in a close race with Feinstein less than two weeks before Election Day, scrambled Thursday to assess the political damage after the report in Thursday’s editions of The Times, which was picked up widely on radio and television. The candidate canceled a morning event in Los Angeles, and staff members huddled at the Orange County campaign headquarters without making statements to the media.

About 2 p.m., the campaign alerted the media to a news conference in Santa Barbara to “set the record straight.” The location and timing limited media access from Los Angeles and San Francisco because of travel time and avoided network news broadcasts on the East Coast. Still, a bank of reporters and cameras faced the confident-looking candidate and his tentative wife seated at a table.

The couple was peppered with questions about the employee, whom Arianna Huffington identified by the name Marisela.

The candidate also was asked to reconcile his tough stand against illegal immigration--including support for Proposition 187, which would deny education and non-emergency health care to illegal immigrants--and how he could employ an illegal immigrant when he wanted others to leave the country.

In response, Huffington seemed to soften his tough talk on Proposition 187 and other immigration questions. Instead of seeking the ouster of illegal immigrants in the country, Huffington said, his support of the measure was primarily aimed at easing a financial burden on the state. At one point he seemed to say that he thought there was nothing wrong with employing illegal immigrants, as long as state tax money is not involved.

“If there are illegal immigrants here who are using taxpayer-paid services . . . that is not appropriate,” he said, adding that he also supported more guards to enforce the border. “Neither of those things had to do with our employment of this individual.

“I have never said that we should go from house to house . . . and find household help that has come into the country illegally and send them back to their country,” he added. “I have said, though, anyone using state services such as welfare or education or health care, if they are being paid for by the state, not by private citizens, but by the state, that’s an inappropriate use of funds. And that is one reason I said I would vote for 187.”

Among the other disclosures during the 30-minute briefing were:

* Huffington said his wife did not know the citizenship status of the employee when she was hired. But since 1986, federal law has required that employers ask for proof of citizenship and record the evidence in a document known as an I-9 form. The form is required to be kept and offered for inspection if requested by immigration officials. Failure to maintain the form is a violation of federal law. Huffington said he did not know what an I-9 form was.

* Arianna Huffington said the employee was hired in May, 1989, about the time of the birth of the couple’s first daughter. She said she did not begin paying taxes on the woman’s salary until June, 1990. “I have not paid the taxes from ’89 to 1990,” she said.

* Asked why she waited more than a year before seeking federal documents to allow the woman in the country legally, Arianna Huffington said she was waiting for the outcome of an immigration bill in Congress that might have granted the woman amnesty.

“During that time, the immigration bill was going through the House of Representatives,” she said. “We did not quite know what would happen, whether she was somebody who might be given amnesty in November, 1990. After the bill was signed, I started the process of labor certification.”

But several experts questioned by The Times said there was no amnesty law considered in 1990. “There was absolutely no new amnesty, and if that’s her excuse, she better rethink it quickly,” said Peter A. Schey, who heads the Los Angeles-based Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law.

* To acquire a labor certificate for a foreign resident, federal law requires that the employer prove that no U.S. citizen is capable of doing the job. The Huffingtons said they paid the worker $35,000 a year, and they were asked why they could not find a U.S. employee at that wage.

In response, Huffington asked the reporter if he had any children. Then he described the interview of a nanny as one of the most important of a lifetime. Huffington, however, did not mention that he was living in Texas and working at his family’s company while his wife did the interviews.

* Arianna Huffington said the woman worked at the household full time until the summer of 1993. Sources told The Times, however, that the employment continued until at least November. One source also told The Times that the woman worked in the home for a period this past spring.

Huffington said the woman still visits the children, and they call her regularly.

Both Huffington and his wife said their decision was driven by a strong emotional bond between the woman and their daughters. They said their oldest daughter, now 5, is secretly wishing that her father would lose the Senate race so she could move from Washington back to Santa Barbara, where her former nanny lives.

“I have never found anybody who could replace Marisela,” Arianna Huffington said. “Yes, we could have afforded any child-care provider, but you cannot buy love for your children, and Marisela loves them to this day. If you go to her home, it is full of pictures of my children. The only phone number that my 5-year-old knows by heart is Marisela’s number. She calls her regularly. She still cannot, to this day, understand why Marisela is not with us.”

The candidate said he knew of his children’s attachment, but he made a mistake in not forcing her to leave the household anyway.

Arianna’s “instinct was kind and it was generous, but according to the law, it was wrong,” he said. “While I was not personally involved in the hiring process, I must take full responsibility. As the head of my household, the buck stops with me. I should have put my foot down, ignored the pleas of my wife and my daughter, and demanded that my wife terminate the woman’s employment. But I didn’t. That was my decision, and it was my responsibility.”

Since 1986, federal law has made it a crime for employers to hire illegal immigrants. President Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act on Nov. 6, 1986, requiring that employers verify a worker’s citizenship status when they are hired by requesting personal documents such as a U.S. passport, Social Security card or driver’s license.

The act provides civil penalties of up to $10,000 for each illegal immigrant hired. Repeat violators may also be prosecuted criminally and face jail terms.

Huffington’s campaign confirmed Wednesday evening that the household had hired an illegal immigrant to care for the children after The Times called for a response to a pending story about the issue.