-
When I'm writing, I can always play around with tense. I can always make past present. I can always kind of manipulate, and I can always be delusional in a way that's completely self-serving. With film, it's like, the camera can't really lie. It can manipulate to a certain extent.
Jose Antonio Vargas -
For decades, I have cringed whenever someone called me 'illegal,' as if I'm an insect on someone's back. I found out I didn't have the right papers - that I was here illegally - when I tried to get a driver's permit at age 16. But I am not 'illegal.' No person is.
Jose Antonio Vargas
-
When it comes to fighting for citizenship that many people take for granted, there isn't anyone I would not talk to. When it comes to immigration, there isn't any question I will not answer.
Jose Antonio Vargas -
In many ways, I think I've always overcompensated. I was always almost too careful, because I knew if anybody ever found any way to doubt my work, then they'd start picking my life apart, too.
Jose Antonio Vargas -
As I graduated from public schools and started working in newsrooms, I told myself that I am only the 'illegal' that my own country has not bothered to get to know.
Jose Antonio Vargas -
I'm more than willing to go to places and talk to people who believe that I am an illegal alien who deserves to be jailed. I want to look them in the eye and say, 'What makes you think I'm any different from you?' I think for our generation, immigration rights is a civil rights issue.
Jose Antonio Vargas -
I've been uncomfortable dealing with my identity since I was 16 years old.
Jose Antonio Vargas -
Film in many ways is very literal.
Jose Antonio Vargas
-
You can call me whatever you want to call me, but I am an American. No one can take that away from me. No, no one can.
Jose Antonio Vargas -
When people saw that the film was called 'White People,' many got very defensive. I've been getting some very interesting emails - and I'm used to hate mail, believe me. I think this idea that we grouped white people together is offensive to people.
Jose Antonio Vargas -
Everyone has an opinion when it comes to immigration - strong, intense opinions.
Jose Antonio Vargas -
When I was younger, I didn't understand how a mother could put her son on a plane and just say, you know, 'Here you go, I'll see you later.' And she never followed, she never came.
Jose Antonio Vargas -
To me, politics is culture. I became a journalist, and later a filmmaker, to get to know my new country and my volatile place in it as a gay, undocumented Filipino-American.
Jose Antonio Vargas -
The story of undocumented immigrants in this country is not just about undocumented immigrants. It's about the country as a whole, and it's about us being able to tell the truth about where we are with this issue because we haven't been telling the truth about where we are with this issue.
Jose Antonio Vargas
-
Facebook's headquarters is a two-story building at the end of a quiet, tree-lined street. Zuckerberg nicknamed it the Bunker. Facebook has grown so fast that this is the company's fifth home in six years - the third in Palo Alto. There is virtually no indication outside of the Bunker's tenant.
Jose Antonio Vargas -
Of all the questions I get asked as an undocumented immigrant in the United States, there are two - asked in various permutations via email, social media or in person - that chill me to the bone: 'Why don't you just make yourself legal?' And: 'Why don't you get in the back of the line?'
Jose Antonio Vargas -
I believe fundamentally in the kindness of the American people because I have been a beneficiary of it.
Jose Antonio Vargas -
I'm a gay, undocumented immigrant; I have to be optimistic.
Jose Antonio Vargas -
Demographically speaking, young white people are not in the majority in this country; they're in the minority. My question is, if they're not the majority anymore, then what happens? How do things change? Or do they change at all?
Jose Antonio Vargas -
Since I got to this country when I was 12, I've been obsessed with this idea of whiteness and blackness because I realized I was neither. For me, it was so important to me to make a film that focused on whiteness because you wouldn't have blackness if you didn't have whiteness.
Jose Antonio Vargas
-
I want to be as creatively disruptive as possible. I want to be radically transparent in a way that isn't showboating.
Jose Antonio Vargas -
I worked for 'The Chronicle' in San Francisco, and immigration is a big issue in that region.
Jose Antonio Vargas -
At the end of the day, stories connect us, not politics. And there's so many stories out there waiting to be told. It's just a matter of who's out there listening.
Jose Antonio Vargas -
Undocumented people get arrested all the time. I get arrested, and it's front-page news. I feel guilt.
Jose Antonio Vargas