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

Jose Antonio Vargas

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" 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

" I think everybody could agree that our immigration system is broken. We have not told the truth about it. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" As I graduated from public schools and started working in newsrooms, I told myself that I am only the 'illegal' that my own country has not bothered to get to know. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" In many ways, I think I've always overcompensated. I was always almost too careful, because I knew if anybody ever found any way to doubt my work, then they'd start picking my life apart, too. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

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

Jose Antonio Vargas

" My being gay is not a social issue; it's a fact. It's not something to be debated. It's a reality. "

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

" I am more than an immigration activist. "

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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

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

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

Jose Antonio Vargas

" 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

" 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 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

" I want to be as creatively disruptive as possible. I want to be radically transparent in a way that isn't showboating. "

Jose Antonio Vargas