Immigration

Share this post

"My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant" is the personal story of Jose Antonio Vargas, former reporter for The Washington Post who shared a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings, and who came to the United States from the Philippines as an undocumented immigrant in 1993 when he was 12 years old.

In his story he tells of being unaware of his undocumented status until he went at age 16 to the DMV to obtain a driver's permit and the clerk there informed him that his green card was fake. Vargas is the founder of Define American, which seeks to change the conversation on immigration reform. The following is an excerpt from his revealing article:

"I’ve tried. Over the past 14 years, I’ve graduated from high school and college and built a career as a journalist, interviewing some of the most famous people in the country. On the surface, I’ve created a good life. I’ve lived the American dream.

But I am still an undocumented immigrant. And that means living a different kind of reality. It means going about my day in fear of being found out. It means rarely trusting people, even those closest to me, with who I really am. It means keeping my family photos in a shoebox rather than displaying them on shelves in my home, so friends don’t ask about them. It means reluctantly, even painfully, doing things I know are wrong and unlawful. And it has meant relying on a sort of 21st-century underground railroad of supporters, people who took an interest in my future and took risks for me.

Last year I read about four students who walked from Miami to Washington to lobby for the Dream Act, a nearly decade-old immigration bill that would provide a path to legal permanent residency for young people who have been educated in this country. At the risk of deportation — the Obama administration has deported almost 800,000 people in the last two years — they are speaking out. Their courage has inspired me.

There are believed to be 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. 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."

Read the full story "My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant" at NYTimes.com