By BRETT ZONGKER | AP
WASHINGTON: A prize-winning journalist who reported for The Washington Post went public Wednesday with a secret he has been keeping for nearly two decades: He is an illegal immigrant.
Jose Antonio Vargas, whose mother sent him from the Philippines to live with his grandparents in California when he was 12, says that now he wants to push Congress to pass a bill called the DREAM Act that would allow people like him to become citizens if they go to college or serve in the military.
“I’m done running. I’m exhausted,” Vargas wrote in a New York Times Magazine essay posted online Wednesday. “I don’t want that life anymore.” Vargas referred a request for comment from The Associated Press to his public relations team, which did not immediately make him available Wednesday. He also spoke to ABC News in interviews that will air Thursday and Friday.
He says he didn’t know about his citizenship status until four years after he arrived in the US, when he applied for a driver’s permit and handed a clerk his green card.
“This is fake,” a Department of Motor Vehicles clerk said, according to Vargas’ account. “Don’t come back here again.” Vargas confronted his grandfather, who acknowledged he purchased the green card and other fake documents.
Categories: Americas, Human Rights, United States