Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen

by Jose Antonio Vargas

someone, somewhere, somehow created “the master narrative” of illegality: human beings identified as “illegals,” as if one’s existence can be deemed unlawful;

White as the default, white as the center, white as the norm, is the central part of the master narrative. The centrality of whiteness—how it constructed white versus black, legal versus illegal—hurts not only people of color who aren’t white but also white people who can’t carry the burden of what they’ve constructed.

I am here illegally, but as a human being, I cannot be illegal because that doesn’t exist. People cannot be illegal.”