Jose Antonio Vargas loses his drivers license

Listen to Jose Antonio Vargas loses his drivers license

Jose Antonio Vargas has written hundreds of stories as a reporter for the Washington Post and shared in a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Virginia tech shootings.

But last month he published a piece his lawyer warned him would cause trouble:

“Lawyers told me not to publish this story at all. One of them said it was like legal suicide.”

Because in the story he admits that he is in the U.S. illegally — sent here at the age of 12 by his mother. Among the documents he obtained illegally — a Washington State drivers license, which doesn’t require a social security number. This week state officials yanked that license.

And that could be just the beginning. Vargas could be deported to his native Philippines.

But listen now to to what he told told NPR; the way he rationalized falsely checking the citizen box on his I-9 form:

“This is going to sound deluded, but I actually thought to myself ‘Why don’t I just check that box and why don’t I just try to live up to what that word means.'”

And that’s exactly what he did. He immersed himself in American culture and language. He spent hours watching “Frasier,” “Home Improvement,” and reruns of “The Golden Girls” to lose his accent.

Do you see the opportunity here?

Jose Vargas is part of a class of immigrants who are willing to become as American as we want them to be…as long as we don’t make them wait in line ten years.

They would jump through any hoops we set up. Learn unaccented English. Immerse themselves in Disney films. Say the Pledge INCLUDING the “Under God” part! Stuff even Americans who were BORN here won’t do.

Why would we not take this deal?