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DEFINE AMERICAN. Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who covered presidential politics and the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings, is pictured in this undated handout photo provided by Define American. In a high-profile report, Vargas went on network television to announce he is an illegal immigrant. (AP Photo/Define American)
From The Asian Reporter, V21, #13 (July 4, 2011), page 8.
Journalist says he’s an illegal immigrant in the U.S.
By Brett Zongker
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — A prize-winning journalist who covered presidential politics and the 2007 Virginia Tech University shootings for The Washington Post went on U.S. network television to announce he is an illegal immigrant.
Jose Antonio Vargas told ABC News in interviews that aired in late June that he is outing himself as one of millions of illegal U.S. immigrants after living with the secret for years. He also told his story in a New York Times Magazine essay published online.
"I’m done running. I’m exhausted," Vargas wrote. "I don’t want that life anymore."
He referred a request for comment to his public relations team, which did not immediately make him available.
He said in the interviews with ABC that he wants to push congress to pass a bill called the DREAM Act that would allow people like himself who came to this country as children to become citizens.
When Vargas was 12 and living in the Philippines, his mother took him to the airport and sent him to California to live with his grandparents, he said. He didn’t know about his citizenship status until four years later, when he applied for a driver’s permit and handed a clerk his green card.
"This is fake," a Department of Motor Vehicles clerk said, according to Vargas’ account. "Don’t come back here again."
Vargas confronted his grandfather, who acknowledged he purchased the green card and other fake documents.
"I remember the very first instinct was, OK, that’s it, get rid of the accent," Vargas told ABC. "Because I just thought to myself, you know, I couldn’t give anybody any reason to ever doubt that I’m an American."
He convinced himself that if he worked hard enough and achieved enough, he would be rewarded with citizenship, Vargas wrote in the magazine piece.
His grandfather imagined the fake documents would help Vargas get low-wage jobs. College seemed out of reach, until Vargas told Mountain View High School principal Pat Hyland and school district superintendent Rich Fisher about his problem. They became mentors and surrogate parents, eventually finding a scholarship fund for high-achieving students that allowed him to attend San Francisco State University.
Vargas was hired for internships at The San Francisco Chronicle and the Philadelphia Daily News. He was denied an internship at The Seattle Times because he didn’t have all the documents they required. But he kept applying and got an offer from The Washington Post.
The newspaper required a driver’s license, so Vargas said his network of mentors helped him get one from Oregon, which has less stringent requirements than some other states.
Once hired full-time at the Post, he used the fake license to cover Washington events, including a state dinner at the White House, Vargas recalled.
He wrote that he was nearly paralyzed with anxiety that his secret would be found out at the Post. He tried to avoid reporting on immigration policy, but at times it was impossible. At one point, he wrote about then-senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s position on driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants.
Vargas eventually told his mentor, Peter Perl, now the newspaper’s training director. Perl told him that once he had accomplished more, they would tell then-editor Leonard Downie Jr. and Post chairman Don Graham together. They kept the secret until Vargas left the paper.
Washington Post spokeswoman Kris Coratti strongly condemned their actions.
"What Jose did was wrong. What Peter did was wrong," Coratti said, declining to comment further on personnel matters. "We are also reviewing our internal procedures, and we believe this was an isolated incident of deception."
An e-mail seeking comment was sent to Perl.
Vargas shared a Pulitzer Prize for the Post’s coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings. The Pulitzer is American journalism’s most prestigious prize. A 2006 series he wrote on the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Washington inspired a documentary film. Last year, he wrote a profile of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for The New Yorker.
Most recently, he was a senior contributing editor at the Huffington Post. He said he left after less than a year and was worried professionally about a looming deadline: the expiration of his eight-year-old Oregon driver’s license.
Just before he turned 30 this year, Vargas said he obtained a Washington state driver’s license, which would have given him a five-year reprieve — and meant five more years of lying. He said he couldn’t deal with that.
Vargas has launched a campaign called Define American to use stories of immigrants like himself with a goal to "elevate the national discourse" with an honest dialogue about immigration. His high school principal and superintendent have signed on as board members.