Immigration's untold stories

I don't do this often, but today I'm going to beg you all to read an article. This morning, NYTimes.com posted the fascinating autobiographical story (seemingly an online version of a Sunday Magazine piece) of Juan Antonio Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who used the article to "come out" as an illegal immigrant. His story is long but absolutely mesmerizing, and I feel like it offers a rare window into the other side of a story that we don't often see or hear (or, frankly, even bother to think) about.

I won't spend too much time proselytizing or analyzing the Vargas story, because I think the piece is strong enough to stand on its own merits. But in the ongoing debate over immigrants both legal and illegal, I think that it is often easy to generalize and stereotype, ignoring the very personal stories that are the real face of immigration. A brief excerpt:

There are believed to be 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. We’re not always who you think we are. Some pick your strawberries or care for your children. Some are in high school or college. And some, it turns out, write news articles you might read. I grew up here. This is my home. Yet even though I think of myself as an American and consider America my country, my country doesn’t think of me as one of its own...

I did my best to steer clear of reporting on immigration policy but couldn’t always avoid it. On two occasions, I wrote about Hillary Clinton’s position on driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants. I also wrote an article about Senator Mel Martinez of Florida, then thechairman of the Republican National Committee, who was defending his party’s stance toward Latinos after only one Republican presidential candidate — John McCain, the co-author of a failed immigration bill — agreed to participate in a debate sponsored by Univision, the Spanish-language network.

It was an odd sort of dance: I was trying to stand out in a highly competitive newsroom, yet I was terrified that if I stood out too much, I’d invite unwanted scrutiny. I tried to compartmentalize my fears, distract myself by reporting on the lives of other people, but there was no escaping the central conflict in my life. Maintaining a deception for so long distorts your sense of self. You start wondering who you’ve become, and why.

Seriously, take a few minutes and read the whole thing. Regardless of your personal politics and your views on immigration policy, I think that this story--while almost certainly unique--is an important data point in the debate on what America was, is, and wants to be in the coming centuries.

[NY Times]