Feinstein Employee Had Permit to Work, INS Says : Politics: Agency reports that permit expired during immigrant’s employment but no federal laws were broken.

After several wild days of accusations and retractions in the fiercely contested U.S. Senate race, the Immigration and Naturalization Service confirmed Friday that the woman employed by U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein as a housekeeper in the early 1980s entered the country with a legal work permit that expired while she was still working for Feinstein.

The INS said no federal laws were broken and in any case the hiring occurred years before a 1986 law made hiring illegal immigrants a crime.

INS records also show that the woman’s work visa would have limited her to working at the Guatemalan Consulate and that the permit expired in November, 1980--while she was employed by Feinstein.

The hiring occurred long before federal law made it a crime to hire illegal immigrants. But throughout the day, the Santa Barbara congressman was on the airwaves--in commercials and television interviews--accusing Feinstein of violating an obscure California labor law by hiring the housekeeper.

Republican challenger Mike Huffington has repeatedly attacked Feinstein this past week after admitting that he and his wife had employed an illegal immigrant as a nanny until last year--long after the 1986 law that made such hiring illegal.

The issue continued to frustrate Feinstein’s campaign strategy to draw attention to her record of bipartisan support in cities and counties. In press conferences, she maintained that the woman she hired as a housekeeper in 1980 showed her documentation that she was in the United States legally. She appeared with city and county officials in several cities who praised her record as a senator.

The immigration issue was only one of a series of events in the Senate race Friday:

* In another sign of the race’s volatility, KNBC-TV released a poll that showed Feinstein with a 16-point lead over Huffington, up 10 points from a poll two weeks ago. The 52-36 margin came only days after another poll, done by a local television station, showed Huffington with a 2-point lead over Feinstein. KNBC attributed its results to Huffington’s disclosure about breaking the law by hiring the nanny.

* Entering the last frantic weekend of campaigning, Feinstein traveled to several cities while Huffington concentrated on Los Angeles, with several television appearances. On a local cable television program, he called Feinstein a “hypocrite” and accused the INS of a “cover-up,” though he offered no proof.

* The costliest race in congressional history also got more expensive. Campaign disclosure reports showed that Huffington gave another $500,000 to his campaign, raising the total to nearly $28 million, which again breaks national spending records for a congressional race. Feinstein loaned her campaign $70,000, bringing its total close to $11 million.

* The Associated Press asked the Huffington campaign to withdraw a new commercial accusing Feinstein of breaking the law because, the wire service said, it was quoted erroneously in the ad. The Huffington campaign refused the request.

A Los Angeles City Hall rally with President Clinton capped a day of barnstorming by Feinstein, who earlier Friday went to Sacramento and Fresno.

In Sacramento, more than a dozen city and county officials gave so many testimonials about their support for the senator that the chilled crowd on the City Hall steps began to thin out before the event ended. “I know that was a long litany but it is an important litany because this is my campaign . . . these press conferences are replicated up and down the state all week beginning with Mayor Richard Riordan in Los Angeles,” Feinstein said.

“Never in the history of this nation has there been a race like this where one person with no record and no performance . . . has spent so much to attack and slander. Never, never, never in the history of this nation,” Feinstein said.

Repeating a recent theme of her campaign, Feinstein implored her supporters to turn back Huffington’s expensive campaign. “A Senate seat cannot be bought. A Senate seat must be earned. And the way you earn it is by performing,” she said.

Feinstein’s campaign was shadowed all day by the possibility that she may have misspoken about never having employed an illegal worker. And even if the circumstances differed significantly than those of her opponent, the distinction was sure to be blurred in campaigning.

All day long, Huffington and his campaign accused Feinstein of lying about the former housekeeper’s status.

The housekeeper was quoted Friday by Associated Press as insisting she was in the country legally. “Yes, I was legal. I already talked with her (Feinstein) and I am not going to say anything more,” she said.

Richard Kenney, an INS spokesman in Washington, said a woman identified as Annabella del Rosario Legrand-Cabrera Realegeno, 44, entered the United States on Nov. 17, 1979, on a one-year visa that allowed her to work for the Guatemalan Consulate in San Francisco. He said that visa was good until Nov. 16, 1980--months after Feinstein has said she hired the woman.

