Reluctant Illegal

When Victor Cueto borrowed $1,800 last year to leave Peru and become an assistant waiter on the Royal Caribbean Cruise line, he never imagined he would end up an illegal immigrant in the United States, separated indefinitely from his wife and two young daughters.
Recruited in Lima by a Royal Caribbean hiring official who enticed Cueto, 35, and other young Peruvian men with stories of good pay and world travel, he signed on.
For Cueto and other Peruvians mired in poverty, “good pay” was a relative term. The salary was a pittance: $50 per month as an assistant waiter. However, with tips he hoped to earn as much as $1,600 per month.
At his restaurant job in Lima, Cueto only made $500 per month.
The tips on this new job would provide enough money for him to support his family and eventually earn enough money to open his own restaurant in Peru. Or so he thought.
With a job letter in hand and ten years work experience as a waiter in Lima, he quickly obtained the visa required for travel to the United States.
Cueto said the hiring partner had him sign stacks of paperwork full of legalese, little of which did he understand. He did not ask for an explanation.
Ten days after taking the job, he was in Puerto Rico to board his ship, the “Empress of the Seas.” Initially, Cueto was thrilled to be in Puerto Rico. Everything was new, the beaches were beautiful. Soon he would find out that life on the Empress of the Seas would be more difficult than he anticipated.
His boss told him that after every six weeks he would have to work two weeks without tips. That meant for those two weeks he made $25 working 11 hours per day, every day. He had to pay for his own uniforms and shoes. A neat appearance was critical to earning big tips from the cruise line passengers.
As an assistant waiter, or busboy, as Cueto also described the job, his work entailed more than simply clearing tables or setting out silverware. Being a cruise line busboy meant hard manual labor.
Carrying a load of heavy poolside deck chairs up two levels on the ship resulted in a back injury that left him supine in his cabin for three days. Adding fiscal insult to injury, he lost all his tips for those three days.
Cueto said his supervisor on the ship was not interested in training him and frequently berated him for not knowing his way around the ship. “He made me feel like garbage,” he said.
Cueto’s initial excitement and enthusiasm quickly turned to despair. Cueto said his coworkers on the Empress of the Seas called it the “Depress” of the Seas. It had a reputation among its staff as one of the worst ships in the Royal Caribbean line, he said. Royal Caribbean has since sold the Empress of the Seas to Pullmantur, a Spanish cruise line.
Since the job was only seasonal, at the end of a six month gig, he would have to pay airfare home to Peru to see his family, and then buy another plane ticket back to Puerto Rico again to catch the ship for the next cruise.
Cueto grew up in Lima, the sixth of seven children. Money was tight. His father died when he was a child, and he watched his brothers go to work one by one when they were teenagers. His sisters married young and had children quickly.
Cueto decided at an early age he would not end up selling products in the streets for pocket change.
Married since 1998 to Maria del Carmen, he and his wife are the parents of Danila, six, and Victoria, who turns two this month.
Taking the job had been a mistake, he decided. Desperate to sever ties with Royal Caribbean, Cueto decided to return home.
The problem was that he did not have the money to get there, and even if he could borrow the money for airfare back to Peru, there was no job waiting for him back in Lima. “To get a job in our country is very difficult,” he said.
Cueto was reluctant to enter the United States as an illegal immigrant, but felt he had no choice. He agonized over the decision. “Can you imagine? In my country I’ve never broken the law,” he wrote in an email.
Cueto called his brother, Luis, and asked for help. Luis Cueto lives in Maryland with his wife and three children, two of whom were born in the United States. He is a legal resident, and shares a home with their aunt, Rosa, who is a United States citizen.
He said he did not inform Royal Caribbean that he was quitting because he feared they would have sent him back to Peru. “I would be in Lima with no job, no money, and debt,” he said.
Luis Cueto helped Victor get to Maryland, where he has been living at their house in Silver Spring since April 2007. Victor Cueto is now one of the approximately 32,000 Peruvians living in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2006 American Community Survey.
After working with his brother installing floors for a short time, Cueto got a job as a waiter at The Inkas’ Empire, a Peruvian restaurant in Rockville. There, he earns about $2,000 per month.
“It’s not easy to stay away from my family. I haven’t seen them for more than a year,” he wrote. “They just watch me on the screen of the computer twice or three times a week.”
Recently, Cueto felt the 3,500 miles between himself and his family acutely when Daniela became sick and was hospitalized for a week. “I spend every free minute calling Peru to know about her,” he wrote. She recovered and is now back at home.
Though he cannot vote in the United States, Cueto is following the 2008 presidential election closely. “It’s my favorite issue,” he said. He thinks the winner of the election can affect his life in the most profound way.
He said he is interested in the Democratic Party in general and Sen. Barack Obama in particular, because of his message of change. One of the changes he hopes for is in immigration policy.
“It would be wonderful if I could bring my family here but it also depends on the next government and the Congress because of my status,” he wrote, referring to the fact that he is in the country illegally.
For now, Cueto’s short-term goal is to buy a car to open up opportunities for other jobs. He recently missed out on a chance to take a second job in Baltimore because he did not have a car.
Cueto takes the bus to and from his job at the restaurant, except on weekends. Friday and Saturday nights he frequently works until 3 a.m. when the buses are no longer running. On those nights he sleeps at the restaurant, then takes the bus back home the next morning to shower and change and go right back to work for his next shift.
For now, Maryland is one of the few states that allows state residents to get licenses without proving they are in the country legally. In 2010, all Marylanders will have to prove their citizenship to get a license. Cueto has a Maryland learner’s permit and plans to get his driver’s license soon.
“I’m amazed about how American people respect the law and order. That’s the thing that I really admire the most about American people,” he wrote. In Peru, Cueto said, corruption is rampant.
Cueto was a young boy in Lima during the violent days when the leftist terrorist group Shining Path waged a bombing campaign in Peru’s rural regions. He was a teenager during President Alberto Fujimori’s violent and ultimately successful struggle to eradicate the terrorist group. Even today, many government officials and police are corrupt, he said.
Cueto expressed frustration with his situation. “I don’t want to be an illegal here. I just wanted to be here to work every six months and save money to achieve all the dreams I had,” he wrote.
Still, lacking the funds required to return to Peru or the papers and money required to bring his family to live in the United States, he plans to stay for the near future.
“I experienced many wonderful things here so I want to stay,” he wrote.
At the end of the year, Cueto plans to reevaluate his situation and decide whether or not to stay in the United States.
“I dream every day to get my papers to work, or to save enough money to go back to Peru, but it’s not easy,” he said. “Sometimes I’m worried about the relationship with my family, but I hope everything I’m doing here would have a happy end for the future of my babies.”