American Prize Reports

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist says he's an illegal alien

A PULITZER PRIZE winning journalist, who has written for some of the most prestigious media organisations in the US, has admitted that he is an illegal immigrant.

Jose Antonio Vargas admitted in an article in the New York Times that he had known for some 14 years that he was an illegal alien having arrived in the US from the Philippines in 1993.

He first discovered he was living in the US illegally in 1997 but kept it secret as he went through school and college and began his journalistic career on his local newspaper.

Vargas’ talent saw him write and report for the Washington Post where his coverage of the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre earned him a shared Pulitzer Prize.

He has written for Rolling Stone and interviewed and wrote a profile of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for The New Yorker. He was most recently a senior contributing editor at the Huffington Post but left after less than a year.

Vargas said he was worried about the looming expiration of his eight-year-old Oregon driver’s licence which he had secured to help him meet employment requirements and even used to cover a state dinner at the White House.

Vargas has said he has come out in order to push the US Congress to pass the Dream Act which would allow people such as him to become US citizens if they go to university, as he did, or serve in the military.

He has set up Define American , an organisation which aims to provide a new voice in the discussion about immigration reform in the US. On the website he tells his story:

The Washington Post – which declined to the chance to print their ex-reporter’s deeply personal account of his illegal life – said they were looking into their procedures in light of having employed Vargas for so many years. Senior staff are said to have known of Vargas’ status but kept quiet.

US Immigration officials said they take enforcement action on a case-by-case basis and would give priority to “the most significant threats to public safety”.

Despite the potential threat of being so open, it appears not even Vargas’ mother could keep him quiet. She told AP that she tried to persuade him from going public but supported him because it was her son’s choice to come clean.

Fergal, good point. I’ve adjusted the sentence now so it reads a bit better. According to Vargas’ account in the New York Times, it happens like this – “One day when I was 16, I rode my bike to the nearby D.M.V. office to get my driver’s permit. Some of my friends already had their licenses, so I figured it was time. But when I handed the clerk my green card as proof of U.S. residency, she flipped it around, examining it. “This is fake,” she whispered. “Don’t come back here again.

With WaPo Approval, Illegal Alien Reporter Used Fake ID to Report ...

One day when I was 16, I rode my bike to the nearby D.M.V. office to get my driver’s permit. Some of my friends already had their licenses, so I figured it was time. But when I handed the clerk my green card as proof of U.S. residency, she flipped it around, examining it. “This is fake,” she whispered. “Don’t come back here again.”

Confused and scared, I pedaled home and confronted Lolo. I remember him sitting in the garage, cutting coupons. I dropped my bike and ran over to him, showing him the green card. “Peke ba ito?” I asked in Tagalog. (“Is this fake?”) My grandparents were naturalized American citizens — he worked as a security guard, she as a food server — and they had begun supporting my mother and me financially when I was 3, after my father’s wandering eye and inability to properly provide for us led to my parents’ separation. Lolo was a proud man, and I saw the shame on his face as he told me he purchased the card, along with other fake documents, for me. “Don’t show it to other people,” he warned…

…The “uncle” who brought me here turned out to be a coyote, not a relative, my grandfather later explained. Lolo scraped together enough money — I eventually learned it was $4,500, a huge sum for him — to pay him to smuggle me here under a fake name and fake passport. (I never saw the passport again after the flight and have always assumed that the coyote kept it.) After I arrived in America, Lolo obtained a new fake Filipino passport, in my real name this time, adorned with a fake student visa, in addition to the fraudulent green card.

Using the fake passport, we went to the local Social Security Administration office and applied for a Social Security number and card. It was, I remember, a quick visit. When the card came in the mail, it had my full, real name, but it also clearly stated: “Valid for work only with I.N.S. authorization.”

When I began looking for work, a short time after the D.M.V. incident, my grandfather and I took the Social Security card to Kinko’s, where he covered the “I.N.S. authorization” text with a sliver of white tape. We then made photocopies of the card. At a glance, at least, the copies would look like copies of a regular, unrestricted Social Security card.

About four months into my job as a reporter for The Post, I began feeling increasingly paranoid, as if I had “illegal immigrant” tattooed on my forehead — and in Washington, of all places, where the debates over immigration seemed never-ending. I was so eager to prove myself that I feared I was annoying some colleagues and editors — and worried that any one of these professional journalists could discover my secret. The anxiety was nearly paralyzing. I decided I had to tell one of the higher-ups about my situation. I turned to Peter.