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4.36 AVERAGE
4.36 AVERAGE
emotional
informative
reflective
fast-paced
This does a lot of great things:
-It really brings a very human perspective to the table
-It emphasizes that children who are brought to this country and are undocumented are not responsible for that decision
-It emphasizes how many immigrant families have a mixture of individuals who are or are not documented
-It really shows that we have no current pathway to help people who ARE Americans and have spent nearly their entire lives here but are undocumented
I'm already pro open borders, but I learned more from this than I expected to. A lot of the rhetoric in this country surrounding documentation is intentionally false. This book works to combat a lot of that misinformation.
-It really brings a very human perspective to the table
-It emphasizes that children who are brought to this country and are undocumented are not responsible for that decision
-It emphasizes how many immigrant families have a mixture of individuals who are or are not documented
-It really shows that we have no current pathway to help people who ARE Americans and have spent nearly their entire lives here but are undocumented
I'm already pro open borders, but I learned more from this than I expected to. A lot of the rhetoric in this country surrounding documentation is intentionally false. This book works to combat a lot of that misinformation.
hopeful
informative
reflective
fast-paced
informative
reflective
fast-paced
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
This was smart, personal story that combines the experiences of Jose Antonio Vargas, along with providing great thought provoking questions about the state of our government when it comes to immigration, both documented and undocumented, and the frustrating process that many undocumented immigrants who were brought here as children have to suffer through due to a giant gray area in our laws that makes them feel unwanted and homeless despite growing up in the United States and only knowing this country as their home.
Unfortunately no present or politician before has been able to effectively fix our immigration problems that Jose brings up here. This mixed in with a rise of ignorance and blatant anti-immigrant waves that out Trump in office has only made things worse for immigration in our country since Trump has no knowledge of the laws and how there isn’t a clear path to get “legal” as a undocumented immigrant, or the issues that we caused in other countries to create the need to seek asylum in the US.
Knowledge is power and at a time of unprecedented ignorance, we need to start listening to people and work in fixing the problems our laws and leadership had created for the immigration system.
Unfortunately no present or politician before has been able to effectively fix our immigration problems that Jose brings up here. This mixed in with a rise of ignorance and blatant anti-immigrant waves that out Trump in office has only made things worse for immigration in our country since Trump has no knowledge of the laws and how there isn’t a clear path to get “legal” as a undocumented immigrant, or the issues that we caused in other countries to create the need to seek asylum in the US.
Knowledge is power and at a time of unprecedented ignorance, we need to start listening to people and work in fixing the problems our laws and leadership had created for the immigration system.
Listened to the audio, which was read by the author. A relatively quick read, just under 6 hours.
Oooh, the last line was chilling - after 30-some-odd years of being undocumented in the United States, with no obvious path forward - Vargas' mom was like, maybe it's time to come back to the Philippines*? (I have to assume he said no, since he'd had so many opportunities to leave over those years, knowing he might not be able to make it back to the only life he knows. And also as he mentioned, Philippines leadership wasn't exactly gung-ho about gay men.) *Vargas' mom put him on a plane when he was a tween with the intention of following him later, but per the book was never legally able to make her own way to the U.S.
I appreciated Vargas' story a lot, especially because it provided a different perspective than the ones we see most often from the southern borders. Especially as he became a journalist as an adult - I loved hearing about the newsrooms and his career at WaPo and his technology writing back when it was The Facebook. He talked about his "coming out" as undocumented and all the ways he was forced to lie to survive (getting a job, getting a license, etc.) once he found out he was not in the U.S. legally (and DACA hadn't been invented yet). The descriptions of his travel around the country and speaking to people of all walks of life about the experiences of being undocumented and what undocumented people actually want and need from their adopted homeland, and the policies that came in and out over the years that somehow never applied to him, leaving him in a perpetual state of limbo.
And ohhhhh the stuff about the Texas border and his being detained in Brownsville/McAllen. I mean, I know the Powers That Be in Texas have basically never done anything good for our neighbors to the south, but Vargas could have been in way worse trouble if he didn't have journalist and ambassador friends in high places from all his years of reporting.
I'd recommend. I didn't wholeheartedly love it, but it was very good.
Oooh, the last line was chilling - after 30-some-odd years of being undocumented in the United States, with no obvious path forward - Vargas' mom was like, maybe it's time to come back to the Philippines*? (I have to assume he said no, since he'd had so many opportunities to leave over those years, knowing he might not be able to make it back to the only life he knows. And also as he mentioned, Philippines leadership wasn't exactly gung-ho about gay men.) *Vargas' mom put him on a plane when he was a tween with the intention of following him later, but per the book was never legally able to make her own way to the U.S.
I appreciated Vargas' story a lot, especially because it provided a different perspective than the ones we see most often from the southern borders. Especially as he became a journalist as an adult - I loved hearing about the newsrooms and his career at WaPo and his technology writing back when it was The Facebook. He talked about his "coming out" as undocumented and all the ways he was forced to lie to survive (getting a job, getting a license, etc.) once he found out he was not in the U.S. legally (and DACA hadn't been invented yet). The descriptions of his travel around the country and speaking to people of all walks of life about the experiences of being undocumented and what undocumented people actually want and need from their adopted homeland, and the policies that came in and out over the years that somehow never applied to him, leaving him in a perpetual state of limbo.
And ohhhhh the stuff about the Texas border and his being detained in Brownsville/McAllen. I mean, I know the Powers That Be in Texas have basically never done anything good for our neighbors to the south, but Vargas could have been in way worse trouble if he didn't have journalist and ambassador friends in high places from all his years of reporting.
I'd recommend. I didn't wholeheartedly love it, but it was very good.
I think this should be required reading for every American. Not only does it drive into the truths of how much of a joke the immigration system is but it talks about how hard we judge fellow humans for labels the media slaps on us.
Read this.
I learned about the government representing me and how undocumented men and women pay taxes but cannot access many of the benefits paid for by those taxes. I learned that "there is no line." So while the American government is happen to take the tax payments from those wanting to be citizens, it doesn't allow many of them the dignity of applying to be citizens because of the 37 hoops, 4 layers of red tape, and 67 exceptions outlined in the small print (numbers totally made up by me to prove a point). I also remembered why politics disgusts me.
Read this.
I learned about the government representing me and how undocumented men and women pay taxes but cannot access many of the benefits paid for by those taxes. I learned that "there is no line." So while the American government is happen to take the tax payments from those wanting to be citizens, it doesn't allow many of them the dignity of applying to be citizens because of the 37 hoops, 4 layers of red tape, and 67 exceptions outlined in the small print (numbers totally made up by me to prove a point). I also remembered why politics disgusts me.
Jose Antonio Vargas's story gives an insightful account about what it's like to live in the "shadows" as a person who is undocumented. Regardless of how a person leans politically on the subject of immigration, it's important to read an account from an actual person who is or has experienced hardships because of his/her immigration status. Merely looking at an issue from a conservative/liberal standpoint only distorts the whole picture. It fails to humanize the struggles of people who want to be in the country, who are actually contributing to the well-being and prosperity of this country, but through no fault of their own, they don't have identity that recognizes them as a citizen of the country. Although Jose put himself in a position to have people fight on his behalf to help keep him in the country he calls home, there are plenty of other people like him who are just as determined to stay in a country where they made a life, but their voices are not as loud and their faces aren't as familiar.