THE BIRMINGHAM NEWS (Opinion)
By Jose Antonio Vargas
October 22, 2012
http://blog.al.com/birmingham-news-commentary/2012/10/opinion_from_jose_antonio_varg.html
The first time I heard of a place called "Birmingham" was when my U.S. history teacher assigned the class to read "Letter from Birmingham Jail" by a man named Martin Luther King Jr. I was in 8th grade and a newcomer to America, arriving from the Philippines just three years earlier.
To give me a better life, my mother sent me to America to live with her parents, both naturalized American citizens. There was a new language to master, a new culture to embrace, a new history to understand. Everything was exciting and challenging, not least of which was King's prose. In particular, I remember wrestling with -- and physically underlining -- one line in an essay full of indelible lines: "An unjust law is no law at all" -- King quoting St. Augustine.
A year later, that one line carried even more weight after I went to get my driver permit and discovered that, unlike my grandparents, I did not have the right papers to be in America. I was what many people call an "illegal alien" -- an "illegal." I was 16 years old.
At Mountain View High School, educators, classmates, and parents of classmates nurtured and protected me. For about 14 years, with the encouragement of my high school principal and my high school superintendent, I lived and, in some instances, lied my way to the American dream.
I worked as a reporter The Washington Post and wrote for the New Yorker and Huffington Post; I paid income taxes and Social Security; I contributed, in the best way I could, to the country I call home. All these years as an undocumented American -- because I am, in my heart, an American -- not a day that goes by that I don't think of that one line: "An unjust law is no law at all."
Which brings me to HB 56, the Hammon-Beason Alabama Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act, signed into law in June 2011. Coincidentally, that was the same month that I disclosed my undocumented status in an essay in The New York Times Magazine. Months later, after traveling the country and interviewing everyday Americans as a public face of a largely misunderstood issue, I wrote a cover story for TIME magazine that addressed the most frequent questions I get asked, questions such as:
- "Why haven't you gotten deported?"
- "Why don't you become legal?"
- "Why did you get your driver's license when you knew it wasn't legal?"
- "Why don't you just go home?"
- "Have you no respect for the law?"
If you have the same questions -- and especially if you support HB 56, in many ways the toughest immigration law in the country -- please attend the Immigration Town Hall meeting I am co-hosting next Tuesday, Oct. 30, from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Alumni Auditorium at UAB's Hill Center. (The event is free and open to the public. RSVP at events@al.com. Sponsors of the event include The Birmingham News, SPJ-Pro Alabama, UAB, SALSA, the Spanish and Latino Student Association at UAB, and Define American, a campaign I founded last year that seeks to elevate how we talk about immigration.)
An invitation has been extended to elected leaders such as Scott Beason, the Alabama state senator from Gardendale who co-sponsored HB 56. But aside from elected officials and politicians, we need everyday Alabamians of all background to attend and share their opinions. If you call people like me "illegal"; if you think people like me should "self-deport," pack our bags and leave; if you have questions about why undocumented people and our allies are advocating for in-state tuition to colleges; if you wonder why we need serious and comprehensive immigration reform to address a serious and complex issue -- please come.
We will never fully solve an issue that we are unwilling to fully comprehend. So let's talk.
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