Charles Melcher:

Jose, it's such an honor to have you on the Future of Storytelling podcast. Thank you for joining me.

Jose Antonio Vargas:

Oh, thank you so much for having me.

Charles Melcher:

First of all, it's nice to be back in touch with you. It was really exciting to have you at the Future of Storytelling back in 2017.

Jose Antonio Vargas:

Wait, what was that? 2017? It feels like... I've gone to a lot of conferences in the past, what? Nine years, almost nine years of doing the work that I do. That was one of those conference where I feel like, "Okay, this is where I should be."

Charles Melcher:

Wow. Thank you.

Jose Antonio Vargas:

It was just very... Because I was surrounded by storytellers who work in different mediums, it felt like the kind of place that people who do the work that I do should be doing a lot more of, which is interacting with people in the storytelling, marketing realm. So it was great.

Charles Melcher:

Thank you. Let's start with your story. Now, I've been social distancing up here in Connecticut, and this is where I first got my driver's license, my learner's permit when I was 16. And wow, what a breath of freedom it was for a teenage boy to get his driver's license and his permit. What was your experience like when you went to try to get yours at 16?

Jose Antonio Vargas:

Well, first of all, coming here from the Philippines when I was 12, I thought that there was nothing more American than driving a car. So I was excited about getting a driver's license. I went to the DMV without telling my grandparents. I lived with my grandparents. My mom sent me here when I was 12 from the Philippines to live with her parents. My grandparents are both naturalized American citizens. My grandfather was a security guard, grandmother was a food server. And then one afternoon after school, without telling them, because I figured I don't need their permission, I went to the DMV to get a driver's permit. I brought my Mountain View High School ID and a green card that I got from the Manila folder that my grandfather kept at his filing cabinet in his bedroom.

Jose Antonio Vargas:

When the woman called my name out, I went to the booth. I gave her my green card. I gave her my school ID. She looked at my school ID. Didn't really give that any attention, but looked at the green card, and I remember she looked kind of confused. She flipped it around twice, and then she lowered herself in the booth. She had curly hair and glasses, white woman. And she said, "This is fake."

Charles Melcher:

Wow.

Jose Antonio Vargas:

The first thought in my head was, "I am not Mexican." Which is horrible. Even I, as a 16-year-old immigrant from the Philippines, had so surrendered this idea that fake papers was only impacting Mexican people. Back then I was only exposed to what? Television and newspapers and radio shows. I had already internalized this idea that this was about Mexican people and maybe the woman at the DMV was confused because my name is Jose Antonio Vargas. I wanted to tell her, "I'm from the Philippines. We're colonized by the Spanish people. I don't look all that Mexican." Whatever, right?

Charles Melcher:

Right.

Jose Antonio Vargas:

And in many ways, that woman was the very first person to kind of save me. She said, "This is fake. Don't come back here again." I didn't really know what that second part meant until I got home and confronted my grandfather and said, "I went to the DMV. This woman said this was fake. What does this mean?" My grandfather, whose favorite karaoke song was Frank Sinatra's My Way, so that should tell you a lot about his personality, and in his [inaudible 00:03:30]- accented English was like, "What are you doing showing that to people?" The green card. And then my grandfather said, "You're not supposed to be here." I think for me that was the beginning of, "You're a problem that nobody can solve."

Charles Melcher:

So then you hid this secret throughout high school. You graduated, but you were not sure whether you were going to go to college. How did you make that decision?

Jose Antonio Vargas:

I graduated high school 2000. That was, what? A year before the DREAM Act was introduced in Congress, right? Even back then, there was really no language around this. The only person that I told was my high school principal, Pat Highland, because she was the one asking me why I wasn't applying to colleges. I was so involved in school. I did everything there was to do at school. Pat was very like, "What's wrong with you? Why are you not applying?" So I told her. What was interesting about Pat is she was also the first adult that I told outside of my household that I was gay. I came out as gay about a year after I found out that I was here illegally. I told Pat Highland about it, so that's how she and I got close. But then two years later in high school, she was like, "Well, okay then why are you not applying to colleges?" Then I told her I was here illegally. She and the high school superintendent, Rich Fisher, found the venture capitalist to send me to college who didn't care about my immigration status. That's how I got to college.

