Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen

by Jose Antonio Vargas

A colonial history, in brief: The Philippine islands were “discovered” by Spanish colonialists who ruled them for more than 370 years until the Americans, desperate to expand their economic and political reach, craved empire. The United States declared itself the rightful “owner” of the islands for some fifty years. In his book In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines, historian Stanley Karnow characterized my birth country’s colonial history as being “300 years in the convent, 50 years in Hollywood.”

Still, if the Philippines was America’s “first real temptation,” as Mark Twain wrote, then America, given its imperialist history, also became a temptation for Filipinos eager to escape poverty and provide for their families. After all, if Americans could come and claim the Philippines, why can’t Filipinos move to America?

The Philippines is one of the world’s largest recipients of remittances; Lolo and Lola were among the estimated 3.5 million Filipinos in the U.S. who would send monthly remittances that the Philippine economy could not survive without, creating a culture of consumerism and a cycle of financial dependency that I was part of before I even knew who I was.

I didn’t know that the immigration law that allowed my Filipino family to legally come here is the very same law that created “illegal immigration” as we know it. While the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act benefited Asian immigrants, it put Latinos at a disadvantage. Before 1965, immigration from Mexico and other Latin American countries was largely unrestricted, and there was a government guest worker system called the bracero program that permitted millions of Mexican nationals to work in the U.S. The dissolution of the bracero program and the enactment of the 1965 immigration law created an “illegal immigrant” problem where there had been none.

Understanding the experience of black people in America—why black was created so people could be white—pried open how Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, and other marginalized groups have been historically oppressed through laws and systems that had little or nothing to do with what was right. 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.

“You have to decide who you are, and force the world to deal with you, not its idea of you.”

“You’re not going anywhere. You’re already here,” Rich said. “Put this problem on a shelf. Compartmentalize it. Keep going.” I’m not sure where my life would have gone without those words. I pocketed and referenced them whenever any kind of doubt surfaced. Put this problem on a shelf. Compartmentalize it. Keep going.

I don’t know why they did what they did. But I know for sure that all these Americans—all these strangers, all across the country—have allowed people like me to pass. If just five people—a friend, a co-worker, a classmate, a neighbor, a faith leader—helped one of the estimated 11 million undocumented people in our country, then illegal immigration as we know it would touch at least 66 million people.

According to the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, undocumented immigrants nationwide pay an estimated 8 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes on average. To put that in perspective, the top 1 percent of taxpayers pay an average nationwide effective tax rate of just 5.4 percent.

Annually, undocumented workers pay $12 billion to the Social Security Trust Fund.

A longtime journalist who edited immigration for a regional news outlet told me: “Even when we report facts about undocumented immigrants, the readers either don’t care or don’t want to believe it. That’s how successful the right-wing sites have been.” The overall result? Immigrants are seen as mere labor, our physical bodies judged by perceptions of what we contribute, or what we take. Our existence is as broadly criminalized as it is commodified. I don’t how many times I’ve explained to a fellow journalist that even though it is an illegal act to enter the country without documents, it is not illegal for a person to be in the country without documents. That is a clear and crucial distinction. I am not a criminal. This is not a crime.

What I did not fully anticipate was that my story would be largely viewed through a political lens, usually couched and anatomized in partisan and politicized terms. Here’s the “immigration reform,” “pro-immigrant” side, and here’s the “no amnesty,” “anti-immigrant” side, substituting the appearance of balance and neutrality for real insight. To achieve journalistic “objectivity,” we sacrifice people’s humanity. It was a sobering experience, being on the other side. It made me wonder how the subjects of and sources for my news stories felt about what I wrote.

On the call, I told him that Asians, not Latinos, are the fastest-growing undocumented population in the country and urged him to ask Trump how building a wall on the southern border would protect Americans from undocumented Asians who flew here and overstayed their visas. I added that, with nearly three-quarters of all Asian adults born abroad, Asians have passed Latinos as the largest group of new immigrants to the U.S. “That’s a good point,” he said before we hung up. Then I e-mailed him an article from The Atlantic. “Asians Now Outpace Mexicans in Terms of Undocumented Growth—Chinese, South Koreans, and Indians Among the Fastest-Growing Segments of Undocumented Immigrants,” the headline read. Todd never did ask my question, perhaps because it did not fit the narrative. Maybe he just ran out of time.

In the next fifty years, immigrants and their offspring are expected to comprise 88 percent of our country’s total population growth. In other words, a country that’s been long characterized by its black-and-white binary now faces a far more complex and unparalleled demographic reality.

“That’s when we had a country. That’s when we had borders. Without borders you don’t have a country,” Trump said of the 1950s, just a few decades after his grandfather emigrated from Germany.

Here in the U.S., the language we use to discuss immigration does not recognize the realities of our lives based on conditions that we did not create and cannot control. For the most part, why are white people called “expats” while people of color are called “immigrants”? Why are some people called “expats” while others are called “immigrants”? What’s the difference between a “settler” and a “refugee”? Language itself is a barrier to information, a fortress against understanding the inalienable instinct of human beings to move.

Migration is the most natural thing people do, the root of how civilizations, nation-states, and countries were established. The difference, however, is that when white people move, then and now, it’s seen as courageous and necessary, celebrated in history books. Yet when people of color move, legally or illegally, the migration itself is subjected to question of legality. Is it a crime? Will they assimilate? When will they stop?

Polls showed substantial support for creating a path to citizenship for people like me, yet 52 percent of Americans supported allowing police to stop and question anyone they suspected of being “illegal.” Democrats are viewed as being more welcoming to immigrants, but the Obama administration had sharply ramped up deportations. The pro-business Republican Party is home to the most virulent anti-immigrant officials, even though many industries, from agriculture to construction to food processing, depend on cheap labor.