The first time I jaywalked, I was walking downtown with friends when they stepped off the curb into an empty street. I stopped cold. My heart pounded. Every instinct in my body told me I couldn’t follow them.

For most people, jaywalking is a forgettable moment. For me, it was the collision of a lifetime of fear with a freedom I wasn’t sure I was allowed to claim.

For 24 years, I lived in the United States without legal status. That meant no work permit, no protection from deportation and no room for mistakes. When you grow up undocumented, you learn to live without the margin of error that everyone else takes for granted.

So when I finally became a permanent resident at 25 years old, I expected my life to feel different. What I didn’t expect was how long it would take for my body to believe I was safe.

When I explained this to my friends, they cried. They told me it must be exhausting to live in a way that leaves no room for being human. I had never thought about it that way until they said it out loud. But they were right — years of hypervigilance had shaped everything about me. No wonder I had spent years battling anxiety and eventually needed therapy and medication to manage it.

Immigrants are expected to be perfect for a system set to criminalize us — and to never give anyone a reason to justify that criminalization.

My family tried to “get in line.” My parents submitted an immigration petition when I was 2 years old — one among thousands, with a wait time stretching more than 25 years. While that petition sat in a backlog, we received no work permits, no protection from deportation and no ability to leave the country without canceling the process. We did everything asked of us and still had nothing to show for it.

This is the part of immigration most Americans never see. Many families arrived decades ago and immediately tried to do things “the legal way” — a phrase that hides how impossible the system can be. They’ve now spent decades waiting. Not because they are hiding. Not because they want to live in the shadows. But because the system demands it.

I became a permanent resident at 25 years old, not because my family’s petition finally came through, but because I fell in love with and married my husband, a U.S. citizen I met at church. Marriage gave me the stability my family’s decades‑long petition never could.

I have worked in immigration law and policy for more than six years. I present data, provide legal analysis and make policy recommendations. But charts and statutes do not change hearts.

Stories do.

It is difficult to ignore a system’s failures when they impact your favorite co-worker or next door neighbor.

We also cannot ignore the need to both expand legal pathways and ensure those entering the country are properly vetted. Those goals are not mutually exclusive.

Yet in Washington, D.C., immigration has become a political game. One side claims to be the party of secure borders. The other claims to be the party of legal pathways. The truth is, Americans should not have to choose between the two. And the more we accept the false choice being presented, the further we drift from the real solutions our country needs.

My hope for meaningful immigration reform does not lie in Washington, D.C. It lies in our communities — where people actually know their neighbors and understand that the system is failing good people. Real change begins when we step beyond our driveways, talk together and refuse to let polarization dictate our understanding of each other.

That is why when I was offered an opportunity to serve as a producer and lead cultural advisor on an immigration-related film, I said yes. Releasing this fall, “Brotherhood – A Cinematic Musical” follows Fabián, a Mexican immigrant stuck in years‑long limbo, and Jon, his American-born neighbor. Their story asks what becomes possible when politics no longer decide who counts as our neighbor.

The film shows people as they actually are — complicated, hopeful, afraid, trying. It reminds us that the immigration debate is lived in kitchens, classrooms and apartment hallways.

At a time when it is increasingly dangerous for immigrants to tell their stories, “Brotherhood” insists that we still need them — not because stories solve policy, but because they make policy matter. They help us see one another clearly enough to demand something better.

Real reform begins when we choose each other — when a neighbor pauses long enough to understand why someone like me hesitated at the edge of a curb on an empty street. If we build that kind of connection, Washington, D.C. will have no choice but to follow.

Liliana Bolaños brings more than five years of experience in immigration law and policy, grounded in her own journey through the U.S. immigration system. She first worked as an immigration paralegal for three years and then as a policy analyst working on state and federal level legislation. She grew up undocumented in Utah, received DACA as a teenager and later became a permanent resident in her mid-20s through her U.S. citizen husband. These lived experiences fuel her commitment to humanizing immigration and advocating for comprehensive, compassionate reform. She currently serves as a consulting producer and key cultural advisor at Craftsman Films on “Brotherhood: A Cinematic Musical,” set to be released in U.S. theaters this fall.

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