Charles Melcher:

I've heard you describe it as this second family that stepped in and supported you.

Jose Antonio Vargas:

In the beginning, I started referring to them... I majored in African American studies in college. I started referring to them as this pseudo underground railroad of allies and supporters. I use that term with all due respect to how distinct African American history is. But just this idea that from the woman at the DMV, who said, "Don't come back here again," to my high school principal, to my high school superintendent, to the college counselor, to all of these mentors who didn't really know what they were doing. If the teachers and the administrators of Mountain View High School didn't step up, I would not have known what to do. I mean, I didn't have choices. They were the ones that created choices.

Charles Melcher:

So you went to college, you-

Jose Antonio Vargas:

I went to college.

Charles Melcher:

You did well there, and then when you came out, you decided to become a journalist. Tell me about that decision.

Jose Antonio Vargas:

I thought if I could just write my way into America by putting my name on news articles. I thought that was existing. When you're a journalist, you get a byline. Your name gets to be on a piece of paper because you're writing a story. It was the only reason why I started writing for newspapers. I did that at the local newspaper and then at the Philadelphia Daily News to San Francisco Chronicle, then I got to the Washington Post. And then I ended up writing for the New Yorker, for Rolling Stone. And then, when I hit 30, which is when the driver's license I got was expiring. I ended up going to the state of Oregon. There were only two states in the country that allowed undocumented people to go to their states and get licenses, and one of them was Oregon. My support network helped me get this license. And then it was valid for eight years, from 2003 until 2011. It was the only piece of ID that I had. People forget, you can't enter government buildings anywhere without ID, right? So that driver's license, I remember I dropped it once at a club.

Jose Antonio Vargas:

[crosstalk 00:07:05]

Jose Antonio Vargas:

I dropped the ID like a urinal and like freaked out. This is I'm thinking, Oh shit. That was when I had to make a decision of, what do I do now? This is expiring. There's this whole immigration reform movement that's been happening since 2005. So then I decided that it was that I had to quote unquote, tell my story. Clearly, that's what I ended up doing. You did miss one little piece of your own journey, which is, you're a part of a team that received a Pulitzer prize in journalism. It's sad that I don't think about it that much. When the Pulitzer thing happened, it was like a nice little award thing, but it was only a piece of paper. So I didn't really... And I remember when I was getting ready to do what I'm doing now, one of my friends said to me, Jose, the only reason people are going to care about you is because you have that.

Jose Antonio Vargas:

And I remember thinking how angry I was about that, that if I had come out as undocumented farmer or undocumented security guard or undocumented grocery clerk worker, nobody would care. But since I'm an undocumented Pulitzer prize, winning journalists who had worked for the Washington Post. All of a sudden, I matter more. I really resented that.

Charles Melcher:

So, tell us about the article you wrote for the New York times, your coming out story.

Jose Antonio Vargas:

I'm privileged enough that when I was getting ready to say, "Okay, I'm going to tell my story". I had options to where to tell it to. So I called Katherine Weymouth, who was the publisher at the Washington Post, because I thought I owed the Washington Post the story. And she connected me to the editor, Marcus Brauchli, who used to be at the Wall Street Journal. But then Marcus Brauchli decided that basically, how do you trust a liar? Right? I had lied my way through journalism to get jobs.

Jose Antonio Vargas:

So they spiked the story. And so thankfully, one of my friends is a guy named Peter Baker, who I used to sit across from when I was at the Washington Post. He's at the New York times. So I called Peter and Peter was like... And I came out to him on the phone. And I said, I wrote this essay. And then Peter connected me to the editor at the New York times, Sunday magazine. And then they wanted the story. I remember somebody telling me that it was one of those rare instances where a story that was copy, edited, and fact checked by the Washington Post ended up being published in the New York times. But, that's where it was published. That's how that happened.

