Tuesday, July 10, 2012

A Face for the Faceless

Jose Antonio Vargas and others who have made their illegal status public are giving a face to millions, and turning undocumented immigration into a mass civil disobedience movement. Their movement has just seen its first victories.
A year and a half ago, I published a book, Principles of a Free Society, in which I defined civil disobedience as open, non-violent, principled defiance of a law which one wishes to see changed; argued that most illegal immigration does not qualify as civil disobedience because it is not open; and added that: “If illegal immigration in the United States does not yet constitute a mass civil disobedience movement, it is not far from it… A satyagraha approach [satyagraha, meaning 'clinging to the truth,' is Gandhi’s term for civil disobedience] might involve illegal immigrants openly advertising their status in order to court arrest and deportation.” (Principles of a Free Society, p. 129)
These words proved prescient. Several months later, the journalist Jose Antonio Vargas published a four-page story in the New York Times in which he outed himself as an illegal immigrant. He was born in the Philippines, and came to the United States in 1993, at the age of 12, to live with his grandparents in California. His mother “wanted to give [him] a better life.” He “quickly grew to love [his] new home, family, and culture.”
A few years later, he got the first intimation of his status:
One day when I was 16, I rode my bike to the nearby D.M.V. 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.”
After this:
I decided then that I could never give anyone reason to doubt I was an American. I convinced myself that if I worked enough, if I achieved enough, I would be rewarded with citizenship. I felt I could earn it.

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