Listen to the broadcast version of this story.
Vanessa Gutierrez doesn't remember Mexico.
It's there in her baby pictures, in family albums. She's seen what it looks like, and she knows she was born there, but she doesn't remember it.
Her parents brought her to the U.S. when she was three. They worked hard, she says, they paid their taxes and went to church and gave her a great childhood.
Then Gutierrez got to high school, and started thinking about her future.
Gutierrez says it was right around the time her friends started signing up for driver’s ed.
"And I remember talking to my parents about it," she says. "And number one was the cost. They couldn’t afford it, for me to take that course. And, number two, when I started asking other questions, such as 'can I enroll in college?' that’s when I started to find out those answers."