Jose Antonio Vargas is a Pulitzer Prize winner. He has worked for The Washington Post. Nearly a year ago he published a much-discussed profile of Mark Zuckerberg in The New Yorker. And in a story posted earlier this week and published in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, he shares perhaps his most significant story — his own.
Since age 12 Vargas has lived in the United States illegally.
His story is both a confessional and a challenge. It is confessional in that he unburdens himself of guilt from the lies he found necessary to maintain his life in the United States. At the same time Vargas poses a challenge, one he states most directly in his video: What would you do if you knew someone like Vargas? And chances are, many of us do — even if we don’t realize it. Vargas writes:
There are believed to be 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. We’re not always who you think we are. Some pick your strawberries or care for your children. Some are in high school or college. And some, it turns out, write news articles you might read. I grew up here. This is my home. Yet even though I think of myself as an American and consider America my country, my country doesn’t think of me as one of its own.
Vargas tells of how many people, when learning of his undocumented status, extended grace to him. A California DMV worker, whispering to him that his Green Card was fake and telling him not to return; a high school music teacher who changed an overseas trip to visit to Hawaii in order to avoid passport problems. This list goes on — people who made a choice to see Vargas as more than one of “them.”
I realize, however, that some would not see such acts as grace, but as assisting a law-breaker.
I don’t pretend to know the ideal legal solution on the question of immigration, though a chance for some sort of amnesty does not seem that outlandish — and a far cry better than the draconian and fear-driven attempts to crack down on “illegals.” At the same time, I do know of Scripture’s teachings to care for the stranger, and those teachings lead us in a direction very different from today’s polarized immigration debate.
With this story, and with the lauch of his website Define American, Vargas risks his own expulsion in order to make a case not just for himself, but for many others whose stories mirror his. He argues:
Our immigration system is broken — and fixing it requires a conversation that’s bigger and more effective than the one that we’ve become accustomed to.
Define American brings new voices into the immigration conversation, shining a light on a growing 21st century Underground Railroad: American citizens who are forced to fill in where our broken immigration system fails. From principals to pastors, these everyday immigrant allies are simply trying to do the right thing. Some are driven by a biblical call to social justice, while others believe this is a moral imperative. They, like Harriet Tubman and countless brave Americans before them, are willing to take personal risks in order to do what is right. These heroes need to be the center of this national conversation.
I know people who would bristle in respons to such a statement. Heroes? Are you kidding? But Vargas’ story, and the challenge that accompanies it, is worth reading. The real question is: Do we have the courage hear it and ask: What does justice look like?
How we answer says a great deal about what it really means to be an American.
Signs of Grace 