DEAR AMERICA: notes of an undocumented citizen by Jose Antonio Vargas

 

Dear America: notes of an undocumented citizen by Jose Antonio Vargas

This memoir by the incredibly accomplished journalist & filmmaker Jose Antonio Vargas was a real eye-opener for me.

While we share some superficial biographical similarities (a filipino heritage, an adolescence spent as a stranger in a strange land), Vargas’s story is far more dramatic. Yet Vargas’s voice is so earnest & forthright that one cannot help but feel for him.

Thus, the details of Vargas’s life are all his own, but his struggle is something we can (and should) identify with.

Vargas tells his story chronologically, beginning with his childhood in the Phillippines and detailing how his mother sent him to the United States to live with his grandparents when he was 12 years old.

It isn’t until a few years later that Vargas learns a shocking truth: he is undocumented! He was essentially smuggled into the U.S. without his knowledge by his mother & grandparents, and the way he finds this out is harrowing. It’s also Kafkaesque, the way he bumps up against some routine bureaucracy that knocks him into a kind of bizarro-world where everything looks the same but everything has changed.

Suddenly, Vargas’s coming-to-America saga becomes an existential horror, as our hero realizes that his quest for a better life has become a trap.

To make matters worse, he has no one to advise him. Vargas is surrounded by well-wishers whose ignorance of our immigration system only serves to confuse him. Everyone seems to think that his status problems are merely a matter of filling out the right paperwork and paying the proper fee. (Hint: that’s not how it actually works unless you’re rich!)

But then the problems that beset Vargas invoke a calling in him. Complaint gives rise to advocacy. What could be more American than that?

The rest of Vargas’s story is publicly accessible (just look him up!) but should be better known. In my opinion, Vargas is a hero, and this book is just one reason why.

Get Dear America: notes of an undocumented citizen by Jose Antonio Vargas here: https://a.co/d/07tZwwFq