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Immigration attorney Greg Siskind has examined copies of the I-9 and employee application completed by Harsh/Whitman housekeeper Nicandra Diaz Santillan, with this finding: the employer (Whitman) never signed the I-9 employment paperwork. This makes Meg’s claim that she examined the paperwork and found it acceptable impossible to prove.
There’s no way for Meg Whitman to claim she ever saw the paperwork, as required by law. Neither she — nor her husband — ever signed the I-9, as required by law.
These are called ‘violations’ and are identical to the type of violations for which Abercrombie & Fitch was, this week, fined one million dollars.
Siskind:
It’s not clear whether Whitman or the agency handled the I-9 and that’s because the form itself is not signed and dated by the employer or its agent as required by law. The form also doesn’t have a social security number under the List C documentation, another violation. Because the form is not signed or dated by the employer, it is far from clear that the employer even examined the documents presented.
It’s not the referring agency that’s responsible for completing and signing the paperwork, either: it’s the employer. An unsigned I-9 is a paperwork violation, but there appear to be others as well:
The nanny agency was not the employer – just the agent and so Whitman and her husband are still liable for employer violations. There appear to be paperwork violations. There could also be liability for "knowingly" employing someone illegally if the facts show that despite the presentation of a bogus social security card, the employer had independent knowledge or "constructive" knowledge that a worker was out of status.
Finally, Meg Whitman’s claim that her housekeeper’s papers appeared to be in order at the time of hire cannot be proven, since no one signed as the employer. There’s no indication that anyone looked at the papers, as a signature would indicate, another clear violation of law:
Certainly the fact that the I-9 was never signed by the employer means that the defense of saying that you looked at the documents presented and they appeared valid is not going to be readily available.
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she looks worse and worse for california each day. thanks teddy. tweeted and recommended
This seems to bust all Meg’s lies so far: she can’t claim Nicky lied to her about her status if she didn’t sign the paper that she reviewed the status papers. She’s done, I think. This only makes her lies so far look much, much worse.
If the California political media reports it as anything other than “he-said/she-said” after Meg’s SuperLie at today’s debate.
Thank you, Suzanne.
Meg will destroy all CA public pensions, I believe, among other awful things she has planned. None of which she’s described in anything other than very general terms, of course.
absolutely she’s gonna go after the pensions. just as arnold went after injured workers with his worker’s comp redo — which screwed the employee to the benefit of the insurance companies. her speaking only in general terms is classic arnold campaign style.
“Jobs, Education, Lower Taxes!”
That, literally, is her campaign agenda.
No details, and no questions about details permitted.
Ted she was a corporate CEO for a big company everyone gets checked by private or corporate security. Why with the company sales information on her lap top I could know when to buy or short her company weeks before Wallstreet knows.
With new product test and price information I could do the same. Never mind a Corporate CEO does not verify that her home employees are not felons? Kidnapping corporate CEO’s is not a worry in this country?
Her story stinks I hate it when people don’t even bother to tell me a good lie it shows disrespect.
What kind of fine is she facing?
It’s possible the agency performed all these tests on their employees — I don’t know about hiring household domestic personnel, as we have none. So perhaps Harsh/Whitman relied on the agency that referred Nicky to them for these qualifications to be checked.
Notwithstanding, though, the I-9 must be signed by the employer, according to Greg Siskind. And it’s unsigned. So Meg can’t really claim to have verified the other paperwork since the record of her seeing it is her signature, which doesn’t appear. No one’s signature appears. Which is, in and of itself, a violation as well!
I know that when I first signed a contract with the company where I work, the person from HR actually checked that I had documentation and what it was.
If Whitman couldn’t do that much, she isn’t capable of running a business, never mind a state.
Great comment on Debra Saunders column at the SFGate today, quoting a philosopher named Rev Run:
And some HR people ‘neglect’ to sign the I-9 on the last page, because they question the validity of the paperwork but don’t want to hold up their employer’s hiring. However, they don’t want to be held liable, so they put an unsigned form in your file.