Charles Melcher:

And then you ended up testifying in front of Congress as part of the hearings that led to the Dream Act.

Jose Antonio Vargas:

This was when Obama was president. And people forget President Obama deported 400,000 immigrants. So I testified in 2013. And at the time, I was one of the first undocumented people to testify in Congress? And actually, I'll never forget this. Jeff Sessions and Ted Cruz both served in the committee.

Charles Melcher:

Wow.

Jose Antonio Vargas:

And Ted Cruz didn't even listen to the testimony. He likes got up and left. And then Jeff Sessions was the first person to ask me a question after I gave my testimony. And Jeff Sessions's was, "Do you believe that we should have a law that people should follow?" Or something like that? I said, yes. And that was it.

Charles Melcher:

I just want to encourage our listeners to look it up on YouTube because it's a beautiful speech. I've listened to it a couple of times, and every time I'm in tears. It's so moving that you had both sets of family there with you to support you when you gave that.

Jose Antonio Vargas:

Yeah. My grandmother was right behind me and I could actually feel her nervousness. I could feel her nervousness.

Charles Melcher:

Well, when I say both sets of families, it was clear, the pride, your school family, and the pride that your genetic family both had in you. But also just the emotional power and beauty of your presentation and how you made the whole issue so real, so human, so specific, but also universal at the same time.

Jose Antonio Vargas:

Which is to me, what storytelling is supposed to do, right? That's what we do. That's why my high school principal, my high school superintendent, the guy who sent me to college, we're both sitting right behind me. My story doesn't make sense without theirs. And you know, we talk a lot about now about privilege, right? Like that, white privilege and privilege just comes up a lot. And to me, privilege is always a question of, well, what are you willing to risk for it? They did. They took very specific risks to help somebody out. There are some States that want to pass laws that would make it illegal for US citizens to harbor or help undocumented people. And I think that's the conversation. And, to me, this gets us to this question of mutuality. Which to me, really, fundamentally is what storytelling should be about. We should tell stories so we can actually see that we have mutual interests and, we share a mutual humanity. You know what I mean?

Charles Melcher:

Yes, absolutely. You know, I also think that one of the things you did so beautifully in that speech and that you've done many times since is to remind us of the role that immigration plays in the founding and the blood of our nation. In fact, I remember in that testimony you gave to Congress, you specifically referenced JFK's book.

Jose Antonio Vargas:

Oh yeah. A Nation of Immigrants. Yep.

Charles Melcher:

A nation of immigrants. Yeah.

Jose Antonio Vargas:

People forget... I mean, okay, this is what the journalist in me comes into play here. So, this country, between 1776 and 1963, right. During basically the Ellis Island era, 42 million people moved to this country between 1776 and 1963. That's 42 million people from Europe who are Germans, Italians, Polish, and then they got here and then they got to be white. And then after what the Kennedy brothers advocated for, which is the opening of the way we think about immigration in this country, 45 million immigrants has moved to this country from 1966 to 2016. 45 million. Mostly Latin people and Asian people and black immigrants. 11 million of whom are undocumented. So think about that. 42 million in a span of 187 years and in 45 million in a span of 50 years. I mean, that's why it's not a surprise to me, that Donald Trump to pick immigration as the central issue. When he went down that elevator, at Trump tower in 2015 and announced he was running for president, what did he talk about? The Mexicans and the borders and the wall.

Charles Melcher:

Let's talk about that. Because you're so specific about language. You've really pushed back against this idea of calling it illegal immigrants. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Jose Antonio Vargas:

So, a workforce made of migrants. Even that phrase, kind of sips humanity out of the equation. So meaning, it totally makes sense then that you consider immigrants as essential workers, but you wouldn't think of them as essential people. So even the term illegal alien or illegal immigrant, or just illegal makes it this very kind of other foreign thing that has nothing to do with us. Maya Angelou used to give this great, great speech where she said that, words are things. And the words you say dictate how you think and how you act.

Charles Melcher:

So tell us a little bit more about the work that you're doing with Define American.

