While controversy builds around revelations that labor secretary nominee Linda Chavez housed an illegal immigrant, labor lawyers and immigration officials admit there is a gray area around what the law permits. The debate is whether Chavez violated federal laws against harboring and employing illegal immigrants when she took in Marta Mercado, a Guatemalan woman who was in the country illegally. Chavez has said that she let Mercado stay in her home for a year in the early 1990s, let her do jobs around the house and occasionally gave her money, but she insisted the money was not payment.
Violators face fines and criminal penalties.
I don't think you would have had that in this situation. But sources close to Chavez say she only housed Mercado in part because Mercado had been abused. Fleischer stressed today Chavez was only performing an act of kindness. It's called kindness. Federal law says it is illegal to knowingly hire employees who do not have the right to work in the United States.