Just like Meg did.
She’s toast.
Brown is no dummy or inexperienced neophyte. If he was, she just might paper this over and get away with this. And Gloria Alred? OMG!
How much would it have cost eMeg to make her ex maid happy on some island far, far away?
Now she has tossed 120 million bucks down the hole.
Most amazing case of “Penny wise and pound foolish” I have ever seen.
In my case, I’d been working there as an outside contractor, through an agency, for a year, and there was a background check done – in fact, one guy in my workgroup was in the process for direct contract when something came up (I don’t know what), and he was gone *poof* before it went any farther.
Ted, I haven’t checked out Calitics lately . . .
Have you and if so what are they reporting?
Nice work hoss . . . bless yer every bit of soul and thanks for your work.
ds
And yet, there’s the rub too far.
*G*
And this is where you and I concur, till our days are gone.
Bless ya.
*G*
It’s amazing, though…
The commenters at SFHate (the SF Chronicle website) who are rabid anti-SF and anti-immigrant are up to their usual tricks tonight, with mad crazy zaniness against Gloria and Jerry. You’d think Brown sent Nicky Diaz in to work for the Harsh-Whitmans nine years ago, just to set this whole thing up, to read their rants.
You’d think Gloria was a paid Brown operative, as if Jerry could afford Allred!
You’d think Meg and Griff were the victims here, with the lying Messican making their lives hell by lying to them and (probably) stealing from them too!
Like I said, it’s amazing…
The idea that she’d have someone in her home who wasn’t completely checked out is absurd. Nicky’s undocumented status was just a way to get leverage over her when it mattered, until it didn’t. She’s been in their home nine years, which means the precious Griff V was in her care as a nanny-adjunct. This sloppiness is unbelievable — in the sense that I don’t believe it for a minute – from a woman who is said to be consumed with terror that her offspring will be kidnapped at Princeton.
Folks over there rightly point out that the media will give eMeg a free pass on this — she’s a paying customer, after all, not like us measly subscribers. She’s single-handedly keeping teevee and newspapers afloat this fall, and they won’t do anything to piss her off.
LATimes columnist Steve Lopez has engaged a polygraph expert:
Are you really amazed? I’m not.
I am working class and always surprised on the rare occasions an employer doesn’t stoop to any lie to justify their own behavior and trash any employee with a just grievance. And the employee is usually voiceless, doubly victimized – unless they retain Gloria Alred, that is. Yikes!
I can’t help laughing as I type this.
I think it is safe to assume that the reason for that is that employers who deal justly with employees don’t rack up nearly as many complaints. When they do, they tend to deal with them justly also.
Oh, and the rabid wingnut reaction?
a) Hard to believe that an internet-savvy entrepreneur willing to toss money around like eMeg wouldn’t have a large staff of sockpuppets starting fires everyplace they think they might catch. Then the usual messikan haters, crooked employers and assorted wingnuts feed the flames.
b) Jerry Brown has been making the wingnuts crazy since long before that term had been coined. Add Gloria Alred to the mix and I can’t imagine much that would rile em more.
Too late to edit out the term “messican.”
I want to apologize if I offended anybody, we know the wingnuts use terms like that and worse. I’ve heard it all my life, along with other racial epithets and am of the school that context is all re offensive language. I would cheerfully use any such epithet in the proper context – that is quoting people who habitually use those terms in a derogatory fashion.
My debate class in high school was racially diverse and we got along. We often traveled to tourneys in a big bus and the coach would shout out before we boarded the bus: “All you N-words (black people), S-words (Spanish people), K-words (Jewish people), W-word (Italian people), C-word (Chinese people), WASPS – GET ON THE BUS!” I had him add the M-word (Irish people) when I joined the group. Didn’t want to be left out – and I probably did leave someone out. Sorry.
