NEWS ANALYSIS : Wilson Flap Underscores Shifting Political Standards : Issues: Public demands consistency from officials. But voters’ capacity to pardon is well-documented.

Critics accuse them of innumerable evils--swamping our hospitals, crowding our schools, draining our state treasuries. But they also wax our Volvos, pick the tomatoes we eat at the salad bar, dust our pianos and rock our babies to sleep.

Illegal immigrants are the enemy, it seems, but they are also an indispensable, irresistible source of help.

On Thursday, this persistent contradiction in America’s relationship with undocumented workers was illuminated once again--this time, by Gov. Pete Wilson. Wilson, who led a hard-edged assault on illegal immigration while running for reelection last year, revealed that he employed and failed to pay taxes for an undocumented immigrant beginning in 1978. Wilson said he would not have hired the woman if he had known that she had illegally entered the country, and that he never intentionally failed to pay Social Security taxes.

Wilson is not the first politician to make this grim-faced disclosure. Mike Huffington saw his bid for the U.S. Senate last year damaged by revelations that he employed an illegal immigrant as a nanny, and two candidates for U.S. attorney general--Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood--were dropped after problems surfaced over the status of their domestic help.

Perhaps because it has become commonplace, Wilson’s dilemma has kindled debate over just what sort of conduct the public expects from its elected officials.

Opinions vary, but one thing seems clear: The standard for behavior shifts, and people will forgive a lot if they believe that a candidate can make the trains run on time.

“Voters are sufficiently cynical to suspect that politicians’ behavior is going to be less than perfect,” said Darry Sragow, a Democratic political consultant. “They think all politicians are self-serving, rule-bending opportunists. . . . They want the system to be fixed, and they vote for whomever they think will fix it.”

Perhaps so, but Sragow and other observers believe that elected officials--Wilson among them--ought to do better.

“We must demand that our politicians be law-abiding and consistent in their views,” said Kevin Johnson, a professor and immigration specialist at the UC Davis School of Law. “We cannot have politicians who are hypocrites.”

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Estimates suggest that there are about 4 million illegal immigrants in the United States. About 3 million are employed, with one-third working as household domestics.

Surveys of Californians show that views on immigration are not firmly cast, and are highly dependent on whether the immigration in question is legal or illegal.

In September, a Los Angeles Times poll found that 88% of Californians said illegal immigration was a problem for the state. But a slim plurality said legal immigration was not a problem.

More generally, the public’s views on illegal immigration mirror prevailing attitudes toward Congress: People say they love their representative, but loathe the institution.

“People have always had one notion of illegal immigration as a whole, and a very different notion about Jose down the street,” said Phillip Martin, a professor of agricultural economics at UC Davis.

Moreover, public perceptions change over time. During recessionary periods, such as the early 1990s, communal anger over illegal immigration rose based on a belief that “foreigners” were stealing jobs or burdening the government. But when Wilson and his former wife hired an undocumented worker as a maid back in the 1970s, the climate--and the law--were quite different.

It is difficult to divine whether Wilson will be hurt by the current controversy or whether it will pass. The governor’s ex-wife has assumed full blame for the matter, and Wilson’s campaign chairman, Craig Fuller, predicted that all would be forgiven:

“Fair-minded people who know the facts of this matter will understand that both the law and our society are very different today than they were 17 years ago,” Fuller said in a statement. Hiring undocumented workers, he added, was legal at the time, although the Wilsons were required to make Social Security payments for their maid but failed to do so.

Still, Wilson’s actions were different than those committed by Huffington, whose hiring of an undocumented baby-sitter came after federal law explicitly forbade it.

And voters’ capacity to pardon is well-documented, as evidenced in recent annals of political history. Ronald Reagan had a messy family life--complete with divorce and estranged children--but he was elected twice and remains immensely popular.

President Clinton had a far heavier load of baggage as a candidate--from his alleged philandering to accusations that he dodged the draft--but managed to land in the Oval Office nonetheless.

If Wilson is harmed by the new controversy, political analysts say, it will be because of his record as an outspoken critic of illegal immigration. In his gubernatorial campaign last year, Wilson condemned a “flood” of illegal immigrants and their burden on society. And he has promised to raise the issue again in his 1996 White House bid.

“Politicians have exploited the immigration issue endlessly, and if there is a No. 1 offender, it’s Pete Wilson,” said Lisa Navarrete of the National Council of La Raza, a Latino advocacy group in Washington. “With this revelation . . . we know for sure he’s a total hypocrite on this issue.”

Latino activists in Los Angeles echoed that view:

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“For a policy leader who purports to have a thorough and sophisticated understanding of undocumented immigration to profess ignorance of the hiring of a member of his household . . . strains credulity,” said a statement from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

Even fellow Republicans were chiding Wilson on Thursday. Harold Ezell, former western regional commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, lamented the governor’s “double standard” and said a policy of zero tolerance on illegal immigration must be enforced.

“You can’t have your cake and eat it too,” Ezell said. “If you’re going to really be true to your convictions--and if you really believe illegal immigration is a bad thing--then you have to say, ‘Look, I’m going to do everything I can to make sure illegals don’t get my money.’

“Anything else perpetuates the system.”

Times political writer Cathleen Decker contributed to this story from Los Angeles.