BY STACY ST. CLAIR
PHOTOGRAPHS BY BRIAN HILL

Mateusz Pis takes a break from farm chores in rural Poland to talk to his sister on the phone. She won a coveted visa and is working in the Chicago suburbs.

LEG TARNOWSKI, Poland - Mateusz Pis wakes up at 4:30 a.m., about an hour before the sun rises over his family's farm.

He dresses in a button-down shirt and faded jeans, the trendy ones that make him look like an American teenager. He runs gel through his hair and spikes the bangs a little.

His mother, Bogumila, pulls the family car out of the barn. The tiny Russian compact sputters and spits as it makes its way toward the train station.

Mother and son drive in silence, muted by sleepiness and the day's significance. They have made great sacrifices for this moment, yet neither has a say in the outcome.

The Pises are as desperate as any of the 400 Poles who apply for U.S. visas each day. They need the document - and the economic opportunity it would provide - to escape the poverty paralyzing both their family and their homeland.

Nearly one out of every five Poles is without work. With 3 million jobless adults, the country grapples with the highest unemployment rate in the European Union.

The bleak situation puts the Pises on a train to Krakow, their country's most cultured city. They then ride a bus to the American consulate, where they stand outside waiting for Mateusz's name to be called.

He has his passport, visa applications and a sponsor letter from his aunt in Arlington Heights. The U.S. government has charged him $100 for the appointment, a fee state department officials say is necessary to cover the process.

The price, however, is a hefty one for Polish families like the Pises. Bogumila, who is raising three boys alone while caring for her elderly mother, spent a quarter of her $400 monthly income to pay for her son's interview.

The sacrifice only heightens the importance of the coveted visa. If the 18-year-old doesn't get it, he'll be haunted by the missed opportunities in America - and haunted by all the things his family could have done with the application fee.

The $100 could cover a month's college tuition or repairs to their 12-year-old car. It could be mad money - cash to blow on luxuries like Sunday matinee movies.

After a two-hour wait, Mateusz's name is called. He and his mother enter the building, sit down in a cubicle and look at the consulate official on the other side of the bulletproof glass.

The man asks a few questions in Polish. Why does he want to go to the United States? How long has his aunt lived in the Northwest suburbs? How will he pay for the trip?

Mateusz tries to explain his desire to see America and his aunt's willingness to buy his plane ticket.

Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh, the consulate official grunts in response.

The man types a few words into his computer and completes the entire interview in less than five minutes. For each of those five minutes with the consulate officer, Mateusz has paid $20, the equivalent of two days' pay.

Bogumila, a Catholic who fills her home with religious icons, whispers a prayer as she awaits the decision.

"It's hard to say how they decide," she says. "A lot of it has to do with luck."

And luck, for more than two generations, has been keeping its distance from families like the Pises.

Mateusz entered the U.S. consulate knowing his interview wouldn't hurt or help his chances. His fate probably had been sealed before he made the trip to Krakow.

He's an 18-year-old with a $1-an-hour job at a local slaughterhouse. He graduated from high school but doesn't have the money for college.

He owns no property. His family scrapes by on his mother's alimony check and his grandma's pension.

He has emotional ties to Poland, but no financial or professional ones. In the eyes of U.S. government officialdom, he is a prime candidate to come to the United States and never leave.

Mateusz remains hopeful. His 21-year-old sister didn't even have a part-time job last year, yet the consulate approved her application.

He tries to erase doubts about his intentions by applying for a tourist visa so officials might be convinced that he doesn't want to stay in America for good. He swears he only wants to go to America for a vacation, to see the country he has heard and read so much about.

Perhaps that's why the consulate official laughs when Bogumila asks about her son's chances.

Of the 100,000 visa applications the Warsaw embassy and the consulates in Krakow and Poznan receive each year, roughly 30 percent are denied. Requests from young adults are met with great skepticism.

Working in America has become a rite of passage for Polish teens, a tradition that is an open secret between Poles and the U.S. State Department. An American Embassy spokesman in Poland said consular officers are particularly wary of young adults with no money who insist they want to go the United States only to vacation or study.

More often than not, the penniless young adults really have plans to go spend a few months working. They will become what's known as job tourists: Poles who - regardless of age - will enter the country on visitor or student visas, then find work in fields where they can be paid under the table, leaving no paper trail.

