Jose Antonio Vargas
Jose Antonio Vargas
Jose Antonio Vargasis a journalist, filmmaker, and immigration rights activist. Born in the Philippines and raised in the United States from the age of twelve, he was part of The Washington Post team that won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting in 2008 for coverage of the Virginia Tech shooting online and in print. Vargas also has worked for the San Francisco Chronicle, the Philadelphia Daily News, and The Huffington Post. He wrote, produced, and directed the autobiographical 2013...
NationalityFilipino
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth3 February 1981
You have to stand for something bigger than yourself.
I always felt like I had the word "illegal" tattooed on my forehead.
Independent of politics, the changing narrative on immigration is directly correlated to the fact that we have new technologies that are allowing people to talk to each other and tell their own stories and organize themselves.
I'm not a politician. I'm not a policy wonk. I was a political reporter, but that's not really what turns me on. What turns me on is how people perceive the issue and how people see people like me.
I grew up in newsrooms. I've been in newsrooms since I was 17 years old. Journalism has been like my church; it's been like my identity.
I think I've always been paranoid.
The last thing reporters and editors want to be told is what to do and how to write. They don't want to be some politically correct, Orwellian, kind of like "you're telling me how to write about...?"
I like Q&A's better than articles sometimes because I feel like I'd rather hear somebody actually talk or wrestle with...
A friend said to me I'm like a walking New Yorker article. It's true! That's how I write. That's how I think.
Film, as any immigrant will tell you, television and movies is the way we make sense of America when we first got here.
One of the things I had to really wrap my head around is I have no control over what people call me: advocate, activist, gay, Filipino, undocumented person, gay person with an Asian face and Latino name.
To me, it's just that social media is allowing people to be in charge of their own narratives.
Together, undocumented people like me and our relatives, friends and allies wait for broader immigration reform, not just for Dreamers but also for undocumented workers of all ages and backgrounds who contribute to our economic security and prosperity.
To this day writing is the most painful thing to do.