"Tell us something we don't already know"

As it is, she said, families are paying about $2,500 for various legalization application forms. And many families are losing thousands more to scammers who promise to handle the paperwork and then disappear.

Dominguez let me sit in on part of her conference Tuesday with Daniel, a U.S. citizen from Riverside who was with his undocumented wife, Leticia, and their two sons. Leticia came to California illegally in the 1990s to attend a wedding and never went home to Mexico.

No matter what Obama promised in the way of a pathway to legalization, said Daniel, there’s no history of follow-through by anyone in Washington.

“We just don’t have confidence that the government will act on this,” he said.