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
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.
When people call me illegal, calling me illegal says more about you than it does about me.
I have no control over what people call me. The only thing I have control over is my work, and that's really all I can be judged on.
I am not the 'illegal' you think I am, and immigration is not what you think it is,
The only reason I became a writer was so I could exist on a piece of paper.
Citizenship to me is more than a piece of paper. Citizenship is also about character. I am an American. We're just waiting for our country to recognize it.
For Filipino Americans, it's a battle for recognition, for identity in a culture where, for the mainstream, Asians tend to fade into a monochromatic racialized 'other.'
America is White and Black and Latino and Asian. America is mixed. America is immigrants.