#poderarchives

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: A COLLEAGUE'S LESSON, June 2012

A talk with Jose Antonio Vargas, the journalist who gained attention by admitting he has been in the country illegally for years, leads to rethinking a long-held position.

By Ruben Navarrette Jr.

“I have no sympathy for Jose Antonio Vargas. He is a discredit to his profession, and a drag on many of his former colleagues. By lying to friends, colleagues, and employers, he’s made an already tough job—that of being an ethnic journalist—more difficult…Journalists are perplexed about what should happen to Vargas now. It’s not a hard question. He’s undocumented, and thus subject to deportation like any other illegal immigrant. What are we supposed to do? Grant him a special dispensation because he’s a journalist and not a janitor? Treat him better than we treat many others because he speaks English and has a soapbox? That’s not what this country is about.

“And, I bet, it wouldn’t mesh with why Vargas chose to become a journalist in the first place. Most of us get into this business to give voice to the weak and vulnerable, not to use our influence to claim special privileges that those people would never be afforded.”

—Ruben Navarrette—Syndicated Column, July 2011

Those are harsh words. I didn’t expect to have to eat them.

Journalists are a blend of public and private. We put our words out to be seen by strangers. But then some of us are able to retreat into anonymity. We don’t expect for our subject to chase us home.

So when Jose Antonio Vargas, a 31-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and one of the most famous illegal immigrants in the country, responded to the column I’d written about him by “friending” me on Facebook, and then suggested we talk, I felt both excitement and dread.

Vargas started our conversation by saying that, when he was in high school and college, he used to read my columns because my last name N-A-V-A-R-R-E-T-T-E called out to him. It’s a popular name in the Philippines, where Vargas was born and from which he immigrated to the United States in the early 1990s. He felt a connection. That’s why my criticism stung.

“A lot of things are written,” he told me. “I have thick skin. I’m a journalist. I’m used to being corrected. That’s not it. I was only frustrated and hurt by (the column) because I respect you. And so I wanted to talk to you about it.”

I listened as Vargas explained how he’d come here at the age of 12 with a fake passport that had a student visa, how there was no line to come legally, how after years of living a lie with co-conspirators he calls his “underground railroad” all he wants now is to bring truth to the immigration debate.

“As journalists, we have so many things to cover, so much information, so many things to do,” he said. “But collectively, I do not think that we as journalists have told the complete immigration story. People say I’m an advocate, an activist. As far as I’m concerned I’m a journalist who is trying to tell the fullest story I possibly can.”

For the last 20 years, I’ve tried to do the same thing. And yet, I have a blind spot. It comes not from what I know or don’t know, but from what I am: a U.S. citizen whose family goes back at least five generations in the United States. I still don’t have the slightest idea of what it means to be an immigrant—let alone, an illegal immigrant. That’s why I wanted to talk to Vargas. But why did he want to talk to me?

“You are in the unique position to talk about me as a journalist,” he said. “There are times that I wish I wasn’t this person, that I was just reporting on this person. It would make it easier. I do think I am a pretty good journalist, and it’s my job to tell the whole immigration story and report the hell out of it. And part of that is asking myself the hard questions like: Why haven’t I been arrested and deported?”

As Vargas sees it, his story is just a footnote. “We haven’t even gone through the first chapter of the immigration discussion,” he said. “We’re still on the introduction of the book. People focus so much on the fact that I don’t have my papers, and they never ask the why and the how. Why is this happening? How is this happening? As a journalist, that’s what I’m most interested in.”

What I’m interested in, I explained, was whether I screwed up the column I wrote about him. The more he talks, the more I think I did. The point of that column was simple: Of course, the Pulitzer-prize winning journalist should be deported. How do we say that he shouldn’t be while we’re trying to deport the gardener, the nanny, or the avocado picker? But now, I realize, nothing about this story is simple.

“From talking to you,” I said, “and from watching you over the last year, I do admire a lot of what you’re doing and the way you carry yourself—the strength, courage, and poise. But I have a huge blind spot, and it’s the same one that most U.S. citizens have. We don’t understand this life. We can’t put ourselves in your shoes. And so when you lie or cut corners we can very easily judge you because we have the luxury of doing that.”

“Wow,” he said. “What you just said right there. I don’t want to have to call it ‘entitlement.’ But people don’t realize their privilege or how lucky they are. Again, they call us advocates. We are merely advocating to be seen as full human beings.”

Part of the advocacy is Define American, a new organization that Vargas founded to help elevate the immigration debate and find new solutions to the stalemate.

“I believe our history is each other,” he said. “That is our only guide. If we do not tell stories, and we do not connect the dots, and if we fail to see ourselves in other people....”

His voice trailed off. He choked up. He never finished the sentence. But you get the point. If we fail to see ourselves in other people, then we’re lost or we have no hope or we’ve lost our humanity. Take your pick. Either way, he’s right.

I am often too hard on illegal immigrants and too judgmental about what they have to do to survive. While I still believe that Americans need to hold lawbreakers accountable, I also believe that we shouldn’t be naive about the impossibility of an immigration system that the native-born can’t relate to. I also believe that humility is a good thing, not just on the part of illegal immigrants who should worry less about getting their demands met and more about getting right with the law but also on the part of U.S. citizens who should spend more time fixing the immigration system and less time criticizing illegal immigrants who squeak by it.

There, I said it. Twenty years of writing about this issue, and this epiphany finally comes. Thanks to a new friend and fellow journalist intent on telling the whole story—and getting the rest of us to do the same.

Ruben Navarrette Jr. is a nationally syndicated columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group, a CNN.COM contributor and a regular commentator for NPR.