Preview: Jose Antonio Vargas on Immigration Today

by Matthew Leeb

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and poster child of U.S. immigration reform Jose Antonio Vargas will speak at the Tenement Museum on Wednesday, Dec. 4.

“I feel like we’ve lost a real sense of history when it comes to [immigration],” Jose Antonio Vargas says about how America is seemingly forgetting what built the country. “That’s why I feel the Tenement Museum is so important.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas will speak at the Tenement Museum about U.S. immigration policy.

Two years ago, after years of internal struggle throughout the course of his life and career, Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and founder of Define American, publicly came out as an undocumented immigrant in his now famous New York Times essay.

He has since become a public face of immigration reform, speaking across the country, expanding on his essay in the popular Time Magazine cover story “Not Legal Not Leaving” in 2012 and producing “Documented,” a documentary on undocumented people in America that will be aired by CNN this spring.

“The two most defining civil rights battles of our time are what? Immigration rights and LGBT rights. And both those things are about…the fact that the country looks and feels different,” Jose explains. “The story of [America] post 1965 has been that the country has turned more Asian and more Latino. So what do we say to that stage? That’s the question we’re grappling with. Is that a legal immigration question, or an authorized immigration question that, frankly, we culturally, demographically, politically are grappling with?”

Crossing Over

In 1993, at the age of 12, his mother sent him from their home in the Philippines with a coyote (human smuggler) to live with his grandparents in Mountain View, CA. She planned to join him though ultimately couldn’t due American Immigration not allowing U.S. citizens to petition for married children, preventing Jose from obtaining permanent residency as well.

Ever since discovering his true status at the age of 16, Jose fought to define himself as American, doing whatever it took to leap the hurdles his circumstances created.

“I had to get to a point in my life where I had to get so successful that this country could not deny me. That’s why I ran as fast as I could. That’s how I accomplished all these things that people are like ‘how did you do that’? Well, because I was so myopic,” he says. “I literally thought I could ‘right’ my way in America. I could succeed my way in America… They couldn’t deny me American citizenship. And that sounds so crazy to my now.”

Through his organization, Define American, Jose focuses on urging Americans to address its struggle with identity and its notion of undocumented immigrants.

“My work is trying to explain to America why we look the way that we look… kind of unpack it and say here: What do you want to do with me? What do you want to do with us? And how do you define America? We can’t all mow your lawns and babysit your kids.”

Since Jose’s coming out as undocumented, America has seen small victories in immigration reform with the DREAM Act in 2012, halting the deportation of undocumented immigrants younger than 30 who qualify, an announcement made by President Obama one day after Jose’s Time cover story.

Unfortunately, Jose did not qualify because he was four months past the age of 30 at the time of the immigration reform announcement.

“People over the age of 30, the undocumented ones that started to come of age when there was no Google or Internet to find each other in, we’ve lost that generation of people… We only talk about DREAMers and their parents, which is great, but we’ve lost that generation of people.”

Beyond the difficulties Jose has faced in his journey, he still remains optimistic, offering encouragement to all those like him.

“You can’t say ‘no’ to yourself. You hear a lot of ‘nos’. You see a lot of doors that are closed. ‘You can’t do this, you can’t do that’. And the hardest thing is to just look at yourself and say ‘I am more than just pieces of paper and I’m going to fight as hard as I can to exist.’”

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