Nominee Baird Hired Illegal Immigrants, Sources Say

Zoe Baird, President-elect Bill Clinton’s nominee to be the next attorney general, once employed a South American couple living illegally in the United States as a baby-sitter and chauffeur, sources said Wednesday.

In addition to violating U.S. immigration laws, which prohibit the hiring of illegal residents, Baird and her husband, Yale University law professor Paul Gewertz, failed to pay Social Security taxes for the couple until they made a lump sum payment this month, the sources said.

Violation of the immigration law can carry a fine of up to $3,000.

Baird, whose job at the Justice Department would include supervising the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, reportedly has told Clinton transition officials that she believed hiring the couple was legal because she was sponsoring their application for citizenship. She said that she also believed, based on advice from a Connecticut attorney, that she was not required to pay the Social Security tax because the couple were not citizens.

Baird, who earned more than $500,000 a year as the top lawyer for Aetna Life & Casualty in Hartford, Conn., and who, with her husband, has assets estimated at $2.3 million, hired the Peruvian woman to care for her 3-year-old son. The woman’s husband worked as Baird’s driver, chauffeuring her from her New Haven home to her job in Hartford each day, sources said.

The revelation could prove troublesome for Baird, who already has been criticized for having little experience with the kinds of issues likely to come before the Justice Department and for seeming to favor corporate interests over employees’ civil rights.

The information came to light Wednesday as Baird was meeting with representatives of more than 10 police associations from around the country. Her confirmation hearing is set to begin next Tuesday.

Sources said that Baird volunteered the information about the hiring of the illegal immigrants to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will conduct the hearings, and to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is conducting her background check for the committee.

She said she hired the couple in 1990 when she received no satisfactory responses to her newspaper ads for a nanny and chauffeur. The husband quit last March, but his wife continued working for Baird until last fall, sources said.