Jose Antonio Vargas

About Jose Antonio

• Immigrated to America from the Philippines at the age of 12; his parents sent him on a plane with a coyote (or, illegal smuggler); to go live with his grandparents in Northern California.
• He didn’t realize he was in the country illegally until he attempted to get a driver’s license at age 16 and realized he didn’t have the correct paperwork.
• One of his teachers introduced him to journalism and he began interning at a local paper called the Mountain View Voice; after that, he got an entry-level job at the San Francisco Chronicle.
• Despite his lack of papers, he managed to get through college at San Francisco State University, majoring in political science and Black Studies.
• His contributions to the Washington Post’s coverage of the Virginia Tech shooting won him and his colleagues the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting.
• But as he rose through the ranks of the world of journalism, he always felt like he was running from something; he ultimately decided to pen a piece called “My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant.”
• His story was widely covered by national news outlets, as he was one of the most high-profile people ever to publicly come out as an undocumented citizen.
• Decided to found Define American—a nonprofit built around sharing immigrant stories—so he could “take immigration out the box people put it in, make it accessible, and make it human.”