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" Undocumented people get arrested all the time. I get arrested, and it's front-page news. I feel guilt. "
Jose Antonio Vargas
People
I Feel
Guilt
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" 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. "
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" I believe fundamentally in the kindness of the American people because I have been a beneficiary of it. "
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" 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?' "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" I think everyone deserves dignity. "
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" 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. "
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Person
" 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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Organization
" 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. "
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" I'm sure the president doesn't enjoy being called deporter-in-chief. "
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Being
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" 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? "
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" 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.' "
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" 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. "
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Culture
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" Film in many ways is very literal. "
Jose Antonio Vargas
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" 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
Legal
Me
Media
" 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
Relationship
Government
Life
" Left-leaning bloggers have had a tremendous impact on the Democratic Party. "
Jose Antonio Vargas
Party
Democratic
Bloggers
" You have to do what you have to do. I wanted to work. I wanted to prove that I was worthy of being here... and I was gonna do whatever it took to prove that. "
Jose Antonio Vargas
You
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Worthy
" 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? "
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Culture
Kind
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" 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? "
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People
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" There were many factors as to why I decided to come out as being undocumented. One of them is because I look the way that I look; I don't look like the 'stereotypical undocumented' person. "
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Look
Because
Way
" 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. "
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You
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" 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. "
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School
" 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
" 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 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. "
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Me
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" 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. "
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Family
Blessed
American
" 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. "
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Creating
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" 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. "
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Less
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