Once you are illegal, there is no path back to being legal besides returning to your home country and filing the proper application so you can wait your turn in line. This is not a children’s game of “hide and seek” where you can run faster than the seeker back to be safe on home base. The requirement for a properly completed I-9 form has been in place since the 80s and employers who haven’t figured out how to manage their business legally by now deserve the full weight of consequences.
“Once you are illegal, there is no path back to being legal besides returning to your home country and filing the proper application so you can wait your turn in line.”
A lot of people think marrying a U.S. citizen is a “get out of jail free” card. It’s not. I worked with a woman who married an illegal. She had to go live in Mexico for a year (with him, of course) so that he could go through the proper process to get his green card.