As diverse as our group was, there was never any racial tension of awkwardness (that I, a white guy could detect), because the race issue was out in the open, confronted directly by my now deceased debate coach, Mack Godwin. It wasn’t unusual at all for debate partners to visit overnight to cram for a tourney or for a racially diverse group of us to camp out at one of our houses. And this was in Houston Texas in the mid 60s.
I have tried to follow that example for the rest of my life and I chafe at the division that “sensitivity censorship” fosters amongst progressives.
Without tone or context, though, internet-speak becomes difficult to decipher, thus making blanket bans on wrong-words necessary.
I’m gay, and among my gay friends, we use the F-word unsparingly with each other. But I would never type it here, and people know how much I object to it (and others) being used on the blog. It’s just a slippery slope to allowing those words to be used with permission by anyone, for any purpose.
On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog. So you can’t call anybody anything, really, without getting yelled at. And that’s okay, I think, since when I read someone using the F-word for gay people I don’t know right away whether they are “in the tribe” or not. And I don’t care, actually — I just see red when I see or hear the word. Unless it’s from someone I know can use it as one.
Does that make sense?
What is sad is that Whitman wants to be governor of a state that depends on labor intensive crops that use illegals.
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/95nov/strawber.htm
Here is a person who hires an illegal and should be prosecuted for it, not be running for governor. She obviously does no critical thinking as many if not most of the “field” jobs, perhaps a million or more, are filled by “illegals” who are invited to work for low wages by those breaking the law. If it were any other way the Whitman’s of the world would totally bankrupt California as the US issues a total of 5,000 Visa’s a year to people who are not college graduates. Go do some serious farming with that Meg!
Of course. That’s why the apology and lengthy explanation.
I KNOW (raising hand, flapping wildly). Jerry got a hold of it and kept this I-9 in his files all these years. He had it! See, it’s his fault, they never saw it.
No.
If only “down the hole.” That money has gone directly to the enrichment of the Media Lie Screen Complex.
Down the hole in terms of her wanting to be Gov. Meaning she threw a lot of money at this race and it won’t matter if she’s not elected. This story is powerful and falls into the You can’t make this stuff up.
Gimme an “F”.
Oh, and I just loved it when Mary Mc called out Meg’s looks the other night. Might I add, two words, Meg. Consider bangs.
I would like to see Whitman go down for any reason, but I do think think there is some grey area in terms of illegal employees in California. There are millions. I can not say for sure that I never hired one, although certainly not for nine years. What is the biggest offense here? Is it hypocrisy? Is it that they have nailed some of our candidates over this issue, so now we will nail one of theirs. One of the main points of the immigration debate, like the marijuana debate, is that it is happening already. We use that to change the law, more than to punish people who are part of the current corrupt system. Is this revelation the equivalent of Whitman being a user of pot or a dealer of pot? What exactly is the hypocrisy in this case?
My rule is, if you have to think about saying it, even for a second, don’t say it. If it turns out you were too timid, you can always say it later. I’ve broken it a few times, but it’s still the best rule.
I’ve been hanging in this room forever, so most people know i’m queer etc, and supply their own snark tags for most of my bullshit when I forget.
Don’t worry or navel-gaze, just follow the above rule. Keep commenting, the good side needs everybody.
She reminds me of Leona “only the little people pay taxes” Helmsley. I would guess that Mitt convinced her that she could buy the election and transform the nation’s largest blue state to red. Remember redistricting after the latest census – the governorship will be very important. Whitman wants NO capital gains and dividend taxes, which will cut 50% of state revenue and give trust fund babies like Paris Hilton a free ride!
What a disaster this woman will be for California. I hope she loses the election, and am looking forward to seeing her implode with anger and blame everyone but herself.
That’s exactly what I thought. Why are the superrich so cheap? And doesn’t it say something about their general attitude toward the “little people,” as Leona Helmsley so famously called us?
Megyn Kelly (Fox News) was screeching that Whitman paid Diaz-Santillan $23 an hour.
I can only imagine how little Ms Kelly tips when she’s out at any restaurant – and somehow, I can’t see her cleaning her own toilets.
