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
As you watch 'Documented' on CNN, I ask you, my fellow Americans: What do you want to do with me? What do you want to do with us? How do you define American?
I remember the first article I ever wrote, and I saw my name in the paper, and I already knew I was undocumented, and I was thinking: 'How can they now say I don't exist?'
I am undoubtedly one of the more, if not the most, privileged undocumented immigrants in America. And for us at Define American, which is this culture campaign group that I founded with some friends, culture trumps politics.
In 2005, MTV Networks considered buying Facebook for seventy-five million dollars. Yahoo! and Microsoft soon offered much more. Zuckerberg turned them all down.
Facebook's privacy policies are confusing to many people, and the company has changed them frequently, almost always allowing more information to be exposed in more ways.
I don't think there's any other issue out there that young people are more passionate, and more ahead in, than global warming.
Film, as any immigrant will tell you, television and movies is the way we make sense of America when we first got here.
I've done everything I've done in America with the limitations I have.
While in high school, I worked part time at Subway, then at the front desk of the local YMCA, then at a tennis club, until I landed an unpaid internship at 'The Mountain View Voice,' my hometown newspaper.
Undocumented people get arrested all the time. I get arrested, and it's front-page news. I feel guilt.
You know, I'm one of millions of undocumented people in this country who are living kind of under the shadows. And in many ways, coming out, it was my way of - at the end of the day, I think we have to tell the truth about this immigration system. And because of that, I had to tell the truth about myself.
You have to do what you have to do. I wanted to work. I wanted to prove that I was worthy of being here... and I was gonna do whatever it took to prove that.
We cannot change the politics issue until we change the culture around it; until we talk about what parents do for their kids as an act of love. That's a cultural conversation.
When it comes to fighting for citizenship that many people take for granted, there isn't anyone I would not talk to. When it comes to immigration, there isn't any question I will not answer.