Mario Penafiel leaned against the makeshift wall of the Himalayan boutique Restaurant Row at the New York State Fair after 10 hours of selling products to the crowd.

It was another five hours until he got his first break — at midnight, when he returned to the hotel where he and four other fair workers from Ecuador had been staying. 

Penafiel is one of many undocumented workers hired by larger corporations, such as Himalayan Mercantile, to work the booths at the fair, which ended Monday.

He worked 15-hour days, totaling approximately 100 hours a week, with no breaks, for $4.28 an hour. 

The company bought him lunch on slow days, giving him half an hour to eat the only food in the immediate vicinity — deep-fried onions, potatoes and Twinkies. 

He was not allowed to walk more than 200 feet from the booth, in case the crowd picked up again. 

And on busy days, Penafiel said he didn’t get breaks at all, which makes him one of the few people at the fair who hoped for a lesser turnout. He said he once nearly collapsed from fatigue. 

‘I was so tired,’ he said. ‘I just want sleep. Just a break — half an hour.’

After moving to the United States two years ago, Penafiel said he thought working long hours for low wages was normal. 

‘It is hard to get a visa,’ he said. ‘When you get visa, you work what you can get.’

This year the fair aimed to provide more international vendors, in an attempt to better represent the population of New York, said Fred Pierce, director of public affairs for the fair. But hiring foreign vendors could result in more undocumented workers being taken advantage of.

As part of the effort to attract foreign vendors, the fair finished renovations on the International Building this year, eliminating non-foreign vendors from the site, Pierce said. The idea for the renovations was to bring in a larger international crowd to supply fair visitors with an accurate representation of the New York population, which has a large immigrant population.

‘We try to make it a microcosm of New York state,’ he said. 

But Pierce said foreign workers can be easy targets for greedy companies, even though every vendor signs a contract agreeing to abide by New York state health standards, as well as tax and labor laws.

‘It could just be the case that people don’t understand the language and don’t know they’re getting taken advantage of,’ Pierce said.

Many of the companies that rent space at the fair travel along the East Coast, which makes it difficult to verify workers’ documents and enforce labor laws. This leaves many non-English speaking workers without resources to reach out to. Some workers may even be afraid to report the violations, he said.

Pierce said the fair does not conduct background checks or verify that employees are legal and being treated fairly. 

‘We don’t ask where work forces come from,’ Pierce said. ‘Vendors police themselves.’

On the opposite side of the fair from Penafiel, inside the Americraft Center of Progress Building, Maxim Tyunnikoe put the finishing touches on his 20th caricature of the day. 

Tyunnikoe moved to New York City from Kazakhstan after receiving his master’s degree in architecture from East Kazakhstan Technical University. 

‘I love my job,’ said Tyunnikoe with a grin. ‘I get good hours, long breaks, but mostly good company.’

Situated in a row next to artists from Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania and Romania, Tyunnikoe spent all day drawing 10-minute portraits of fairgoers. He saw about 50 people a day, he said. 

The booth charged $16 per person for an 8-foot by 14-foot portrait. Tyunnikoe got paid 35 percent of that, plus tips, averaging more than $300 a day, he said. 

Now that the fair is over, Tyunnikoe will return to New York City and resume his position as a street artist, taking time to rest after the fair, he said.

Pierce said the waiting list for fair vendors grows longer every year, an indication that vendors are making substantial profit. 

Last year, the fair increased the number of vendors by 13 percent, charging between $1,500 and $2,000 a week for space on Restaurant Row, the main hub and traffic area for the fair. Labor costs less than renting the actual booth for the vendors hiring undocumented workers or paying immigrants below the minimum wage of $7.25.

‘You never know what’s out there,’ Pierce said.

Felix Palompia, whose booth was next to the International Building, moved here six years ago from Peru and speaks less English than Penafiel. His visa expired some time ago. 

‘I make these,’ he said, pointing to the row of woven bracelets with different names of U.S. states written in an assortment of red, white and blue twine. The bracelet for Louisiana is spelled ‘Lousiana,’ and Missouri spelled ‘Missoury.’

Palompia’s employers allowed him a one-foot by one-foot space to sell his own products. He sold the bracelets for $3 each. The profit he earned from the bracelets was more than Palompia makes in three hours.

‘They take good care sometimes,’ Palompia said. ‘It’s OK. I make $350 weekly, work all day. It’s not bad.’

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