Our undocumented immigrants make America a better place
He has a blunt message for America, where he has lived since he was 12, and for Americans like him. I tracked him down and asked him to explain it.
"America, look at yourself," he said. "Americans, look past yourselves. What you can't face about yourself is what you can't see about people like me."
Now Vargas has written a new memoir about his experience as "an undocumented citizen" in a country that doesn't know what it wants to do with people like him. The book -- "Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen" -- explains that living in the United States without documents is all about lying to get by, passing as a citizen, and hiding from authorities.
I'd add a fourth item. Most of the undocumented people I know have a nervous tick: They won't admit they did anything wrong. In the case of the Dreamers -- undocumented young people brought here as children by their parents -- they won't admit that their parents did anything wrong.
So you have 11 million people -- a figure that a recent study by Yale professors estimates could actually be twice as large -- who are here, out of status, and no one did anything wrong?
Most Americans won't accept that. And so they're not eager to cut a deal that would allow the undocumented to legally stay in the United States. Which gets us nowhere.
Vargas supports immigration reform, but he thinks it'll be pointless if Americans don't confront the anti-immigrant virus in our bloodstream.
That's why he co-founded "Define American," an organization that wants to explore what it means to be a citizen of this country.
I was wrong about Vargas. I was so busy demanding that illegal immigrants (my friend hates that term, but he's not writing this column) "earn" their legal status that I didn't appreciate what a steep price many of them have already paid in terms of pain, suffering, homesickness, alienation and the heartbreak of family separation.
Vargas hasn't seen his own mother in 25 years. He could go back to the Philippines and visit her, but he wouldn't be able to come back. The ledger is clear; he's paid enough.
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