HIS grandfather picked cotton In Arizona His father made glass picture frames at a factory in New York. So when his time came, at age 13. Roberto Fructuoso Perez followed the same path away from his family's home In Mexico and set out for the United States.

Ten years later, he earns 340 US dollars a week unloading boxes of vegetables and meat from a delivery truck at Chinese restaurants. He puts aside about a fourth of his earnings, and he manages to send a steady trickle of money back to Mexico.

With his help, his parents have built a house, paid tuition for one of his sisters and opened a sandwich stand.

"It's very Important that I'm here to give them a little more support." Fructuoso says during a ride in the delivery truck between restaurants. "J came with that wish to be able to give them what they might have wanted to give us but couldn't."

He shares that wish with countless other young Mexicans who head north when hope runs out In their homeland. But Fructuoso. like his father and grandfather before him. pays a high personal price to help support his family.

Because he has no documents, returning to Mexico to visit would mean risking arrest and possibly even death trying to cross the US border on the way back. So for the past five years, the 23-year-old has put aside thoughts of seeing his family, even though he believes he should have the right to come and go.

He says it's wrong that he should be treated like a criminal while he and other illegal immigrants help keep the US economy going.

"Supposedly they say America is the land of freedom. But we really don't see it that way." he says. "We came with a dream, supposedly to the land of freedom. and we found what we have — sometimes more barriers than in our countries of origin. Many times, our dream is frustrated."

Without a coveted "green card" to allow him to work legally in the United States. Fructuoso is limited to tolling In the hardest, lowest-paying Jobs. At work, he carries buckets of tofu and 100-pound (45 kilograms) sacks of rice into restaurants, his cheeks shining with perspiration.

In Spanish, he greets young Mexican men who work In restaurant kitchens, on other delivery trucks, and at warehouses. They are all part of a deeply entrenched pattern of immigration that keeps young Mexican men in the United States for many years at a time, often sacrificing life with their families for the money to support them.

After work. Fructuoso stops by the travel agency he uses to wire money to his family, a small shop with signs in its windows advertising airfares to Mexico, Peru and Ecuador. He counts out 180 dollars and passes the bills across the counter to an employee. He pays the woman a fee of 9.20 dollars, and she hands him a yellow receipt printed with his mother s name.

The next morning in Cuautla. 40 miles (64.36 kilometres) south of Mexico City. Fructuoso's family gathers to pick up the money. His father, who returned from New York years ago. had spoken to his son by phone and decided to skip work His mother and sister

leave their sandwich stand in tire hands of a younger sister even though they just opened It days earlier.

At 9:30 am. the family takes a bus to the town's tree-lined main plaza and waits in line at the Mexico Express office behind a woman with a baby bundled on her back.

Fructuoso's mother. Rufina Perez, proudly hands her voter card to the teller, then signs her name in studied letters. She smiles when the teller turns over nine crisp 20-dollar bills.

Fructuoso's father, also named Roberto, says most of the money will disappear immediately

"We have to pay what we owe." he says. "It there's anything left. It will be a little money for the house, for food."

A big chunk of the money — 490 pesos, or 53 dollars — goes toward monthly tuition for Fructuoso's 17-year-old sister. Veronica.

Some will go for rent on the tiny yellow-walled sandwich stand, which costs the family 500 pesos (54 dollars) a month.

Some will help pay off the 4.000-peso (430 dollars) loan they took out to buy the stove and refrigerator and pay for permits they needed to open the business. They must make a loan payment of 200 pesos (22 dollars) each week.

Without the help, the family wouldn't have enough money. The father's Job of digging wells on poor ranches, a trade he learned from his father, doesn't bring in much.

The family's sandwich stand has -a single table with four chairs. Without a sink, Fructuoso's mother and a sister fill a garbage can with water from a spig°t and scoop it out with a bowl to wash dishes and clean the lunch counter. The women sell fruit drinks for four pesos (43 cents) and sandwiches for five pesos (54 cents).

The family's house is tiny and ramshackle. A cracked car mirror is nailed to a wall, and ancient mattresses sit on cinderblocks. Light bulbs hang from a Jumble of wires. On one wall is a board covered with postcards from New York. They are blank on the back.

The kitchen is outside, with an old. rusted stove. A cistern holds water because service comes only every third day. A small washing machine hasn't worked for years.

"We bought the land and built the house — all from what Roberto sends." his father says.

“We thought we could put up walls around the kitchen this year, but we couldn't do It." he adds. He hopes they can afford . W nex^WP * M

"The only hope'comes from Roberto, because here. It's tough."

