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Posted on 09/13/2003 2:09:58 PM PDT by Brian S
BY DION NISSENBAUM San Jose Mercury News
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger has denounced illegal immigration in his bid to become California's next governor, but the Austrian native may have stretched the bounds of United States law to secure his own ticket to America in the 1960s.
As a 21-year-old bodybuilder, Schwarzenegger came to the United States in 1968 on a B-1 visa, which allows visiting athletes to compete and train, but bars them from drawing a salary from an American company.
But in his 1977 autobiography, Schwarzenegger said he reached a deal with a legendary figure in the bodybuilding industry "to pay me a weekly salary in exchange for my information and being able to use photographs of me in his magazine."
That arrangement, said a half dozen immigration attorneys across the nation, appears to have violated the terms of his visa.
"It allows you to come in to conduct business, but to be gainfully employed you need a visa that allows you to be gainfully employed in the United States," said New York-based immigration attorney Steven S. Mukamal. "It would seem that Mr. Schwarzenegger violated his own status."
Schwarzenegger told campaign aides last week that he does not recall earning a salary during his first year in America, even though he wrote about it in his autobiography and the arrangement has been reported in numerous accounts over the decades.
Aides to the actor vigorously defend the candidate's immigration record, saying that the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service would not have extended his B-1 visa after six months, then given him a temporary working visa if he had done anything wrong.
"The INS knew full well what he was doing here and had no problem with it," said Thomas Hiltachk, Schwarzenegger's attorney. "Had there been any violation of his existing visa, he would not have been granted a new visa."
Schwarzenegger declined be interviewed or release immigration records that detail his employment history in the United States.
Immigration has emerged as a central issue in the race to replace Democratic Gov. Gray Davis, who is facing an historic Oct. 7 recall election.
Although many immigrants break the terms of their visa by working in the United States, Schwarzenegger has repeatedly stressed that he followed the rules and insists that other immigrants must do the same.
The Hollywood star, who calls himself the "true immigrant" in the race, has used his own rags-to-riches tale to explain his support for Proposition 187, a controversial 1994 ballot measure that sought to bar illegal immigrants from receiving educational and social services. And, as governor, he has vowed to fight a law Davis signed earlier this month that allows illegal immigrants to get driver's licenses.
"People like myself waited for 15 years after I came to this country - legally - to get citizenship," Schwarzenegger said recently on talk radio. "So I find it unfair to push the whole thing of undocumented immigrants and to say, `Well, you know they should just get their citizenship because they're coming in.'"
But Schwarzenegger's own tale is not so clear-cut.
The B-1 visa that Schwarzenegger received allows a select group of visitors to come into the United States for brief periods of business. It allows athletes to take part in competitions, ministers to lead evangelical tours, engineers to install computer systems and musicians to record albums. Under the terms of the visa, "a non-immigrant in B-1 status may not receive a salary from a U.S. source for services rendered in connection with his or her activities in the United States." The rules do allow immigrants to receive "actual reasonable expenses," such as money for food and hotel rooms.
Even before he arrived in America, Schwarzenegger has said, he struck a deal to work for bodybuilding magnate Joe Weider while he had a B-1 visa so he could train in California. Weider convinced Schwarzenegger to train at the legendary Gold's Gym in Venice after the young bodybuilder lost a major competition in Florida.
"I worked out an agreement with Joe Weider to spend one year in America," Schwarzenegger wrote in his 1977 autobiography. "My part of the agreement was to make available to Weider information about how I trained. He agreed to provide an apartment, a car and to pay me a weekly salary in exchange for my information and being able to use photographs of me in his magazine."
In interviews over the years with major American newspapers, Weider has said he paid the young bodybuilder between $100 and $200 a week to write brochures and columns for his bodybulding magazines.
"We helped him edit them, and later we encouraged him to sell his own correspondence courses," Weider told Schwarzenegger biographer Nigel Andrews in the 1995 "True Myths: The Life and Times of Arnold Schwarzenegger."
