In the second episode of The Affair’s thrilling fourth season, Luisa (played by Oscar nominee Catalina Sandino Moreno) gets pulled over for a busted taillight while driving her husband Cole’s (Joshua Jackson) Jeep. The police officer asks for her driver’s license, but Luisa replies that she left it at home. As he radios the station, Luisa waits, her hands trembling in fear. Cole tries to comfort her: “We’re married,” he says. “It doesn’t matter, Cole. They don’t care,” she replies, almost hyperventilating.

Lucky for her, the cop gets called away, and Luisa’s off the hook—for now. You see, she’s an undocumented immigrant from Ecuador—and even though she’s married to Cole, she’s unable to obtain a green card because she came into the country illegally.

“The situation of Luisa is the situation of thousands of people right now,” Moreno said ahead of this season’s finale on Sunday. “She can’t apply for DACA, because she is too old. She can’t show [that] no one depends on her. It’s a tough spot for her. I thought the timing [for this story line] was perfect. There’s still many people going through the same things she’s going through.”

Moreno joined The Affair’s cast in 2015, during the show’s second season. Her character’s immigration status initially went unmentioned on the show, at first; all she told Cole initially was that she’s from Queens and is trying save money for college. Now it’s out in the open, and though the immigration story line hasn’t become The Affair’s main focus—as ever, the show is centered on Cole’s relationship with his ex-wife, Alison (Ruth Wilson)—it’s been quietly thrumming in the background all season.

“She can’t have independence, because she depends on using everything that’s his,” Moreno says. “Just seeing it as a woman, just as a person, it has to awful to depend on anyone. She doesn’t like to depend on anyone. The first time we meet Luisa, she’s working in a bar. She wants to get some money so she can go back to school. She’s a driven, independent person who wants to provide for herself. But when these things happen, it’s a reminder that you’re not as independent as you want to be.”

Moreno herself emigrated from Bogotá, Colombia to New York City in 2005, but she says her own immigration story is “boring.” She came to the U.S. after starring in 2004’s Maria Full of Grace as a pregnant drug mule; her performance earned her a best-actress Oscar nomination in 2005. (Since then, no Latina actress has been nominated for best actress.) HBO Films produced the movie, and needed her to be able to travel in the States to promote it—so she says she “got an easy way in.”

“But I can imagine how if you’re desperate, if you’re looking for asylum from your country . . . that’s the way we receive these kind of people,” she said. “It’s scary what’s happening. And these people aren’t coming to this country just to have fun. They have reasons to risk their lives and be apart from each other.”