Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen

by Jose Antonio Vargas

Immigration of any kind, legal or illegal, is under unprecedented attack.

you should be uncomfortable, you should look over your shoulder, and you need to be worried.”

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.”

It’s painful to think that the same water that connects us all also divides us,

When he greeted me by saying “What’s up?” I responded, “The sky.”

Separation not only divides families; separation buries emotion, buries it so far down you can’t touch it.

Are people labeled “Asian” for geographic reasons, because we came from the “Asian” continent? But, if it was about geography, shouldn’t “Hispanic” and “Latino” people be called “Americans”?

Are people “Asian” and “Hispanic” because Americans started labeling people “black” and “white”? Did America make all of this up? And whenever I read anything about race, why are “Asian” and “Hispanic” capitalized while “black” and “white” are not? Where do you go if you are multiracial and multiethnic?