That was what upset them more than the fact that she did not pay Social Security taxes. Eskew said Chavez had helped people in need before and after Mercado. He said she housed two refugees from Vietnam for two weeks and that she had paid for parochial school educations for two Puerto Rican children in New York. He said the minimum financial requirements to qualify someone as an employee are very low, and if the payments to Mercado were in the thousands of dollars, the threshold had easily been reached. Under immigration law, it is also illegal to harbor any person who is in the country without proper documentation.
Violators are subject to fine and imprisonment.
As secretary of labor, Linda Chavez would have chief law enforcement responsibility for the basic and fundamental protections that workers in this country . Other Bush Cabinet choices also came under fire over the weekend. The paper said the half-hour lecture, delivered at Tufts University, was underwritten by Lebanese Deputy Prime Minister Issam Fares, described as a billionaire businessman with close ties to Syria. Fares was awarded an honorary doctor of international public affairs degree before Powell's lecture, the Associated Press reported at the time. The paper quoted Powell's spokesman, Col. William Smullen, as confirming Powell was paid for the lecture with money from an endowment by Fares.