Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen

by Jose Antonio Vargas

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

All I knew was, I was not Mexican. “I guess you don’t have to worry about your green card,” Mexican José told me a couple of minutes later. “Your name is Jose, but you look Asian.”

The angrier Lolo became, the more independent I felt. I didn’t need his approval.

Fancy or not, I made a concerted effort to stay as busy as possible. The busier my schedule was, the more activities I committed to, the less time I had to spend at home. Being at home reminded me of my limitations. Being at school opened up possibilities.

Fees for speech competitions would be covered, with no trace of who paid for what. Karen Keefer, my speech and debate coach, usually covered what I couldn’t pay for. For the most part, you couldn’t find anyone to thank because they didn’t need or want thanking. If it sounds too benevolent to believe, just too good to be true, perhaps it was.

They were like a family unit, and they treated me like family.

“I was not leaving any of my students behind.”

I couldn’t talk to my own mother while I was collecting mother figures.

Mary’s daughter, Daisy, offered to marry me even though she knew I was gay. I declined, lovingly.

What would you have done? Work under the table? Stay under the radar? Not work at all? Which box would you check? What have you done to earn your box? Besides being born at a certain place in a certain time, did you have to do anything? Anything at all? If you wanted to have a career, if you wanted to have a life, if you wanted to exist as a human being, what would you have done?

I never felt protected by the law.

To pass as an American, I always had to question the law. Not just break it, not just circumvent it, but question it.

I had to realize that throughout American history, legality has forever been a construct of power.

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.

Too often, while searching for her work, I was directed to the African American sections of bookstores.

I cite their race because it’s a crucial element of their power. Black writers gave me permission to question America. Black writers challenged me to find my place here and created a space for me to claim.

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

“The goal,” he said, “is to not make me spill this mocha on my lap.”

“I didn’t meet the kind of white people you’re talking about—the people who put you in your place—until I moved to Washington, D.C.”

There was no room for error; I could not make any mistakes. There was also no room for enemies. I had to make friends and allies, but I had to make sure I didn’t get too close to anyone or share more information than needed. I had to be careful.

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.

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

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.

was no longer just writing the stories, I was now being written about, subject to how other people perceive the story based on their knowledge of the issue.

All of that aside, this country of countries, founded on the freedom of movement, must look itself in the mirror, clearly and carefully, before determining the price and cost of who gets to be an American in a globalized and interconnected twenty-first century.

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?

There are an estimated 258 million migrants around the world, and many of us are migrating to countries that previously colonized and imperialized us.

We have a human right to move, and governments should serve that ...

Yes, we are here because we believe in the promise of the American Dream—the search for a better life, the challenge of dreaming big. But we are also here because you were there—the cost of American imperialism and globalization, the impact of economic policies and political decisions.

I came to the realization that I refuse to let a presidency scare me from my own country.

Citizenship is showing up. Citizenship is using your voice while making sure you hear other people around you. Citizenship is how you live your life. Citizenship is resilience.

We show up even though many Americans, especially white Americans with their own immigrant backgrounds, can’t seem to see the common threads between why we show up and why they showed up, at a time when showing up did not require visas and the Border Patrol didn’t exist yet.

All I could see as I stared at the boys was young Pepeton staring back at me.

Put simply, for the government, keeping people “illegal” is much easier than allowing them to get “legal.”

Perhaps it’s no accident that the ITIN, which allows undocumented workers to pay federal taxes, was created in 1996.

Extending from California to Texas, about seven hundred miles of fencing that includes wire mesh, chain link, post and rail, sheet piling, and concrete barriers has been constructed at a cost of between $2.8 million and $3.9 million per mile. And all for what? To protect Americans from whom?

“Border security” means running random checkpoints anywhere within one hundred miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, a Constitution-free zone in which agents can stop your car, inspect your belongings, and ask for your papers, regardless of your immigration status.

(The Fourth Amendment does not allow for citizens to be subjected to random search and seizures, but in the interest of “national security,” the Fourth Amendment does not apply within a hundred miles of the border.)

It occurred to me that I’d been in an intimate, long-term relationship all along. I was in a toxic, abusive, codependent relationship with America, and there was no getting out.

Inside that cell I came to the conclusion that we do not have a broken immigration system. We don’t. What we’re doing—waving a “Keep Out!” flag at the Mexican border while holding up a Help Wanted sign a hundred yards in—is deliberate.

Dear America, is this what you really want? Do you even know what is happening in your name? I don’t know what else you want from us. I don’t know what else you need us to do.

He was of Mexican descent, like all the other agents in the station.

“What’s ‘miedo’?” “Fear,” one of the agents said. “It means fear.”