Jose Antonio Vargas:

The shortest explanation is to say that we are changing the immigrant narrative one story at a time. So we use stories to change the overall narrative of this issue. And how do we do that? We do that to two kind of main ways, is entertainment media. So meaning Hollywood, right? So we've consulted on over 70 television shows and movies. So now we've become the place that a lot of producers and writers go to when they have that kind of content. And then the journalism front. I'll never forget when Donald Trump first started using the phrase 'chain migration', and then you had news articles just using the phrase without pushing back. And so, we were the organization that we contacted 5,000 journalists and basically said, "Look, at the very least, if you're even going to use the phrase, use quotation marks. Question it. Don't just accept it for what it is." So, those are the two avenues that most people understand what the issue is. So our job is, how do we help storytellers tell a more accurate, more factual, more truthful and more human stories about immigrants.

Charles Melcher:

And it makes total sense and super smart to focus on the storytellers in Hollywood. The ones who make the shows and then films and the journalists who are out there putting out the newspapers and the stories in social media. If you can influence the way they think about the issue, you can have an amplified impact.

Jose Antonio Vargas:

Absolutely. There was this great report in the New York Times after the 2016 election of Donald Trump that said, "The television show you watch is a greater indicator of who you voted for it, than the political party you belong to." And Grey's anatomy, is one of the top 10 most popular shows for Trump voters. So when Donald Trump ended DACA, one of the very first people to reach out to us at the Define American was Shonda Rhimes, because she's amazing. And Shonda was like, "How can I help? How can..." She was horrified that what was happening. At the time, we knew about a hundred undocumented medical students. And so, she said, "Send them to our writer's room." So we work with an organization that PhD Dreamers [inaudible 00:16:47] the group. So we sent, I think, four or five undocumented medical students to her writer's room?

Jose Antonio Vargas:

And then that's how her writers created this character of an undocumented intern. And then in an episode of Grey's anatomy, [inaudible 00:16:59] shows up at the hospital to get her. So we reached more people in that one episode, than say an MSNBC or CNN hit. But that's why it's important for us, especially now in the golden age of streaming and television, that a lot of people get what they think of this issue from television and from movies. The reality is, there are so many undocumented white people and undocumented Asian people and undocumented black people that we don't talk about. If I were just to count the undocumented white people, I meet at Starbucks, all across the country. It's way more than 11 million undocumented people in this country.

Charles Melcher:

My assistant, for several years was a Caucasian Dreamer.

Jose Antonio Vargas:

Wow.

Charles Melcher:

I came from Eastern Europe. So this is something I lived through daily with her listening up and down every day with the political winds blowing for DACA and Dreamers.

Jose Antonio Vargas:

And I'm sure the anxiety of that, right? The anxiety of... That's why I mentor quite a few Dreamers. And so, mental health to me, which is something I'm so glad that we're living in a time when people are more openly talking about mental health issues a lot more. Because I really am so anxious for what's going to happen with DACA. Can you imagine? I mean, it's hard to think of it even of a historical parallel where you have 900,000 people that have legal status and then that status will be taken away. So then what happens?

Charles Melcher:

And have built lives and have been so productive and contributing to our country and literally thought they had this path and now very likely won't.

Jose Antonio Vargas:

And then what? 200,000 of them are quote unquote essential workers, right? There was a study by CAP that just came out. That, undocumented medical workers, undocumented grocery workers. Again, they're essential people, [inaudible 00:18:50] , I don't know if you know much about... I'm sure you do, but DACA recipients have to pay this government. The very government that wants to deport them. They have to pay the government what, $500 every two years so that the government doesn't deport them. DACA stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. The deferred part is actually about deferral from deportation. I mean, that's what it says. So I don't know what's going to happen, if the Supreme Court doesn't, save it. In this country, legalizing marijuana is considered a higher priority than legalizing immigrants. Which by the way, I am really glad, especially considering all of the criminal justice issues as relates to marijuana and drugs. I'm glad that we're thinking through that in a much more progressive way. But there are States that have legalized marijuana that, don't allow undocumented people to drive. Right? So, how can we actually talk about that?

