Tucked into a booth at Amer's Deli on State Street, a 22-year-old man pours over notes for a coming English exam. Armed with a black iPod and a good dose of caffeine, he fits right in with the students studying around him.

But for Emigdio, study sessions are different from those of the other students' in the café. They're wedged between long shifts at a local restaurant and weighted down by a question - given his status as an illegal immigrant - of how much they will even matter.

Since illegally immigrating to the United States from Mexico two years ago, Emigdio - who agreed to be interviewed only if just his middle name was used - has come to wear many hats, from illegal alien, to cook, to college student.

For Emigdio, Ann Arbor is a lesson in contradictions. There is great opportunity, but also constant fear and instability, simple facts of life for an immigrant "without papers." And, largely because he works almost constantly - nine hours a day, six days a week - there is loneliness too.

It's a fascinating story, but not a very unique one, according to immigrant advocates, English-as-a-second-language instructors and immigrants themselves. Ann Arbor draws scores of immigrants from Central and Latin America. While even a rough estimate of the number of immigrants - legal and otherwise - is hard to come by, the area's robust service industry and wealth of colleges and universities has become known as an attractive destination for immigrants looking for jobs.

Despite working at almost every restaurant near campus, the city's large number of immigrant workers are rarely noticed by the University students they serve. Their presence is known only through snippets of Spanish heard from a kitchen or in a recognizable face behind the counter at a South University Avenue restaurant.

"For some (University) students, it is difficult to consider that there are illegal immigrants here," LSA sophomore Tiernan Seaver said. "They think, 'We're in Michigan. How would they have gotten all the way here?' "

Seaver, who teaches English to Spanish-speaking immigrants at The Washtenaw County Workers' Center, an organization that works for fair treatment of immigrant workers, said her students have taught her about the challenges they face in moving to Ann Arbor. These workers come here for the same reason University students do - to make a better future for themselves, but on their own dime and with no support from the government.

Emigdio embodies that parallel struggle. For the young student, Ann Arbor is a place where he can work and study at the same time, albeit not easily. He had planned to go to college at home in Mexico, but his parents, farmers from the small town of Atlixco, had other ideas.

"They didn't think education was that important," Emigdio said.

Of his parents' six children, he is the only one who completed high school. The others have just third-grade educations. When Emigdio told his family he wanted to continue with school, his father said he would not provide anything for Emigdio's university tuition. "No more education for you," Emigdio recalled his father telling him.

Emigdio's cousin in Brooklyn suggested he come to the United States, where more jobs are available and he could go to school. So Emigdio left. He crossed the border to a small Texas town and made his way to Brooklyn, where he worked before arriving in Ann Arbor last year.

The trip across the border, shrouded in mystery even for Emigdio, who did not know what town in Texas he first entered, took three weeks and cost Emigdio $3,000 dollars in cash upfront. First, Emigdio said the people trying to cross were broken up into small groups. They walked for three hours through the desert. Just as he was about to cross the border he was stopped by thieves and robbed. "They threw us up against the fence and looked for anything we had on us," he said.

When the group made it across the border, they waited an hour until a van came and drove them to a safe house. Another van arrived to take them to Phoenix, and then Las Vegas. Finally, they flew to New York where family members met him.

Emigdio's journey is exhausting by any standard, but it takes some people a couple of tries before they can immigrate successfully. Gonzales, a Mexican immigrant worker in Ann Arbor who asked to be known by only his middle name because of his illegal status, was twice caught and sent back to Mexico while trying to immigrate.

"I walked across the border with eight guys from my town," Gonzales said. "There are helicopters, cars, lights everywhere. You had to hide all day long without enough water or food."