Photo by PoliticalActivityLaw.com/Flickr (Creative Commons)
Award-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas, right
Revealing one’s undocumented status as a political act has so far been embraced mostly by college students, young people eager to put a face on those who would benefit from proposed legislation known as the Dream Act. Now, that face has become a little older, a little more familiar.
In a piece published today in the New York Times Magazine, former Washington Post reporter Jose Antonio Vargas reveals the secret that has haunted him throughout his career: He is undocumented.
Vargas, who shared a Pulitzer Prize three years ago for coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre, was brought here illegally by a smuggler from the Philippines when he was 12 years old, at his mother’s behest. He writes:
We’re not always who you think we are. Some pick your strawberries or care for your children. Some are in high school or college. And some, it turns out, write news articles you might read. I grew up here. This is my home. Yet even though I think of myself as an American and consider America my country, my country doesn’t think of me as one of its own.
In a stunning confession, Vargas tells the story of how he managed to navigate through high school and college, and eventually into a coveted internship and a Washington Post staff writer job, with the help of an intimate network of supporters who knew his secret, among them his grandfather, a legal immigrant who initially arranged for his false papers. He recalls how he researched which states would be most apt to grant him a driver’s license, settling on Oregon. He learned early on that revealing his secret typically led to closed doors, so he kept it to himself, sharing it only with a few close confidantes.
He writes that he was inspired to tell his story by the young people who have revealed their status recently as they campaign for the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, which would grant conditional legal status to youths brought here before age 16 if they go to college or join the military. When he was younger, Vargas would have qualified.
