Wilson Camp Seeks to Limit Damage on Immigrant Issue

Gov. Pete Wilson’s fledgling campaign for President on Thursday tried to control the damage from his admission that he once hired an illegal immigrant housekeeper and failed to pay her employment taxes, but officials also acknowledged that they still don’t know the extent of the problem.

Wilson aides said the housekeeper told them she obtained a green card for legal employment in 1979, about a year after she was hired by Wilson, who was then mayor of San Diego, and his former wife. But the woman--identified by the campaign as Josefina Klag of Tijuana--has refused to help the campaign document her legal status because she is afraid of the public scrutiny.

“She doesn’t want to talk to anybody,” said a La Jolla woman who has employed the housekeeper for years. “She’s very upset by this. She didn’t do anything wrong.”

Federal immigration records and other sources checked by The Times indicate that the housekeeper obtained a permit to work in the United States after she married an American citizen for less than three weeks in 1978, about the time she started working for the Wilsons.

An attorney investigating the issue for the Wilson campaign said he is also still trying to determine how much the governor and his former wife owe in back taxes and penalties because they have been unable to locate any records of the employment. In a memo to the governor dated Wednesday, the attorney estimated that the liability might be about $3,000 in back taxes and penalties.

Wilson was returning to California from New York on Thursday and unavailable for comment, but his campaign officials responded to a flurry of media inquiries by releasing a series of documents outlining their investigation to date and including statements from the governor and his former wife.

Campaign chairman Craig Fuller also said that the disclosure will not prevent Wilson from making illegal immigration a cornerstone of his presidential campaign, as he did during his reelection as governor last year. Fuller said he expects Wilson will be criticized, but he should actually be “commended for seeking the facts and taking appropriate action.”

“Clearly there are those who hope that this will somehow discourage Pete Wilson from continuing to address the serious problem of illegal immigration--nothing could be further from the truth,” Fuller said. “Although we fully expect some people to continue to try to exploit this incident for their own political purposes, we believe that it will have no lasting effect on our campaign’s success.”

Wilson and his former wife, Betty Hosie, were separated and divorced in 1981, about three years after they hired the housekeeper at their condominium in San Diego. Both said in statements that they never inquired about the woman’s legal status when she was hired and they were unaware that she had not been a documented worker until the housekeeper told a Wilson campaign investigator last month.

“I have no idea whether her statement is true and accurate, but I do know that if it is, I first learned of her possible illegal status when John told me,” the governor said in a statement released Thursday, referring to his longtime friend and adviser, attorney John Davies.

The housekeeper told Wilson aides that she was given a green card to work legally in the United States on March 19, 1979.

Sources at the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service said they have a record of a 52-year-old woman named Josefa Klag who was issued a green card on that date. The records indicate that the woman is also known as Josefa Delgado and she became a “permanent legal resident” in 1979 because of her marriage to a U.S. citizen.

Marriage records at the San Diego County Superior Court indicate that a Josefa Delgado was married to Kirk C. Klag in December, 1978, and that the two separated three weeks later.

The housekeeper Klag is currently employed two days a week in the La Jolla condominium of Becky Irwin. Irwin said in an interview with The Times on Thursday that it was she who referred the housekeeper to the Wilsons back in the late 1970s and, at the time, she was unaware of Klag’s legal status.

Irvin said that Klag told her Tuesday that the controversy about the housekeeper’s employment was about to erupt and that she would be temporarily unable to work. Irwin also confirmed that her housekeeper goes by several first and last names: Josefina, Josefa, Klag and Delgado.

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“She’s extremely loyal,” Irwin said. “She’s done so much for me all these years. She helped me through the death of my husband, through illnesses, through so many things. She’s been a good friend and a loyal, trusted employee.

“You have to understand the era of time we’re talking about,” she said. “You have to understand, this was no fault of hers, and it was no fault of Betty’s or Pete’s. It was simply the times.”

At the time, “we felt it would have been rude of us to ask her what her immigration status was,” Irwin said. “ . . . As far as I know, Pete knew nothing about Josefina’s circumstances. . . . He was the husband and in those days, in particular in La Jolla, it was just not something the husband handled.”

Irwin is the widow of Richard Irwin, longtime general manager of the La Valencia Hotel in the heart of La Jolla.

Hosie, the governor’s ex-wife who worked as a real estate broker at the time, said in her statement that she, not her former husband, was responsible for the housekeeper’s employment. Hosie said she called Wilson’s office in March to alert him--before he officially launches his presidential campaign later this month--that she did not pay the Social Security taxes on their employee.

At her residence in La Jolla on Thursday, Hosie posted a sign for reporters that read, “Private Property. Keep Out. No Statements.”

But Hosie’s role in excusing her husband’s actions also triggered complaints Thursday that Wilson was not accepting responsibility for his household and, instead, was hiding behind his ex-wife.

Former Republican Education Secretary William Bennett, who crossed swords with Wilson last year by opposing California’s anti-illegal immigrant ballot measure, Proposition 187, was critical of Wilson’s response.

“Say you made a mistake . . . don’t say she did it, she did it,” he said. “This is not what I would call virile Republicanism. It really isn’t manly, which I think (is) something men should still try to do.”

In Washington, Democrats who have watched several of President Clinton’s nominees be stung by the issue were also quick to hoot at Wilson and accuse him of a sexual double standard. “How come Republican men always get to blame these things on their wives?” demanded one White House adviser.