And it’s the major reason the remaining California political media, such as it is, will treat this as a ‘he-said-she-said’ story after Meg’s charges in yesterday’s debate: the Whitman campaign is a big-time paying customer of California media, they don’t want to bite the hand that feeds.
Well, sorry then. I don’t think I can make that any clearer even though it’s pretty off-topic in this thread.
In Tuesday’s debate, Meg said, “We must hold employers of undocumented workers accountable.”
On Wednesday, Nicky’s press conference.
Since then? Meg’s shifting explanations, but no accountability. She won’t take responsibility for what she (and her husband) did; she even blames her opponent for the entire situation.
That’s hypocrisy.
Yes, I appreciate that.
I meant to amplify your explanation, not contradict it or lecture you.
Thanks.
But not for all her hours worked, and without a raise when new duties (nanny) were added. Besides, it was only for fifteen hours even though she says she worked more.
$23 * 15 * 52 weeks = $17,940
Not a living wage on the Peninsula.
$23 an hour would just about be a living wage in the bay area.
Maybe OT, except it seems just a little analogous to the hypocrisy involved with someone (maybe Meg, not sure) who takes a hard line against undocumented workers but has no problem employing one. I’m in your corner, just hard to reconcile your “blanket bans” and “slippery slope” rhetoric with your permissible exceptions.
Thanks for continued updates on this topic of E-Meg’s illegal hiring of an undocumented worker for 9 years, and then when E-Meg is busted, she lies about it and blames: a) the undocumented worker, b) Gloria Allred and c) her opponent, Jerry Brown (not necessarily in that order).
Of course, the rightwing shrieks will continue to be IOKIYAR.
I am most upset with her illegal action coupled with her stand on harsh treatment for undocumented workers, while not really discussing harsh treatment (and there are laws on the books already) for the employers – such as E-Meg – for employers who knowingly hire and retain undocumented workers. It’s not just the hypocrisy – although that’s part of it – it’s the ongoing rightwing double standard of treatment of the undocumented workers v. treatment of the employers.
Plus: Whitman lied and then lied some more.
Of course, conservatives will ignore this and vote for her, which is pretty despicable but predictable.
My point is that there are linguistic constructions permitted en famille that I wouldn’t permit with non-family members present. I don’t mind a bunch of us gays throwing the F-word around among ourselves but I certainly don’t like hearing it used in mixed company, and especially not by people en famille.
I think that makes perfect sense. Disallowing a word on the blog happens because there’s no way to determine if someone is en famille on the blog; and I certainly don’t know my audience when I use such a word.
Yes, but her best shot was getting Hispanic voters to desert the Democratic nominee for her rational, corporate approach (despite having the odious Prop 187 governor Pete Wilson chairing her campaign, but that’s probably in the background for most voters). Having a Latina out there, talking about mistreatment and termination, is the best publicity anyone could hope for among the Hispanic voters who might have strayed.
eMeg needs above 35% of the Hispanic vote next month to win. I cannot see that happening now.
Conservatives and bigots were probably always going to vote for her, but I don’t see Housekeepergate as a motivator for them to make the extra effort to get to the polls, do you?
If she were being paid for all the hours she worked, barely.
But she was being paid for only 15 hours a week, while working a lot more, she says.
IOKIYAF? Peace!
Please let this little escapade relegate Meggy where she belongs – to the circular file :)
Basic Bottom Line is this:
If a Cop does not follows rules on the road can he or she has right to enforce rules on rest of the general public irrespective of what Cop says, you caught me violating rules to become a cop yourself, shame on you etc.
If Republican representative gets elected by any chance in my opinion californians should be looking out for creative accounting, mandates and give-aways to wall street due to unpayable bond measures and regressive taxation. That will be the likely path which leads to a boom when unpayable bond money is given followed by a bigger bust than now.
I hope Republicans made a better down-to-earth honest choice which they should be having many, to make it a better contest for california future since they have the wind behind their back due to Health care mandates and lack of wall street accountability after bailouts.
It’s cool