Back in New York. Fructuoso recalls that when his father was in the United States, he sometimes didn't send the family enough money, so his mother had to struggle to feed the children. Early in the morning, she went door to door selling dough for making tortillas.

Later In the day. she took a bus to fields in the surrounding hills, where she would fill a large sack with tomatoes and other vegetables discarded in the rows.

"1 wanted to come because my mother was suffering a lot." Fructuoso says. "She always had fought for us."

The situation at home prompted him to leave for the United States with an uncle in 1989 even though he hadn't finished school. As the only son in the family, it was his duty to help provide for his mother and four sisters.

It was a well-travelled path. Fructuoso had heard stories of

how his grandfather worked in the fields in Arizona for a time, and when the boy arrived in New York, his father was already there working In a fac-,OrBefore long. Fructuoso says, his father was badly cut when olass fell on him while working at the frame factory and he later returned to Mexico when the homesickness became too much. , _

But the son stayed, growing accustomed to a backdrop of skyscrapers Instead of modest one-story homes. He saw snow for the first time, and he got used to wearing a thick Jacket in the winter. His salary gradu# ally rose as he went from working in a supermarket to working In warehouses.

A decade later, the money Fructuoso sends home — often between 300 and 350 dollars a month — Is the only regular connection he has with his family aside from occasional phone calls.

"He's the only boy. so we miss him I tell him he has to come back." his mother says. "1 didn't want him to go. but he said. ‘No mama, there's no work here and there isn't anything to eat.’ So he went."

The phone calls are usually brief because of the expense. Fructuoso asks about the family, about how Cuautla has changed from the sleepy village It was in his youth into the bustling town It now is.

His parents and sisters never expected him to be gone so long, but they understand it's too expensive and difficult to come and go.

Fructuoso returned to the town once for a three-month visit when he was 18. He passed a test to complete his basic schooling.

Afterward, getting back into the United States was tough. He tried unsuccessfully to cross the border 13 times. Each time, he was caught by US Border Patrol agents and sent back to Mexico.

Finally, after two weeks of trying, he made the crossing into the Arizona desert jammed into the back of a van with 22 other people. Once on the other side, he paid 1.500 dollars to the coyote guide who took him across.

The money he carried wasn't his. He had borrowed it from a great-aunt and a friend, and he paid them back, with Interest, after resuming work in New York.

"It took him a whole year to pay it back," says his father.

When Fructuoso first returned to New York, he had nightmares of being appre-' bended by immigration offi-cevsA/The nightmares eventually went away, but- he still worries about the possibility of being sent back.

"You always live with a little fear." he says.

Fructuoso believes It's wrong that despite his years of work, the United States still considers him an "illegal alien". Last year, he took a bus with others to Washington and marched in front of the White House to urge the government to declare an amnesty that would let immigrants like him stay legally.

“I don't know what the reason would be that they don't want to accept us to live legally here." he says.

An estimated 7 million Mexican-born adults live In the United States, and the money they send home — by all accounts more than the documented figure of 5.9 billion dollars a year — is one of Mexico's largest sources of income.

New York, like many places in the United States, is dependent upon Mexican labour. Young men and teenagers mop its restaurants, stock its shelves and whittle thorns from roses outside its corner stores.

The city estimates its Mexican population has more than tripled In the past decade, rising from about 64.000 In the 1990 census to an estimated 200,000 last year. Other experts say the number of Mexicans In the city is probably much higher.

Before coming to the United States. Fructuoso imagined it differently, a place where "there was less racism." Now. he spends some free time in the evenings at the Mexican community group Association Te-peyac helping organize cultural events and marches for immigrant rights.

He begins his days early, loading boxes into a graffiti-covered delivery trucK. The work has given him the build of a weightlifter. He and his boss, a Chinese man who owns the truck, unload their goods at restaurants across the city.

Fructuoso does this work six days a week, even when it's snowing. Holidays are rare, and his boss sometimes doesn't pay on time. But Fructuoso Is grateful for what he has.

"Estoy bien. oractas a Dios.” he often says. "I'm fine, thanks to God." ' »

He buys some clothes second hand, and he shares a small one-bedroom apartment with an uncle and a cousin, together paying 700 dollars a month In rent. Fructuoso sleeps with his cousin on a mattress on the floor.

He warms tortillas on the stoves gas burners. He says they don't compare to the ones his mother makes fresh at home.

Fructuoso misses his parents and sisters, and he has no photographs of them. He lost one family picture when someone stole his backpack during the crossing from Mexico. But he says he doesn't need a photo to remember them by.

They are always here. In my mind, he says. 'I know that my mama prays for me. I pray for them."