From the outside, Arjav Ezekiel appears to be living the dream.
Mr. Ezekiel, 36, is a consummate restaurateur and sommelier. With his wife, the chef Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel, he owns Birdie’s in Austin, Texas, a counter-service natural wine bar that, since opening in 2021, has become one of the most acclaimed restaurants in the country.
He is smart, funny and personable, a new father who is an ideal restaurant host and a joy to discuss wine with. He also happened to spend much of his professional life as an undocumented immigrant, having come to the United States on a tourist visa with his family when he was 12.
“People forget that everything they eat is likely to have been touched by somebody who didn’t have papers,” Mr. Ezekiel said. “Whether restaurants, grocery stores or an incredible wine tasting in Napa Valley, the harvesting, the pruning — somewhere along the way it’s hard for me to imagine some undocumented immigrant didn’t play a role in that.”
Precise numbers for unauthorized immigrants in the United States are understandably hard to come by, and in an election season, highly political. But the Pew Research Center, which calls itself a “nonpartisan fact tank,” estimates that they make up roughly 3.4 percent to 4.4 percent of the American work force, including nearly 12 percent of all food service workers and 25 percent of farm workers.
I first met Mr. Ezekiel last year at a wine bar in Midtown Manhattan, where at the end of an hourlong conversation, I asked him which wine regions he enjoyed the most. He replied that he’d never been to a wine region outside the United States.
This was surprising. How was it possible that somebody as successful and accomplished with wine as Mr. Ezekiel had never visited the world’s great production areas?
He hesitated slightly before answering: Until recently, he explained, he had been undocumented, and therefore unable to get a passport and travel internationally.
I was dumbfounded, and more than a little intrigued. I wanted to know more, and eventually, Mr. Ezekiel agreed to tell me his story.
Like so many immigrant families, including my own grandparents, Mr. Ezekiel’s parents came seeking a better life for their children.
Mr. Ezekiel was born in New Delhi. His parents, whom he asked me not to identify because they haven’t revealed their background to anybody outside the family, had jobs with a hotel group training hospitality workers.
In the 1990s, Mr. Ezekiel said, the Indian educational system was emphasizing science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
“We were hardworking and creative,” Mr. Ezekiel said of himself and his younger brother. “But we weren’t STEM students. Our parents wanted us to be in a school system where we felt nurtured rather than hurt.”
His parents decided to leave India. They chose Portland, Ore., where they had relatives, as their destination. And so, in 1999, armed with tourist visas, they departed for a new life.
In Portland, they enrolled the children in school and found a small apartment. His father found work in a hotel. When their tourist visas expired, they never left. They lived quiet, outwardly normal lives, Mr. Ezekiel said, with a secret they kept even from their extended family.
Occasionally, something awkward or unsettling would occur. Mr. Ezekiel’s high school choir booked a tour of Europe, and he had to come up with a creative excuse for not going. The psychic costs of looming jail or deportation began to accumulate.
“We were emotionally stranded — just the four of us who knew the secret,” he said. “There was a level of shame about it and fear that we would be outed in the George W. Bush years. My parents couldn’t go home when they lost their parents. You felt the weight of their sacrifice.”
He was accepted at Kenyon College in Ohio, where he was offered financial aid. His mother had a frank discussion with the dean of admissions, wanting to make sure the aid could continue, as the family could not apply for federal loans.
On graduating, Mr. Ezekiel wanted to go into law or international politics. He was offered a job as a paralegal, but could not take it because he was unable to provide the required papers. He had worked in restaurants in high school, and in need of a job, he turned to them again. He landed jobs in Washington, D.C., at the Source and Komi, influential restaurants that have since closed, starting as a waiter and progressing to captain.
“I decided I would do the restaurant thing, and do it as hard as I could at the highest level,” he said.
Still, he concealed his immigration status, not telling close friends or co-workers.
At the Source, a Wolfgang Puck restaurant, he worked for managers who loved wine, and so he began to explore it himself. He picked their brains and would compete with colleagues to see who could sell the most expensive bottles.
“It was an entry into a lifestyle,” he said. “These people were rich, wearing Patek Philippes, ordering expensive bottles. Wine equaled success and the American dream. I started studying wine as a means of understanding.”
He remembers the time a colleague who had traveled widely compared a wine to how a beach in Santorini smelled.
“I would listen and try to remember and imagine what it felt like,” Mr. Ezekiel recalled. “I got adept at faking it. But I felt like I was missing out, and it hurt. These guys would come back from their trips and talk about it. They’d say, ‘When are you coming with us?’ I was never honest.”
In 2012, Mr. Ezekiel and thousands of others like him received a lifeline. Congress passed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which shielded young immigrants from deportation. With it, Mr. Ezekiel could qualify for a legitimate Social Security card and be able to work legally. He applied almost immediately.
Only then did he feel comfortable enough to discuss his status with friends.
“I was deeply surprised,” said Jacob Riesberg, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California who met Mr. Ezekiel in 2010 when Mr. Riesberg was working for the Federal Trade Commission in Washington. “I was extremely grateful that he shared the truth of his identity and what his life had been like, and I felt deeply sad that it was something he had to keep hidden from the rest of the world.”
Even with the DACA protection, Mr. Ezekiel said, he felt a level of fear. He had to reapply every two years. Always, there was the concern that the protection could be taken away.
He had moved to New York and worked his way up with the Union Square Hospitality Group, becoming a manager at Untitled and then at Gramercy Tavern. One year, his DACA application was delayed, and the company would not let him work until the renewal came through. Still, Mr. Ezekiel said, it did not abandon him.
Union Square Hospitality arranged brief unpaid stints at several acclaimed California restaurants like French Laundry and Meadowood. “I was motivated to make the most of things,” he said.
It was at Untitled that he met Ms. Malechek in 2015. They married in 2018 and moved to Austin, where they opened Birdie’s in July 2021.
Marriage to a United States citizen permitted him to get a green card, a passport and, in February 2023, citizenship.
“I had it really lucky,” he said. “I present as an American to most people. I’m racially ambiguous to some degree. I think a lot about how restaurants are filled with people like me.”
He took his first trip abroad to Rome in 2019, but still hasn’t been to a wine region. “I wanted to go to the big cities I had dreamed about,” he said. “I had some catching up to do.”
Reflecting on his unlikely career, Mr. Ezekiel doesn’t dwell on opportunities he might have lost.
“I don’t know if I would be here if I hadn’t had the same path,” he said. “It’s informed so much of what I know of empathy and hospitality.”
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