Legal or not, Vargas is one hell of a reporter, one gutsy Filipino

I don’t even know if Jose Antonio Vargas—the prize-winning journalist, who stunned the world by disclosing his status as undocumented U.S.  immigrant—has A Pinoy nickname.

I knew him when I was still a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle where he worked as an intern.

He was always Jose to us. Not Joey, or Jojo, or Jun Jun.

In any case, Jose certainly is one of the hardest working journalists and one of the most talented writers I know.

And legal or not, Jose Antonio Vargas is one hell of a reporter.

He was part of the Washington Post team that won the Pulitzer Prize for the paper’s coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre. He wrote a much-talked about New Yorker profile of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. He wrote an important series on AIDs in the Washington DC area.

By coming out in the open about his status to help shed light on a what has been one of the more complex issues in the debate over illegal immigration in the U.S., Jose has shown that he is also one gutsy Pinoy.

As the Associated Press story on his surprising revelation said, Jose could have chosen to keep his life as undocumented Pinoy a secret for five more years.

But he decided it was time to come clean on his status.

“I’m done running. I’m exhausted,” Vargas said in his New York Times Magazine essay. “I don’t want that life anymore.”

It was not a life he chose for himself.

He was 12 when he was sent to live with his grandparents in the U.S. He only found out later that he was in the country illegally.  By then, he was living the life of a Filipino American.

Many other young people find themselves in similar situations. They’re undocumented because they were brought to the U.S. by parents who entered the country illegally.

But as San Francisco immigration attorney Jojo Liangco told me years ago when I wrote about the issue for the San Francisco Chronicle, “These are children who did not make the decision to come to the United States or to commit fraud. They learn American values and are educated in American schools. They are functional Americans, but they are being set up as another class.’”

One of them was Liangco’s former clients, Chris Camat.

His own story should be an inspiration to other FilAms, undocumented or not.

Chris entered the U.S. with his mother and siblings with an invalid visa. He worked picking sugar peas in California and even competing as a boxer. He won a bronze model in the Junior Olympics. One of his trainers compared him to Oscar De Lay Hoya.

But then his career stalled after he failed to show a green card to the U.S. Boxing Association. He was going to be deported, but his attorney successfully argued before a court that Chris had been a model youth.

Chris went on to represent the Philippines in international competitions, though he remained rooted in the U.S. where he grew up.

“I grew up here,” he told me when I interviewed him years ago. “I had my first job here. I had my first girlfriend here. I’m starting my family here. Everything is here.”

For Jose, life also is in the United States where he has built an impressive career.

But he’s now willing to risk that career for a bigger goal. His Define American campaign hopes to highlight the stories of people like him and Chris Camat – for young people caught in what has historically been a bitter and complicated debate over immigration and identity.

“You can call me whatever you want to call me, but I am an American,” Vargas told ABC. “No one can take that away from me.”

Though I don’t know if he has a Pinoy nickname, Jose is also Pinoy – a very talented one, with much to offer his homeland and the country he now considers home.

At the risk of sounding like one of the corny TV commercial ads in Manila, I say, ‘Atin ‘to. Suportahan natin.’

On Twitter @KuwentoPimentel.