Overstay Visas So They Can Earn Enough to Purchase Cars, Phones : Poles Take On Dirty Work in U.S. to Provide for Easier Life in Homeland

The basement room is sparsely furnished, just a battered dresser, two chairs, a couch that converts to a bed, and a faded yellow carpet covering a concrete floor.

But the humble trappings of Leszek’s room belie his status as a future member of the economic elite in his native Poland.

“I want to build a house in Poland, so here I have to work to make the money,” said Leszek, who, like other Poles interviewed, spoke on condition that his surname not be used.

Leszek (pronounced LESH-ek) is one of thousands of Poles who have fled the deteriorating economic situation in their homeland, where even staples such as bread and milk are often missing from shops.

In 1988, of the 63,500 Poles who entered the United States as tourists, about 14,000 stayed longer than their visas permitted, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service figures show. Tourist visas usually are valid from three to nine months.

A higher percentage of Poles illegally overstay their visas than residents of any other major country, said INS researcher Robert Warren.

That number has fallen from 22,000 since 1986, the year a new immigration law mandating penalties for employers who hire illegal aliens went into effect.

But the number of Poles illegally working here is still considerable, said INS spokesman Carl Henderson in Chicago, where the majority of such Poles end up. Polish restaurants and shops abound in this city, and Poles can get by with learning a minimum of English.

Want to Earn Easy Money

At Poland’s consulate in Chicago, Vice Consul Robert Michniewicz acknowledged: “With the economic situation in Poland, people are all wanting to get out and earn easy money.”

But he added: “Most of them want to come here just to make some dollars and then go back.”

Wages at even menial jobs here far outstrip earnings in Poland, where monthly salaries average about $15 at the legal black market exchange rate.

“What I make here in a week, it would take me a year to earn in Poland,” said Jadwiga, who earns $275 weekly for taking care of an ailing woman here.

Even so, the 48-year-old research chemist noted: “It would never come into my head to leave Poland forever. Life in Poland is very hard, but I don’t want to be a foreigner all my life.”

And with dollars or West German marks in hand, a Pole can afford what many of his or her countrymen can only dream about--luxuries such as a telephone, a car, even an apartment.

For other Poles, working abroad is simply a matter of survival.

“I had to come here,” said Marta, a high school teacher in Poland who has taken care of an elderly man in a Chicago suburb since the fall of 1987.

Marta, 40, entered the United States on a tourist visa, leaving her 14-year-old daughter at home with the girl’s grandparents.

She said she plans to return with about $15,000, which she says she will put in an interest-bearing dollar account in a Polish bank to supplement her salary so she can put food on the table.

“I’ve paid a certain psychological price, but there’s a positive side to it too,” Marta said. “My daughter says she misses me, but she understands we need the money.”

For many immigrants the price of American wages can be high.

“They do the hardest and dirtiest jobs,” said Michniewicz, the vice consul.

“People are living six to a basement and working two or three jobs.”

Although Leszek, as a miner in Poland, could earn three times the average salary, that sum is still paltry when compared with the $5 an hour he can earn doing odd jobs at construction sites in Chicago.

In his quest for a better life, Leszek, who is 37 but looks older, left behind his wife and two daughters.

He plans on staying in the United States for about 18 months. Working a year in Germany previously allowed him to pay the $2,300 cost of his trip here and to buy a car.

In his basement room, Leszek looks out the window at the tires of passing cars, then shows off pictures of his wife and children in their Polish home.

“Here it’s such a wild life--everybody’s running after money,” he said. “At home we have time to go to the sea or to the mountains. Here they’re working from morning to night.”