Last month in an interview with the San Jose Mercury News, Weider said he paid Schwarzenegger $200 a week, a generous sum in 1968 when the average weekly wage was about $114. "I paid him right away," Weider said. "How do you think he was going to live?"
Schwarzenegger spokesman Sean Walsh also told the Mercury News last month that the young bodybuilder was paid a weekly salary, but Walsh said that it was only $65 a week.
The two salary figures were published in a profile of Schwarzenegger in the Mercury News on Aug. 24, and the campaign did not take issue with the article's accuracy.
When the San Jose Mercury News questioned last week whether taking a salary violated the terms of Schwarzenegger's visa, the campaign argued that Schwarzenegger did not receive a salary.
Hiltachk said that, despite what Schwarzenegger wrote in his autobiography, the actor does not think he was paid in exchange for work while he had a B-1 visa. "His recollection was foggy, but he said he didn't believe he received a salary or was working for Joe," he said.
The campaign also hastily arranged a conference call Thursday with Weider. Both Walsh and Hiltachk were on the call. Weider, who is 83, told the Mercury News that he now cannot recall if he paid Schwarzenegger $200 a week in 1968.
"I thought I paid him around that, but I'm not sure," Weider said Thursday. "I don't think I paid him exactly weekly. He was paid when he needed some money."
And on Friday, Walsh said that he told the Mercury News in August that Weider gave Schwarzenegger just a one-time payment of $65 when he arrived - not $65 a week.
If Weider did pay Schwarzenegger a salary to write for his magazines in 1968 and 1969, that would have been a violation of his immigration status, six immigration attorneys said last week.
"If I had presented that story to the INS, I doubt they would have OK'd it," said San Francisco attorney Don Ungar, who has been practicing immigration law for 42 years. "If he's being paid to provide information that's being used by Joe Weider, that strikes me as employment."
Hiltachk said the candidate's 1973 application to become a permanent resident outlines his relationship with Weider, demonstrating that the INS knew of the business arrangement and found no fault with it. But Hiltachk declined to release any details, citing attorney-client privilege.
The Mercury News filed a public records request for access to Schwarzenegger's immigration file, but the federal government - citing confidentiality - released just one of the 83 pages - a newspaper article from 1974. The INS, now called the Bureau of Immigration and Citizenship Services, also declined to discuss Schwarzenegger's immigration record.
In November 1969, after more than a year in the United States, Schwarzenegger received an H-2 visa, which allowed him to work in this country. He became a permanent resident in 1974 and a citizen in 1983.
Several immigration attorneys said the federal government was much more lax in the 1960s and 1970s in enforcing immigration laws and said the INS would probably not have closely scrutinized Schwarzenegger's immigration forms. Had he tried to do the same thing today, said Crystal Williams of the American Immigration Lawyers Association in Washington, D.C., Schwarzenegger might have faced deportation for violating the terms of his B-1 visa.
"Things were a lot looser in 1968 than they were today," she said. "Generally they were not paying as much attention back then as they do today. If you change from a B-1 to working status without disclosing that you were working beforehand, that could be considered fraud - and that's very serious."
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(Knight Ridder Newspapers correspondent Eric Nalder contributed to this report.)
24 more shopping days until the end of Arnie.
What makes you think Arnold S. paid taxes on his illegal wages? It sounds like an under-the-counter arrangement.
I does, indeed.
This was held onto and dumped on Schwarzenegger's big day at the Republican convention. This is what the Democrats consider to be dirtier dirt. When people begin to say "What more can they say about him," something dirtier always magically appears.
What more is still out there?
-PJ
Your question would be valid if the upcoming election were a Republican primary. But this is a unique event, as you probably know.
Schwarzenegger is drawing support from both independents and Democrats. Winner take all. There's no nomination involved, and no second chances.
Excellent point.
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