Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa worked for just$155 a week on a 10,000-acre form in central California. He was an illegal Mexican immigrant living in a decrepit truck camper.

    It had been a year since he failed in his first attempt crossing the border illegally. He went over the fence again. It was January 2, 1987, Quinones 19th birthday. This time his cousin was there. Quinones hopped in his car, and they headed to El Centro.

    Quinoneses family was almost middle-class. But in 1976 the Mexican government devaluated the peso. Quinones says: "We lost everything just like that. I remember going to the back of the house to find my father crying."

    We turned to his brothers who were migrant farm workers. Besides working hard at a taco stand he kept up with school. At the age 14, Quinones qualified for an accelerated program in Mexicali prepared students for jobs.