Jose Antonio Vargas: My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant

[alp227]

A former Washington Post reporter, Vargas is "coming out" as an undocumented immigrant at age 30. He won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting. This article will be published on Sunday's New York Times Magazine.

---

One August morning nearly two decades ago, my mother woke me and put me in a cab. She handed me a jacket. “Baka malamig doon” were among the few words she said. (“It might be cold there.”) When I arrived at the Philippines’ Ninoy Aquino International Airport with her, my aunt and a family friend, I was introduced to a man I’d never seen. They told me he was my uncle. He held my hand as I boarded an airplane for the first time. It was 1993, and I was 12.

My mother wanted to give me a better life, so she sent me thousands of miles away to live with her parents in America — my grandfather (Lolo in Tagalog) and grandmother (Lola). After I arrived in Mountain View, Calif., in the San Francisco Bay Area, I entered sixth grade and quickly grew to love my new home, family and culture. I discovered a passion for language, though it was hard to learn the difference between formal English and American slang. One of my early memories is of a freckled kid in middle school asking me, “What’s up?” I replied, “The sky,” and he and a couple of other kids laughed. I won the eighth-grade spelling bee by memorizing words I couldn’t properly pronounce. (The winning word was “indefatigable.”)

One day when I was 16, I rode my bike to the nearby D.M.V. office to get my driver’s permit. Some of my friends already had their licenses, so I figured it was time. But when I handed the clerk my green card as proof of U.S. residency, she flipped it around, examining it. “This is fake,” she whispered. “Don’t come back here again.”

Confused and scared, I pedaled home and confronted Lolo. I remember him sitting in the garage, cutting coupons. I dropped my bike and ran over to him, showing him the green card. “Peke ba ito?” I asked in Tagalog. (“Is this fake?”) My grandparents were naturalized American citizens — he worked as a security guard, she as a food server — and they had begun supporting my mother and me financially when I was 3, after my father’s wandering eye and inability to properly provide for us led to my parents’ separation. Lolo was a proud man, and I saw the shame on his face as he told me he purchased the card, along with other fake documents, for me. “Don’t show it to other people,” he warned.

Full: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/magazine/my-life-as-an-undocumented-immigrant.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

Hmm. Vargas' grandparents were citizens, so couldn't Jose have obtained citizenship if his US citizen grandparents formally adopted him? Just wondering. On the other hand, this is really the dialogue on immigration reform we really need in America.

[alp227]

1. Note regarding the citizenship of JAV's grandparents:

The Philippines had been an American colony from the early 1900s to 1946, so people born there during that era (including Vargas' grandparents) were US citizens. USCIS has information about immigration through adoption.

[vanbean]

2. Will Vargas be deported? Probably not according to this article.

http://www.npr.org/2011/06/24/137390554/will-journalist-face-deportation-signs-point-to-no

June 24, 2011

Now that a high-profile journalist has admitted to being an illegal immigrant, can he expect a visit from the authorities? Based on recent immigration policy directives, the answer likely is "no."

As he explains in a New York Times Magazine article and an ABC News interview, journalist Jose Antonio Vargas broke numerous laws to conceal his citizenship status for more than a decade. A spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined to directly address whether the agency might take action against Vargas.

"ICE takes enforcement action on a case-by-case basis – prioritizing those who present the most significant threats to public safety as determined by their criminal history and taking into consideration the specific facts of each case, including immigration history," spokeswoman Cori W. Bassett said in an emailed statement.

But the agency's recent issuance of certain directives might provide the clearer answer — which is that Vargas probably is safe.