Those who go to the Chicago area find a metropolitan region dependent upon illegal aliens. The labor market's 220,000 undocumented workers - who make up 5 percent of the work force - fill more than 31,000 jobs and contribute $5.5 billion to the local economy, according to the Chicago-based Center for Urban Economic Development.

Mateusz Pis helps his family store grain in their barn in Leg Tarnowski. Mateusz, 18, wants to come to America, and his Arlington Heights aunt has offered to pay his plane fare. His sister already lives in the Chicago suburbs, where she cares for an elderly woman.

Men typically get jobs in construction or factories. Women often become house cleaners or nannies.

Though some travel to Germany and other European countries to make money, the United States remains their land of economic opportunity. Most choose the United States because they have friends or family here, some illegally, who help with the job search.

The teen workers generally are paid less than their American counterparts, making them attractive to employers. The paycheck, though, still is more than they could ever dream of cashing back home.

Mateusz, for example, earns $10 a day cleaning grain at a slaughterhouse. The average undocumented worker in the Chicago area makes seven times that amount, according to the Center for Urban Economic Development.

Mateusz dances around the topic of illegal employment after his consulate interview, repeatedly saying he wants to be a tourist. Asked if he would take a job in America given the chance, his younger brothers burst into laughter before he can answer.

To them, the question is silly. Who would reject a job when his mom and brothers are barely scraping by?

"I would have to see what I could get," Mateusz says carefully.

Bogumila doesn't deny her son would look for work, either. She's just not sure he could find something given the current U.S. economy.

"Jobs aren't always easy to find when you don't speak the language and you don't have a driver's license," she says.

The family could use the money, though, she adds. Mateusz wants to go to a culinary college, but she cannot afford the tuition.

The best school costs about $350 per month, not including room and board. Even the lower-end institutions, which charge about $100 per month, are too expensive for the Pises.

"How am I going to pay for that?" his mother asks. "I can't. It's impossible here."

Bogumila doesn't object to sending her children to America to work illegally. Her eldest daughter traveled to the Chicago suburbs nine months ago on a tourist visa and has been caring for an elderly woman since arriving.

She lives with the woman full-time, except when she visits her aunt in Arlington Heights twice a month. She bathes her employer, cooks all meals and cleans the house.

The weekly pay, more than her mother gets monthly, will help give the 21-year-old a better life. At the very least, it's a steady income following three years of unemployment in Poland after she graduated from school with a bookkeeping degree.

Bogumila's daughter now sends token gifts home to her brothers and mother, things they couldn't otherwise afford like Adidas T-shirts and basketball shorts. She mailed Mateusz the dress shirt he wore to his consulate interview.

She recently petitioned to stay in the country longer and the government extended her visa through November. She is working to change her legal status so she can attend school.

Bogumila knows her daughter's situation cannot last.

"You can't spend your whole life running, looking over your shoulder," she says. "It's no way to live."

Bogumila Pis should know. Her life is a testament to no way to live.

She grew up in Leg Tarnowski, a small town about 60 miles from Krakow. Five years before she was born, her father built a typical Polish farmhouse along a gravel road.

The house was made of cinder blocks and painted white. Flower boxes sat on every window sill, overflowing with red and hot pink geraniums.

Immediately after their wedding, Bogumila and her husband moved into her parents' home, unable to afford their own. They had a little bit of land, enough space to grow wheat, beets and potatoes.

The couple had four children, a girl and three boys. When the youngest boy was 7, she says she asked her husband to leave because he drank too much.

It has been a struggle ever since. Unemployment is an epidemic in Poland. Roughly 18.9 percent - or 3 million people - are out of work.

Bogumila has been unable to find a job, forcing her to get by on the $150 she receives in child support and alimony each month. Her mother, Lucja, signs over her $250 pension check to help make ends meet.

Altogether, she has about $13 a day to feed, clothe and shelter herself, her mom and her three boys. Her income hovers at the poverty level, a reality for 18 percent of Poles.

Dozens of Poles wait outside the American Embassy offices in Warsaw hoping for a chance to come to the United States. The $100 application fee can cost some up to two weeks worth of work. Many Poles hope to come here for better-paying jobs.

