Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen

by Jose Antonio Vargas

You know how politicians and the news media that cover them like to say that we have a “broken immigration system”? Inside that cell I came to the conclusion that we do not have a broken immigration system. We don’t. What we’re doing—waving a “Keep Out!” flag at the Mexican border while holding up a Help Wanted sign a hundred yards in—is deliberate. Spending billions building fences and walls, locking people up like livestock, deporting people to keep the people we don’t want out, tearing families apart, breaking spirits—all of that serves a purpose. People are forced to lie, people spend years if not decades passing in some kind of purgatory. And step by step, this immigration system is set up to do exactly what it does. Dear America, is this what you really want? Do you even know what is happening in your name? I don’t know what else you want from us. I don’t know what else you need us to do.