this is a really important read. he says that this isn't about immigration policy and technically it isn't, but i don't know how you can read this and not want a change in that unspoken policy. how is there no legal way to remedy being undocumented? all the people yelling about "get in line" and "make yourself legal" have no idea how to do that (spoiler - there isn't a way). he is doing so much by putting a face to this situation. one thing i was thinking about as i was reading this, and then he wrote of it too, is how being undocumented mostly isn't possible without having help from "legal" citizens. and if there are 11 million undocumented people, if even 1 person if helping them (and often it's going to be more than that), then that is already a good number of people on the side of reform and assistance. we should be able to make strides, the numbers are there. this whole book is eye opening for what sort of things documentation allows you to do (drive, work, travel) and how our government is happy to take the taxes and money of undocumented people, but give them nothing in return.

"I swallowed American culture before I learned how to chew it."

"I was no longer the blameless kid who wasn't aware of the circumstances of how I arrived in America. I was now a nineteen-year-old making a difficult and necessary choice to survive, which meant breaking the law.

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?"

"Understanding the experience of black people in America - why black was created so people could be white - pried open how Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, and other marginalized groups have been historically oppressed through laws and systems that had little or nothing to do with what was right. 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."

"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."

"The lies had gotten so big that they swallowed everything up, including all the good things. ... I couldn't be present for my own life."

"According to the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, undocumented immigrants nationwide pay an estimated 8 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes on average. To put that in perspective, the top 1 percent of taxpayers pay an average nationwide effective tax rate of just 5.4 percent."

"Our country's mainstream news organizations often fail to report basic facts about how much undocumented workers pay into a government that vilifies us. Whether because of ignorance or indifference, or both, failure to report these facts and provide context has perpetuated the myth of the 'illegal' who is taxing social services and taking away from 'real Americans.'"

"How do we demolish white supremacy without pushing more white people to white nationalism?" ( )

"As if to dare the attorney general to come find him, Philippines-born immigrant journalist Vargas, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, owns up to being “illegal”—but not criminal.

As the author’s account opens and closes, he has been arrested in preparation for a “removal proceeding,” the consequence of his mother’s decision to put him on a plane with a supposed uncle and send him to the promised land of the United States at the age of 12 in 1993. That uncle was a smuggler, and the life Vargas found wasn’t all that it was supposed to be; neither did he have the papers—real ones, anyway—to support things like getting a driver’s license or going to the polls. Given the mood of the nation, which, as the author notes, officially no longer characterizes itself as “a nation of immigrants,” it’s understandable that he is perplexed and worried at his situation, perhaps less intuitively so that he should confess it in a book that almost certainly will not change many minds: Those opposed to immigration, illegal and legal, will dismiss his pleas, and those for it will share his indignation. Of more interest to readers on the middle ground, if there are any, is the author’s account of how few and technically complex the supposed paths for legal immigration are these days—and how easy it is to be deported. Thus he had to wrestle when, having appeared on-air to discuss his plea, he was invited by Nancy Pelosi to be her guest in Congress, an invitation that an immigration-lawyer friend urged him to decline: “It took .25 seconds for the Breitbart website to pull up 725 articles under the search ‘Jose Antonio Vargas.’ Breitbart runs immigration policy in the United States.” Though in fact detained, the author was released and now lives in a kind of legal limbo while waiting to see what, if anything, will happen.

An unusual firsthand report from the immigration wars." www.kirkusreviews.com

Jose is Philippino who entered the country as a child, unknowingly illegal because his grandfather falsified papers. Too old for the Dream Act by 2 months, he’s in a terrifying limbo, fearful of losing the only home he’s ever known & no legal way to become a citizen. This is a factual, but sometimes emotional, explanation of what life is like for an “illegal” human being. Five stars plus. Should be required reading for every “American.” ( )

Jose Antonio Vargas come to America as a small child accompanied by an "uncle" - sent by his mother on a flight to the US to live with his grandparents. In Filipino culture all your adult male relations are referred to as "uncle" so Antonio wasn't particularly troubled that he hadn't previously met this man. Safely delivered to his grandparents in California, Jose began his American life, assured that his mother would soon be joining him.

But his mother was not able to get a visa and never did come to America. It wasn't until Jose was a teenager who went on his own to apply for a drivers license that he learned his green card was invalid. His grandfather confessed that the "uncle" who brought him to America was in fact a paid smuggler and that Jose was undocumented.

Jose's grandfather and mother meant well. They thought that if all else failed, Jose would meet, fall in love with and marry an American girl, and the marriage would confer citizenship on him. This plan was foiled when Jose came out as gay.

In Dear America Jose tells the story of how he dealt with his undocumented status, and was able to go to college and become a respected journalist. While he was out as gay, he hid his undocumented status in the closet. When he finally revealed that he was undocumented he did so as a journalist, writing about it for a major US publication. He went on to found the organization Define American, which seeks to reshape American opinion on immigration. You may agree or disagree with some of the decisions he has made, but given his situation there is no easy legal way to "fix" his undocumented status. I found his story well told and some of the struggles he went through and how they affected him heartbreaking.

I give Dear America Four Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐. I have heard of Vargas and read some of his work, but I did not know anything about his undocumented citizenship until I picked up this book. Recommended. ( )

audiobook nonfiction/memoir; read by author - Filipino (and incidentally gay) immigrant who came out as undocumented after he was an established journalist. ( )