Though the cost of living is roughly half that of Chicago, there are no luxuries in the Pis family budget.

Movies, which cost $4.50 per ticket, are too expensive. Rather than pay 50 cents for bread at the grocery store, Bogumila bakes her own between farming chores.

"It would just be nice for them to go to a Sunday movie now and then," Bogumila says. "You hear about families (in the States) who go on vacation to Florida. They seem to get by. It's hard for me as a mother to not even be able to buy ice cream for them."

Bogumila runs the house and farm with her sons' help. They raise chickens and ducks for their dinner table, as well as wheat to grind into flour.

During the harvest, the three boys and their mother work side-by-side as they haul 500 pounds of grain from their wagon to their dilapidated barn.

Bogumila stands knee deep in the granules as bugs crawl and burrow in the pile. Her youngest son, 11-year-old Lukasz, joins her in the wooden cart to help shovel.

They pass the heavy buckets to Mateusz and 17-year-old Maciek. The older boys carry the grain into the barn and dump it in storage bins.

Behind the barn lies a makeshift soccer field. Lukasz, dressed in a gold Manchester United uniform with "Beckham" printed on the back, keeps eyeing the muddy pitch.

His quick feet and boundless energy make him a natural forward. He longs to be out there playing, honing his skills and emulating his favorite English soccer star.

But Lukasz doesn't leave his mother's side. He continues scooping grain until there are only a few granules left.

With his chores finished, he runs inside and grabs his soccer ball. His mother sighs.

This is not what she wants for him. It's not what she wants for any of her children.

"This is too hard for them," she says. "They aren't having a real childhood."

The struggle seems to get harder for Bogumila each day. Even the colorful geraniums in the window boxes don't bloom as brightly as they once did.

The petals are thin and weathered. They are alive, but just barely.

In many ways, they mirror their owner. Family photos inside the farmhouse show Bogumila once was a pretty, happy blonde.

At 39, she is attractive, with a figure most 20-year-olds would envy. But there's something different about her.

Dark circles ring her tired eyes. She is nearly alone in Leg Tarnowski. Her brother and sister have left for the Chicago area, along with half the people with whom she grew up.

The house next door is half-finished, another cement block structure missing windows and a roof. Her sister was building it when she got a visa for the United States.

She moved immediately, abandoning the house in mid-construction. That was 14 years ago. It hasn't been touched since.

Her sister left a nursing position in Tarnow to work as an aide in a suburban Chicago nursing home. While not as prestigious as her old job, the work gives her family a comfortable life she couldn't possibly re-create in Poland.

She sponsored and paid for her niece's air fare to the United States and has offered to do the same for Mateusz. She sends money home occasionally and faithfully calls her mother each Sunday.

Bogumila hasn't seen her sister in more than a decade. She sees the abandoned house day after day. It's a monument to her sister's good fortune in America. Located on a road still unpaved nearly four decades after it first was carved, the half-built house mocks the bad luck festering in Leg Tarnowski.

"We just can't live here anymore," she says. "This is not a good life."

Bogumila tried to escape last year. She applied for the U.S. Diversity Visa Lottery, a random drawing that allows 50,000 immigrants to enter the country each year.

She paid an agency $27 to help with the paperwork in the hope that her name would be drawn. If it had been, she could have come to America with her three sons.

She is desperate to live in the United States, willing to take any job fit for an immigrant with a high school diploma and few English skills.

The visa lottery was her chance to give her sons a better life. Mateusz could have gone to college and Maciek would have gone to the movies. Lukasz could have spent the entire summer playing soccer.

And they all could have gone for ice cream - if only her name had been drawn.

"The lottery happened," Bogumila says, "and we didn't have the luck."

Mateusz believes luck is on his side as his interrogator at the consulate finalizes the paperwork.

"Unfortunately," the official says, "you didn't get it."

That's it. No explanation. No sympathy. No visa.

Bogumila asks for a reason, but doesn't get one. Mother and son leave the embassy in angry silence.

The $100 is lost forever.

Consulate rules prevent Mateusz from applying for another year - if he decides to try again.

"I don't know if we'll do it again," Bogumila says. "After an experience like that a person feels a little beaten down. I feel like a loser."

Daily Herald staff writer Jack Komperda contributed to this report.

Continue: An up-close look at three paths from Polska.