Charles Melcher:

We can legalize a plant before we can legalize people.

Jose Antonio Vargas:

Or climate change. Right? So climate change is always one of the top concerns of progressives. And yet we're not connecting the dots between climate change and immigration. And the fact that a lot of people are going to have to migrate because of climate change. I'm from the Philippines, right? What 7,000, 107 islands, like some of those islands are going to disappear. So then where are people going to go? To me, we have to really connect these dots and we have to figure out how these issues actually intersect and clash with one another.

Charles Melcher:

So Jose, tell me a little bit about this study that you've been working on.

Jose Antonio Vargas:

So at Define American, we've been kind of at the forefront of figuring out, well, wait a second, how do we actually know what we're doing and how does it work? So, we have really funded research work. So we're about to release a report later this fall. So please check it out. Go to defineamerican.com and just sign up for our email. So you'll get it when it comes out. This is what the Norman Lear Center. And basically, what we've done, is to look at, when immigrants are represented on television, how is their representation affecting how people, how the viewers behave by watching that representation? What we found, is viewers who felt sadness or anger or fear while watching a show, were more empathetic. But they were not moved into any sort of action. But when viewers felt happy, right? When they see a character, they are more likely to write their newspaper, their elected official or volunteer locally.

Charles Melcher:

You think about Will and Grace, for example. Right?

Jose Antonio Vargas:

So again, creating more positive immigration storylines, instead of the doom and gloom narratives that we often see, is actually the way to go.

Charles Melcher:

And this research really supports that. This is now scientifically proven.

Jose Antonio Vargas:

It supports that. And again, for us, that's why partnering with the Norman Lear Center was important because they're basically considered like the top organization that does independent, rigorous research. Right? And for us, we've been studying this year to year to year. I think I did an interview actually with Bill Maher on a show on HBO. And we were on a commercial break, and he turned to me and he goes, "You can't just fix this thing?". And I'm thinking to myself, "If Bill Maher is asking me of this question of why can't I just go fix this? Like, what? Does he think I go in a bathroom and turn on a light and poof, I'm an American? Is that how it works?" So even people who know what the issue is, don't know how the process works. That's the way there are more than 11 million people who can't legalize.

Charles Melcher:

Or lack of process.

Jose Antonio Vargas:

Lack of process, right? I've been really thinking a lot about citizenship. What that asks of us. Watching people who don't want to put their mass on, because you're impinging on their Liberty.

Charles Melcher:

Right.

Jose Antonio Vargas:

Watching the people who are not practicing social distancing, all of that. They're not practicing citizenship. Because citizenship actually means, that you have a responsibility to each other. Yeah, you're a human being. And you're entitled to your what? Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? But to be a citizen means you're a part of something bigger than yourself. So, I actually think, undocumented people in this country actually are challenging the very notion of citizenship. Because, even though we don't have papers or we're not here legally, by our actions, we are a part of something bigger than ourselves. I remember I gave this speech once in Minneapolis and I was really angry and I try as much as possible not to be angry when I'm in front of people. But, because it doesn't work.

Jose Antonio Vargas:

All of a sudden, I'm the angry, illegal. Right? And so I just don't want to be angry. But, for some reason I was angry that night. And somebody asked me a question about, am I deserving of citizenship? And I turned the question around to the gentleman and I said, "Well, sir, are you? What have you done to earn it?" He was like, "What do you mean?". And I was like, "Well, sir, how are you a US citizen?" "Oh, I'm born here." "Oh, is that enough? Is that the country got to be so great? Because you're just born here and all of a sudden you're entitled?". That's not how people like us think about it. You know, what does that great Baldwin quote, "I love America more than any other country in the world. And exactly for that reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually."

Charles Melcher:

Powerful quote. Jose, thank you so much for your work and for your spending time with me today. This has been a real pleasure.

Jose Antonio Vargas:

Oh, thank you for having me. And, I really look forward for Define American and the Future of Storytelling to do more work together. So thank you for having me.

Charles Melcher:

We will. Thank you.