I want to share my Green Card with Jose Antonio Vargas

It may sound counter-intuitive, but when the mailman delivered our Green Cards, less than two weeks ago,  my first thought was “Do I really deserve it? After all, I’ve waited in line only five years. Others dream for it a lifetime”.  

This privacy thing is no joke

The fact that I am struggling to find my own identity in America proves that being an alien is plain hard, with or without legal documents. If only there was a way to split this tiny, valuable card… I would choose to share mine with Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.

Jose, in case you didn’t know, it’s the equivalent of a superhero for all the 11 million unauthorized people living in the U.S. 
Three years ago, he cried from the housetop that he basically shouldn’t be in America. His essay, published in the New York Times, had a very simple, yet moving title: “My life as an undocumented immigrant”.
 

Jose Antonio Vargas- Photo source

I remember almost chocking on Caesar salad when I read it, during my lunch break. Back then, I was just a newbie in the journalistic field and don’t know what blew me away the most; his writing style or his story. After that day at work, I went home and told my husband that we will either go to America with a Green Card, or we won’t go at all. Neither of us could muster the mental strength to live like Jose did for so many years.

Busy with my own American adventure, I totally forgot about him until yesterday, when a string of happy coincidences led me to a website called “Chicago Ideas Week”. Jose’s name was right underneath the “Immigration: From Ellis Island to ICE”panel. 
I bought myself one thicket and next thing I know, we started to follow each other on Twitter. Turns out that not only he wasn’t deported (although he was really close), but also he traveled around the country, in an attempt to shed more light on immigration problems.

On October 15, I will be more than honored to meet this wonderful man, who serves me as an example on so many levels. I am so excited that I’m strongly considering tattooing the date on my wrist, so I can see it every day when I’m handing bowls of soups for a living.

p.s. A big shout-out to Inter Solutions Co., a Chicago based printing company, who offered to donate me a couple of business cards to use at this event. Of course, the owner, Rafal Brzegowy, is Polish. Don’t all big-hearted people in Chicago come from Poland?