Thread: Prize-winning journalist speaks about being an illegal immigrant

REGION: Prize-winning journalist speaks about being an illegal immigrant

By EDWARD SIFUENTES esifuentes@nctimes.com
Posted: Monday, January 16, 2012 5:00 pm

Jose Antonio Vargas, an award-winning reporter who worked for some of the country's most prominent news organizations, was living the American Dream, but he had a secret.

Vargas is an illegal immigrant.

The 30-year-old native of the Philippines arrived in the United States when he was 12. His mother, whom he has not seen since, sent him to live with his grandparents in Mountain View, hoping that he would have a better life in California. He did not learn he was in the country illegally until he was 16 and wanted to get a driver's license, Vargas said.

At Monday's All People's Breakfast, an annual event honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Vargas was the keynote speaker. He drew parallels between the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s and the immigration reform efforts of today. He said much of the hostility illegal immigrants face is because many of them are non-European.

"The question of how we define America is coming face to face with a demographically changing America," Vargas told the audience. "America is no longer just black and white. America is black and white and brown and yellow and gay and straight."

The breakfast at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront hotel drew about 1,200 people, including San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders and various community leaders.

When he learned that he was in the country illegally, Vargas said, he set about trying to earn his citizenship by setting and reaching a number of goals, such as writing for influential magazines and getting prestigious awards.

After graduating from San Francisco State University in 2004, he began working at The Washington Post covering digital technology. Three years later, Vargas was part of a team of reporters that received the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news for its coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007.

Vargas profiled Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for The New Yorker in 2010. He left The Washington Post in 2009 to work for The Huffington Post.

But after years of waiting for politicians to come up with a law that would help him fix his immigration status, Vargas said, he realized he had to reveal his secret. He was particularly inspired by illegal immigrant students, who in December 2010 unsuccessfully pushed for passage of the DREAM Act, a bill that would grant them an opportunity to become legal residents.

Vargas finally revealed his secret in a lengthy article published in The New York Times Magazine in June 2011.

"There are many people; I'm just one. There are 11 million people who are even more successful, whose stories are more compelling than mine," Vargas said in an interview after the breakfast. "But the reality is there are not a lot of people who can call The New York Times and say, 'Here, publish my 4,000-word essay.' There's not a lot of people that can do that."

To survive and keep his secret, Vargas relied on what he called a "21st-century underground railroad" of supporters, including teachers, school officials and co-workers. He used a college ID, pay stubs and letters from friends to get a driver's license from Oregon, one of a few states that did not require proof of citizenship to obtain the document.

But by 2011, he could no longer keep the secret, Vargas said. Telling the truth about his immigration status was more difficult than coming out as a gay man, which he did as a high school student, he said.

"I tried to compartmentalize my fears, distract myself by reporting on the lives of other people, but there was no escaping the central conflict in my life," Vargas wrote in his Times magazine essay. "Maintaining a deception for so long distorts your sense of self. You start wondering who you've become, and why."

Christian Ramirez, an immigrant rights advocate with the American Friends Service Committee in San Diego who was at the event, said Vargas breaks many people's perception of who illegal immigrants are because he is a successful, articulate, Asian and gay man who despite his legal status considers himself an American citizen.

"It really turns the debate upside down, and that is exactly what we needed," Ramirez said.

Since coming out, Vargas has gone from telling other people's stories to becoming the subject of countless news reports. He started an organization called DefineAmerican to help broaden the debate over immigration reform and what it means to be American, he said.

He travels around the country talking to people about immigration and reporting on the Republican presidential primary elections.

Vargas said he uses a passport issued to him by the Philippines as his ID.

Call staff writer Edward Sifuentes at 760-740-3511.

REGION: Prize-winning journalist speaks about being an illegal immigrant

This guy has got to go and take Nikki Diaz, Omar Obama, and Aunt Zatooty with him!