This is an excellent question. The number 1 question, really.

I'll do my best to answer it in the most direct kind of way.

For individuals like myself, which is most people from Mexico, there is no way to legitimize myself in this country. When you hear others spew the line that there's a process and there's a line, you have to know the truth: there is no process and there is no line for people like me. There is either getting married to an American citizen (which I have tried to do unsuccessfully), or going back to a country that I have absolutely no memory of, going to the embassy, applying, and then waiting in line, which is somewhere between 18-24 years.

I've been here since I was 2. I didn't find out that I was undocumented until I was 17. I didn't understand the implications of what it was to be undocumented until age 22. By then, I'd been living and building my life here most of my life. To leave would be to leave my home and not come back to everything I know, my entire family, and everyone else I know until I'm nearly 50 years old.

If you were in my shoes, at my age, would you leave to start over somewhere else?