Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen

by Jose Antonio Vargas

How the largest groups of people who migrate to the USA—voluntarily, forcibly, unknowingly, like them—do so because of what the US government has done to their countries. How a trade agreement, like the North American Free Trade Agreement, drove millions of Mexicans out of jobs and led parents to cross borders and climb up walls so they could feed their kids. How six decades of interventionist policies by both Republicans and Democrats brought economic and political instability and sowed violence in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. If I spoke Spanish, I could have explained, in the clearest, most accessible way I could, the connection between the dirty, muddy, worn-out Reeboks and Nikes they were wearing inside that cell and the inherent American need to expand its economic and political empire. I could have drawn a line between what used to be called “imperialism”—justified by “Manifest Destiny,” “the White Man’s Burden,” and America’s desire to “discover” new “frontiers”—to what is now known as “internationalism”