Keynote

Jose Antonio Vargas

Date: Thursday, October 27th, 2011

Time: 9:15-10:00am

Place: Imperial Ballroom

After being born and raised in the Philippines, Jose Antonio Vargas’ mother wanted to give him a better life. So she sent him to live with his grandparents in Silicon Valley. It was 1993, and Jose was 12 years old.

Jose loved America the moment he got here, and embraced the language, the culture and the people. English was his second language, and he learned to speak “American” by watching Frasier, Home Improvement and The Golden Girls.

At 16, he rode his bike to the DMV to get his driver’s permit. Jose brought his green card with him. The woman at the DMV looked at it, leaned over and whispered, “This is fake. Don’t come back here again.”

He went home and confronted his grandfather, who confirmed it. That was the first time Jose realized he is an undocumented immigrant — what some people call an “illegal.”

He decided then that people could never doubt that he was an American. Speak English well. Write English well. Contribute to this society. If he worked hard enough, if he achieved enough, he felt he could earn what it means to be an American.

The first person Jose told was his choir teacher, Mrs. Denny. After learning of her planned choir trip to Japan, he told her he couldn’t afford it. When she replied that we’d figure out a way, he then told her the truth. “I don’t have the right passport,” he said. “I am not supposed to be here.”
The next day, she told him the choir was going to Hawaii instead.

Mrs. Denny was the first member of Jose’s personal Underground Railroad: Americans who have chosen to help undocumented immigrants like him. Other members include Rich Fischer, his high school superintendent, and Pat Hyland, his high school principal. They found a way to get him to college. For more than a decade, Rich and Pat, among others, have helped guide and support him as he tried to define himself as an American: graduating from college, building a career as a journalist. And after writing hundreds of stories — including covering the 2008 presidential campaign for The Washington Post; profiling Al Gore for Rolling Stone and Mark Zuckerberg for The New Yorker; writing and producing a documentary on the AIDS epidemic in the nation’s capital; and winning a Pulitzer Prize for helping cover the Virginia Tech massacre — Jose is taking full responsibility for what he’s done.

Now, he’s telling his story.

Click here for the complete text of Jose Antonio Varga’s keynote speech.