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" I worked for 'The Chronicle' in San Francisco, and immigration is a big issue in that region. "
Jose Antonio Vargas
San Francisco
Region
Immigration
Related Quotes:
" I can't marry my way into citizenship like straight people can. I can get married in the state of New York where I live, but because of the Defense of Marriage Act, the federal government, which hands out visas, won't recognize my marriage. "
Jose Antonio Vargas
Marriage
New York
Live
" I am more than an immigration activist. "
Jose Antonio Vargas
Than
More
Immigration
" When I'm writing, I can always play around with tense. I can always make past present. I can always kind of manipulate, and I can always be delusional in a way that's completely self-serving. With film, it's like, the camera can't really lie. It can manipulate to a certain extent. "
Jose Antonio Vargas
I Can
Writing
Play
" Left-leaning bloggers have had a tremendous impact on the Democratic Party. "
Jose Antonio Vargas
Party
Democratic
Bloggers
" I've always really wanted to make a film on what it means to be white in a country that's getting less and less white. "
Jose Antonio Vargas
Less
Make
White
" Technology and the Internet are not just changing politics here in the U.S. It's also happening abroad. In the Philippines, where I grew up, grassroots organizers used text messaging to help overthrow a president. "
Jose Antonio Vargas
Help
Up
Technology
" All I've ever done since I was 17 is tell stories. You know, I'm a storyteller. And that's what I'm going to keep on doing, especially now, kind of embracing and making sure that we tell immigration. "
Jose Antonio Vargas
Done
Doing
Immigration
" To me, politics is culture. I became a journalist, and later a filmmaker, to get to know my new country and my volatile place in it as a gay, undocumented Filipino-American. "
Jose Antonio Vargas
Know
Me
Gay
" My mother made a choice. And when I was younger, I judged her for making that choice. Then I got older and got to be an adult, and I realized that was the ultimate sacrifice that any parent and any mother could possibly make. "
Jose Antonio Vargas
Sacrifice
Choice
Her
" When I was younger, I didn't understand how a mother could put her son on a plane and just say, you know, 'Here you go, I'll see you later.' And she never followed, she never came. "
Jose Antonio Vargas
You
Know
Son
" I'm more than willing to go to places and talk to people who believe that I am an illegal alien who deserves to be jailed. I want to look them in the eye and say, 'What makes you think I'm any different from you?' I think for our generation, immigration rights is a civil rights issue. "
Jose Antonio Vargas
Look
Think
People
" You know, I'm one of millions of undocumented people in this country who are living kind of under the shadows. And in many ways, coming out, it was my way of - at the end of the day, I think we have to tell the truth about this immigration system. And because of that, I had to tell the truth about myself. "
Jose Antonio Vargas
People
Myself
Day
" We cannot change the politics issue until we change the culture around it; until we talk about what parents do for their kids as an act of love. That's a cultural conversation. "
Jose Antonio Vargas
Politics
Culture
Change
" After I arrived in Mountain View, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area, I entered sixth grade and quickly grew to love my new home, family and culture. I discovered a passion for language, though it was hard to learn the difference between formal English and American slang. "
Jose Antonio Vargas
Culture
Love
Home
" In 2007, Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would become a 'platform,' meaning that outside developers could start creating applications that would run inside the site. It worked. "
Jose Antonio Vargas
Creating
Start
Run
" I remember the first article I ever wrote, and I saw my name in the paper, and I already knew I was undocumented, and I was thinking: 'How can they now say I don't exist?' "
Jose Antonio Vargas
Remember
Thinking
Say
" In Tagalog, we call undocumented people 'TNT,' which means tago ng tago, which means 'hiding and hiding.' So that's literally what undocumented means in Tagalog. And that kind of tells you how Filipinos think of this issue, and really any culture, right? "
Jose Antonio Vargas
Culture
Kind
People
" I don't think there's any other issue out there that young people are more passionate, and more ahead in, than global warming. "
Jose Antonio Vargas
Young
People
Passionate
" I'm a gay, undocumented immigrant; I have to be optimistic. "
Jose Antonio Vargas
Immigrant
Gay
Optimistic
" I traffic in empathy. I try to be vulnerable with people so they can be vulnerable back. I've always been searching for empathy in other people. It's when I feel most not alone. "
Jose Antonio Vargas
Alone
Try
People
" Kathy Dewar, my high-school English teacher, introduced me to journalism. From the moment I wrote my first article for the student paper, I convinced myself that having my name in print - writing in English, interviewing Americans - validated my presence here. "
Jose Antonio Vargas
Teacher
Myself
Me
" I'm a journalist, and I'm a filmmaker. I have an organization that's all about telling stories. "
Jose Antonio Vargas
Stories
Telling
Organization
" When you're undocumented, you're supposed to keep your head down and be quiet and pay taxes, social security - even though people don't know that we do those things - and not say anything. "
Jose Antonio Vargas
Say
People
Quiet
" In 2005, MTV Networks considered buying Facebook for seventy-five million dollars. Yahoo! and Microsoft soon offered much more. Zuckerberg turned them all down. "
Jose Antonio Vargas
Facebook
Down
Buying
" For decades, I have cringed whenever someone called me 'illegal,' as if I'm an insect on someone's back. I found out I didn't have the right papers - that I was here illegally - when I tried to get a driver's permit at age 16. But I am not 'illegal.' No person is. "
Jose Antonio Vargas
Age
Someone
Person
" Since I got to this country when I was 12, I've been obsessed with this idea of whiteness and blackness because I realized I was neither. For me, it was so important to me to make a film that focused on whiteness because you wouldn't have blackness if you didn't have whiteness. "
Jose Antonio Vargas
You
Country
Important
" As a newcomer to America who learned to 'speak American' by watching movies, I firmly believe that to change the politics of immigration and citizenship, we must change culture - the way we portray undocumented people like me and our role in society. "
Jose Antonio Vargas
Society
Change
Politics
" It's not my job to worry about how Left, Right will react to something. My job is, am I creating something that connects people? That's my job. "
Jose Antonio Vargas
How
Creating
React
" As a gay man, I think the role of culture is central to how you change politics - culture is politics. "
Jose Antonio Vargas
Culture
Change
Man
" Facebook's privacy policies are confusing to many people, and the company has changed them frequently, almost always allowing more information to be exposed in more ways. "
Jose Antonio Vargas
Privacy
People
Company