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 at least four years and that they did not pay the required taxes on her salary for about a year.

The GOP candidate blamed his wife for hiring the woman and said he had not been involved in the decision, but took responsibility because, “as the head of my household, the buck stops with me.” Huffington also said he would pay a fine if he is cited by authorities, but he downplayed the seriousness of the violation.

“We have made a mistake, there is no question about it,” said Huffington, who is challenging Sen. Dianne Feinstein. “(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 information first disclosed by The Times, investigators will begin an inquiry to determine whether laws were broken. Since 1986, federal law has made it a crime for employers to hire illegal immigrants, with violators subject to fines of up to $10,000 per worker.

“Based on (news reports), we are going to look into the matter,” said Virginia Kice, spokeswoman for the INS western regional headquarters in Laguna Niguel.

In his comments Thursday, Huffington downplayed an accusation that he and his campaign had made without offering proof Wednesday night: that Feinstein had also employed illegal immigrants on her household staff.

Feinstein denied the allegation Thursday in a San Francisco campaign appearance. She added: “I think here is a situation where he would not have told the truth again had he not been confronted with the real facts.”

Gov. Pete Wilson declined to comment directly on Huffington’s situation, but stated: “What I will say is, the law requires that employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants suffer a penalty.”

Political experts said Huffington’s confession is likely to damage the Republican campaign, especially because the candidate has been such an outspoken opponent of illegal immigration and supporter of Proposition 187, the controversial measure on the ballot that would deny education and health benefits to illegal immigrants. In the news conference Thursday, Huffington seemed to soften his immigration views.

“It suggests that his position on this issue is one fraught with hypocrisy,” said Larry Berg, director of the Jesse Unruh Institute of Politics at USC. “If you are going to say what he has said for the past six months, this is not something you want to do.”

The Feinstein campaign reportedly was preparing a television ad late Thursday to attack Huffington on the issue.

In the news conference, Huffington said that against his better judgment the couple retained the immigrant as a nanny for their children because the children had grown so close to her. The Huffingtons said they tried to obtain federal approval for the woman to work in the country legally, but she remained undocumented throughout her employment.

“This was not a case of cheap labor, this is not a case of (abusing) an illegal immigrant,” Arianna Huffington said. “This is a case of a family falling in love with another human being who is still very much a part of our family and our hearts. I did, as a citizen, make a mistake legally. As a mother, I still don’t know what I would have done if this came up today.”

Arianna Huffington said the woman’s job ended in the summer of 1993, several months after her husband was sworn in as a freshman congressman and shortly before he announced his challenge to Feinstein. They said the employee chose to leave because the children moved to Washington when Huffington became a congressman and she wanted to remain in California.

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 disclosure quickly drew national attention. 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.

At about 2 p.m., the campaign alerted the media to a 4 p.m. news conference in Santa Barbara. The stated purpose of the gathering was “to set the record straight,” but it also raised some questions:

* Asked to reconcile how he could employ an illegal immigrant when he demanded others should leave the country, Huffington seemed to shift his campaign rhetoric. 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.”

* 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 to stay 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 interviewed 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.

* Arianna Huffington said the woman worked at the household full time until the summer of 1993. Three sources told The Times, however, that her 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 during the Senate race.

* 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, who said they paid the worker $35,000 a year, were asked why they could not find a U.S. citizen to employ at that wage.

“When you have a child and you are interviewing someone to take care of that child, that is the most important interview you will ever have in your entire life,” Huffington responded. Later in the news conference he admitted, however, that he was not present at the interview of the nanny because he was living in Texas and working at his family’s oil and gas company.

After the search for other employees, Arianna Huffington said she concluded that the best candidate was her nanny, whom she identified in the press conference by the name Marisela.

“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 the woman 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.”

Experts were mixed on how much political damage the revelations will do to the Huffington campaign.

Longtime Republican consultant Sal Russo downplayed the damage it would cause and said at most it was an embarrassment to Huffington.

“While it provides some degree of embarrassment, particularly in view of the stand he just took on 187, people have sympathy for people who are trying to find child care help. Oftentimes, it’s the only person you can find.

Veteran Democratic consultant Richie Ross said that by hiring an illegal immigrant, Huffington was no different from most Californians who take advantage of the low cost of immigrant labor. But supporting Proposition 187, he said, illustrated Huffington’s hypocrisy.

“It may say more about the absurdity of Proposition 187 and the absurdity of his support for Proposition 187,” Ross said. “All the candidates have been taking tons of money from people who employ illegal immigrants. They hold their fund-raisers in hotels staffed by illegal immigrants. . . . I’m delighted he got caught in it. It’s always fun when you see someone hoist himself on his own petard.”

Times staff writers Richard Paddock in San Francisco and Patrick McDonnell in Los Angeles contributed to this report.