Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen

by Jose Antonio Vargas

Most Americans, I discovered, have no idea how the immigration system works, what the citizenship process requires, and how difficult, if not downright impossible, it is for undocumented people to “get legal.” All the while, undocumented workers like me pay billions into a government that detains and deports us.

When people think of borders and walls, they usually think of land. I think of water. It’s painful to think that the same water that connects us all also divides us, dividing Mama and me.

Consider the fate of Filipino soldiers who fought the Japanese during World War II. With the promise of U.S. citizenship and full veteran benefits, more than 250,000 Filipino soldiers fought under the American flag, playing a crucial role in achieving victory. Shortly after, the Rescission Act of 1946 retroactively took away these soldiers’ status as U.S. veterans. The message was clear: your service didn’t matter. It took more than sixty years to rectify the injustice.

The dissolution of the bracero program and the enactment of the 1965 immigration law created an “illegal immigrant” problem where there had been none.

I would learn that except for Native Americans, whose tribes were already here before the colonists and the Pilgrims landed, and African Americans, who were uprooted from their homes and imported to this country as slaves, everyone was an immigrant. I didn’t know what legal papers they had, or if they needed them, or if they were considered “illegals,” too, but white people were immigrants, like my family are immigrants.

The master narrative is whatever ideological script that is being imposed by the people in authority on everybody else.

I still can’t believe it. I still can’t believe it. I’m still pinching myself, waiting for Cheryl to call back and say, “Ooh, just kidding.” Well, well, Jose. Be proud, and stop being so paranoid.

I learned that you come out to let people in.

Our country’s mainstream news organizations often fail to report basic facts about how much undocumented workers pay into a government that vilifies us.

“Too often, we’re treated as abstractions, faceless and nameless, subjects of debate rather than individuals with families, hopes, fears, and dreams,”

The politics of immigration was so poisonous even helpless kids couldn’t be seen as kids.

Is this really about who has the right papers and what the laws are? Or is this about someone to control? Is this really about who is a citizen or not? Are we talking about the same citizenship that many Americans callously take for granted? Are these agents so blithely unaware that they and their government have hurt me more than I could ever hurt myself?

It’s dangerous out there, and home should be the place where we feel safe and at peace. Home is not something I should have to earn. Humanity is not some box I should have to check.