Kenney said INS records show the woman’s work authorization was limited to employment at the Guatemalan Consulate. But Kenney said it would have been very difficult for someone who was not an expert to determine what its limitations were.

“I don’t know whether I would know by looking at a passport with a visa stamp in it, and I work for the INS,” Kenney said.

Although the INS said the records did not suggest any violation of the law, the Huffington campaign said the information showed that Feinstein employed an illegal worker and that this constituted a violation of state law.

But an expert on the law raised some doubts about the contention. “There was a law on the books in the California Labor Code that technically made it illegal to hire undocumented workers,” said Kitty Calavita, a professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at UC Irvine. “But it effectively was a dead law. Virtually no one knew it existed. There was no enforcement machinery and there was no publicity about it.”

Calavita added: “In contrast, the (federal) employer sanction law of 1986 was widely publicized and would have been hard for people not to know about.”

Feinstein disputed those accusations throughout the day.

“As I’ve said, this was back in 1980, the person in question handed me documentation. . . . It looked verifiable to me. And I hired her,” Feinstein told reporters as she campaigned in Northern California.

At the San Francisco house where the woman now works as a housekeeper, her husband told The Times that she had entered the country legally and was permitted to work at the time she was employed by Feinstein. Miguel Realegeno, Annabella’s husband, also disputed Huffington’s ads saying the housekeeper was an illegal worker. “That’s not true,” Miguel Realegeno said. “We are not illegal in this country. She came with a visa. She never came here illegally. She did not work with illegal papers like they are saying on TV.”

Miguel Realegeno, who said he also worked for Feinstein and was a legal worker at the time, said Annabella entered the country legally in 1972 and that he met her in the early 1980s.

The Feinstein campaign called on television stations to stop running the Huffington ad on the issue, saying it was “potentially libelous.” In a letter to the stations, campaign manager Kam noted that Associated Press has challenged the accuracy of the ad.

Associated Press San Francisco Bureau Chief Dan Day, who faxed a letter of protest to the Huffington campaign Thursday night, said Friday the news service was asking that the ad be pulled.

“The erroneous information in your ad can substantially damage that reputation. Please confirm to me that you will discontinue this misrepresentation of the AP’s reporting,” Day wrote.

Huffington’s campaign declined the request.

In other developments this week:

* A Senate ethics complaint filed Friday contends that Feinstein would have personally benefited from her efforts to allegedly influence the Justice and Agriculture departments to drop 34 civil fraud suits against Sunkist Growers and its members.

Feinstein wrote officials this year, supporting dismissal of the whistle-blower suits, which seek $80 million to $400 million from Sunkist Growers for violating federal quotas on citrus shipments, the complaint said.

The complaint alleges that Feinstein held an interest in Newhall Land & Farming, which grows oranges and lemons for Sunkist--based on Feinstein’s 1992 financial disclosure statement showing an investment of $500,000 to $1 million.

Her 1993 disclosure lists the investment at less than $1,000, however. Richard Blum, Feinstein’s husband, said one of his partnerships divested the Newhall asset in September, 1993.

The ethics complaint was filed by James Moody, an attorney for Sequoia Orange Co., the firm that filed the whistle-blower suit against Sunkist.

Ethics experts said Feinstein’s letters appear to fall within Senate rules. Hadley Roff, Feinstein’s staff director in California, said her letters were proper.

The Justice Department in September sought dismissal of the Sunkist case, despite having previously intervened on behalf of Sequoia. A spokesman said Feinstein’s letter played no part in the decision.

* State tax officials have questioned a former bookkeeper for the Huffington family as they opened a preliminary inquiry to determine if sales taxes of about $6,250 were paid on furnishings for the candidate’s Montecito mansion.

The inquiry was prompted by the claim of bookkeeper Claudia Bratton that Huffington’s wife, Arianna, purchased at least $100,000 worth of chairs, draperies and other items with a tax card issued to her sister, Agapi Stassinopoulos, by the State Board of Equalization.

The card allows interior designers to buy items from wholesalers without paying sales tax, if the goods are to be resold. But if the items are for personal use, the cardholder must pay the tax.

Also contributing to this story were Times staff writers Dave Lesher and Greg Krikorian in Los Angeles, Mark Gladstone and Virginia Ellis in Sacramento and Ralph Vartabedian in Washington.