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" I'm a journalist, and I'm a filmmaker. I have an organization that's all about telling stories. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

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" 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

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

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

" I have no control whatsoever on how people perceive me from the Right or the Left. All I have control over is who I say I am. "

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 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" I did not realize how broken I was until I saw how broken Mama was. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" Facebook's headquarters is a two-story building at the end of a quiet, tree-lined street. Zuckerberg nicknamed it the Bunker. Facebook has grown so fast that this is the company's fifth home in six years - the third in Palo Alto. There is virtually no indication outside of the Bunker's tenant. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" You can call me whatever you want to call me, but I am an American. No one can take that away from me. No, no one can. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" 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

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

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

" I think everyone deserves dignity. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" 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

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

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

" Of all the questions I get asked as an undocumented immigrant in the United States, there are two - asked in various permutations via email, social media or in person - that chill me to the bone: 'Why don't you just make yourself legal?' And: 'Why don't you get in the back of the line?' "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" 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

" At the end of the day, stories connect us, not politics. And there's so many stories out there waiting to be told. It's just a matter of who's out there listening. "

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

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

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

" 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

" Left-leaning bloggers have had a tremendous impact on the Democratic Party. "

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