Other critics lined up in California on Thursday to blast the governor for taking a hard line against illegal immigrants when he now admits that he employed one in his home.

“This is a man of no principle, no shame and, when convenient, no memory,” Democratic state Chairman Bill Press said at a news conference in Los Angeles.

He also released a copy of a letter to U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno asking for “a complete investigation.”

Both supporters and critics of Wilson were also assessing the impact that the issue might have on the governor’s presidential campaign. The political speculation was complex because the issue has elements that could both modify and exacerbate the damage to Wilson.

On one hand, for example, Klag worked in Wilson’s home long ago--between 14 and 17 years ago--when it was not illegal to hire an undocumented worker. California law prevented the practice only when the employer knowingly hired an illegal immigrant. And the federal law sanctioning employers was not passed until 1986, when Wilson was a U.S. senator and voted in favor of the measure.

“The official line from the (Clinton) Administration is that failing to pay Social Security (taxes) is not disqualifying” for its appointees, said William Schneider, an independent political analyst in Washington. “Had he broken the law when he hired the person, it probably would have demolished his campaign. But there are lots of extenuating circumstances.”

On the other hand, Schneider added that the issue could blunt Wilson’s hopes of staking his presidential campaign on the issue of illegal immigration. It could also stain the image that Wilson brought to the presidential campaign of a bulletproof candidate with a clean reputation that has survived four rigorous California campaigns.

“The worst part about this is that one of the assets Wilson brought to this process is that people thought he ran really good campaigns and he had been tested in the toughest campaign process in the country,” said Bill Carrick, a Democratic political consultant. “Now, here people are getting surprised on something that goes right to the core of one of his right-wing credentials.”

The issue is also likely to fuel a national debate that has surrounded a number of similar cases recently, involving questions about the responsibility public officials have for their domestic helpers, sometimes in the distant past.

Even if Wilson did not know about the woman’s legal status, critics have questioned whether public officials active on the issue of immigration have an obligation to go beyond the law’s requirements in their personal lives.

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In California, the issue was raised last year when Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mike Huffington admitted in the final weeks of his race that he employed an illegal immigrant nanny at his home for more than four years, ending shortly before he announced his candidacy in 1991. Unlike Wilson’s case, Huffington acknowledged that he violated federal law by employing an illegal immigrant after the 1986 employer-sanction bill was passed.

Huffington, however, attacked rival Democratic U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein for a situation that appears similar to Wilson’s. Feinstein claimed that she was unaware of the legal status of her housekeeper during the early 1980s.

For many, it was a surprise to hear that Wilson had been caught in the same political trap. Since the issue has caused so many problems for other public officials and Wilson has been outspoken on illegal immigration, many assumed his background had been thoroughly checked by the governor or others.

“If this had happened (last) October, he wouldn’t be governor today,” state Sen. President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward) said.

When the revelation was made about Huffington last October, Wilson told reporters that he had never knowingly hired an illegal immigrant domestic worker. But Thursday, Wilson aides said the governor has only researched his own background to 1986, when the federal law was passed.

“Prior to that, this was not illegal, so there was no further research done,” Wilson spokesman Dan Schnur said.

According to the documents released by Wilson’s office Thursday, the governor’s former wife called his office March 29 out of concern that the violation of Social Security tax laws might damage Wilson’s presidential campaign.

Wilson subsequently asked his friend, Davies, to investigate the matter. Davies wrote in a memo to the governor that, during the review, the housekeeper acknowledged for the first time that she was not a legal resident when she accepted the job in Wilson’s home.

He said Hosie believed that Klag lived in San Diego when the Wilsons hired her. Klag was employed to clean the couple’s condominium once a week for $25. Hosie maintained Klag as a housekeeper until Hosie remarried in 1992.

Wilson married his current wife, Gayle, in 1983.

Hosie said in her statement that she was unaware she had to pay taxes on Klag until the mid-1980s. After that, she said she did not pay because she “procrastinated.”

Although Wilson officials insisted that the governor did not know about Klag’s status, aides also attempted Thursday to finger California Democrats for digging up the story and leaking it to the Washington Post.

Privately, they said they also believe Wilson’s 1994 rival, Democrat Kathleen Brown, knew about the issue last year and declined to use it because she had a similar conflict in her own household.

A former Brown aide said Friday that a thorough check of the Democratic candidate’s background was made last year and found that “she was free and clear.” Other Brown officials said they knew of rumors last year about an illegal immigrant employee in Wilson’s household.

Wilson officials insisted that they did not leak the information to the Post in hopes of clearing the issue before the presidential campaign gains steam this fall. They acknowledged, however, that they cooperated with the newspaper by providing information from their own investigation and refusing to share the governor’s response with California newspapers.

Other political activists speculated that the disclosure about Wilson was developed by investigators working for the governor’s leading presidential rivals, Sens. Robert Dole and Phil Gramm.

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Ronald Brownstein, James Bornemeier and Gebe Martinez in Washington, Carl Ingram, Dan Morain and Max Vanzi in Sacramento, Michael Granberry in La Jolla and Bill Stall and Patrick McDonnell in Los Angeles.

* TIMING BAD FOR WILSON

Disclosure about housekeeper comes at critical juncture. A3