Immigrants make move for families

Ana was willing to do anything for a better life. So five years ago, when her cousin proposed that the pair wade through a large sewer pipe to get out of Mexico, she didn't hesitate to follow.

"It took 12 hours to walk through the pipe," she recalls. "There were rats, and sometimes, you had to get on your knees and crawl. I was afraid, but I knew I couldn't turn back. There was no future for my family in Mexico."

At the same time Ana was making her way through the sewer system with her cousin and 25 strangers who had paid a guide to help them, her husband, Jose, was taking his chances at climbing over a tall chain-link fence on the Arizona border.

He was caught and jailed by U.S. border patrol agents, not once, but nine times. Still, he didn't give up.

"I finally made it across the same way somebody on vacation would," he says. "I bought some phony documents and dressed in tourist clothes. Then, I simply walked across. It was one of the best days of my life."

Jose was eventually reunited with Ana in Salt Lake City, where they moved into the basement of a friend's house. Working odd jobs, they were soon able to save enough money to send for their daughter, Ana Claudia, then 6 and living with her grandparents in Acapulco.

Now raising a second daughter, Natalie, 2, they dream of the day when they can become legal U.S. citizens. Ana, 33, cannot speak of last month's march supporting amnesty for illegal immigrants without weeping.

"We are not terrorists, we are not out to take somebody's job," she says. "People misunderstand why we are here. We are here because the situation is so terrible in Mexico. Like everybody else, we dream of something better."

With Congress taking on the issue of immigration reform, she and Jose recently met me with their daughters for a Free Lunch of Italian chicken at Salt Lake City's Buca di Beppo restaurant. Jose, 35, had just driven with his brother from California, where he has been living off and on since January, yearning for another dream: a new kidney.

Because he is in the country illegally, the Salt Lake hospital he approached would not treat Jose or put him on a waiting list for a new kidney unless he paid $60,000 up front. "They basically said I would have to die," he says. So when he learned he would be eligible for treatment in California, regardless of his illegal status, Jose packed his bags.

"I do what I have to do for my family," he says. "Who wouldn't do the same?"

Before he became sick last year, Jose made a meager living in construction, often putting in 15-hour days with no pay. More than one boss disappeared without paying him and other illegal hires, but it's a risk Jose was willing to take.