Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" I'm a gay, undocumented immigrant; I have to be optimistic. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

Related Quotes:

" I'm not a minority: I'm a majority of one. We all are. To call someone a minority, you give them baggage, of not being full, or not being seen as full. All of us need to be seen as full human beings. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" While in high school, I worked part time at Subway, then at the front desk of the local YMCA, then at a tennis club, until I landed an unpaid internship at 'The Mountain View Voice,' my hometown newspaper. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" I wasn't supposed to be walking with Mark Zuckerberg. I wasn't supposed to be interviewing Romney's sons. Why was I doing it? Because I wanted to survive. I wanted to live. I wanted to earn what it means to be an American. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" I am undoubtedly one of the more, if not the most, privileged undocumented immigrants in America. And for us at Define American, which is this culture campaign group that I founded with some friends, culture trumps politics. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" Demographically speaking, young white people are not in the majority in this country; they're in the minority. My question is, if they're not the majority anymore, then what happens? How do things change? Or do they change at all? "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" 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

" The Internet is changing the way we think of our relationship with government; it has the potential to bring to life what Abraham Lincoln said about the presidency being an instrument of the people. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" One day when I was 16, I rode my bike to the nearby DMV office to get my driver's permit. Some of my friends already had their licenses, so I figured it was time. But when I handed the clerk my green card as proof of U.S. residency, she flipped it around, examining it. 'This is fake,' she whispered. 'Don't come back here again.' "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" I am not a lobbyist. I am not a political activist. I am not a leader, as far as I'm concerned. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" I worked for 'The Chronicle' in San Francisco, and immigration is a big issue in that region. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" As you watch 'Documented' on CNN, I ask you, my fellow Americans: What do you want to do with me? What do you want to do with us? How do you define American? "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" When I was a kid, I resented my grandparents not speaking the perfect English I wanted to speak. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" 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

" 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

" The story of undocumented immigrants in this country is not just about undocumented immigrants. It's about the country as a whole, and it's about us being able to tell the truth about where we are with this issue because we haven't been telling the truth about where we are with this issue. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" The more successful I got, the more scared I got. My name was all over Google. I had a Wikipedia page I was terrified to look at. And so I just snapped. I thought, 'If I'm going to come out with this, I'm going to do it in a big way. And not just for myself. This can't just be my story.' "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" I believe fundamentally in the kindness of the American people because I have been a beneficiary of it. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" The fact of the matter is, this country is not going to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants. What are we supposed to do with them? What are we supposed to do with these kids? "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" The film 'Documented,' a project of the nonprofit and nonpartisan Define American campaign, is about my families: the family I was blessed to be born into, and the family of friends, mentors and allies that I found when I moved to the United States at 12, a Filipino kid trying to make sense of my new home in America. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" I think the hardest stories we tell are always the ones about ourselves. And as a journalist, I was taught that I'm never supposed to put myself in the story. So I spent what, 11, 12 years of my life writing about other people so I don't have to face my own life. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" 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

" 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

" 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

" I guess, as a reporter, I always thought that my biggest strength was that I could get anybody to talk to me. I wasn't the best writer, but I could get people to talk to me. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" I've been uncomfortable dealing with my identity since I was 16 years old. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" Laws are getting passed in states like Alabama that basically would punish American citizens who are 'harboring' people. Since the federal government hasn't been able to muster or to get comprehensive immigration reform passed, states are taking it upon themselves to police and enforce laws. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" 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

" A broken immigration system means broken families and broken lives. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" People don't really assume that I'm Filipino. Of course, they're gonna think, 'Oh, are you some sort of Hispanic?' and you say, 'No, I'm actually not.' I get Korean or Chinese a lot. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" 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