It was during the naturalization ceremony of my mother-in-law in Los Angeles, when I got my first glance at the immigrant’s American Dream: a packed auditorium of new US-citizens, exhilarated, proud and happy. When I read Jose Antonio Vargas’s article “OUTLAW: My Life As an Undocumented Immigrant” last week in The New York Times Magazine, I saw the unfulfilled version of this dream. In his article, Vargas gives an unexpected face to the more than eleven million undocumented immigrants living in the US: his own! As a successful journalist, Vargas uses his power to challenge the idea of what a US-American is. As much as I admire Vargas’s courage and hope it is not in vain, his claims are neither unambiguous nor unproblematic. On what grounds do they stand? Legality? Practice? Culture? Also, while Vargas intends to move the boundaries of what constitutes a US-American in the authoritative framework of the nation-state, do his claims not reach further? Do they not challenge the nation-state USA in terms of authoritative legitimacy? Following Vargas’s recent video on DefineAmerican.com, I want to take on his plea: “Let’s talk.”

“There are believed to be 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. We’re not always who you think we are. Some pick your strawberries or care for your children. Some are in high school or college. And some, it turns out, write news articles you might read. I grew up here. This is my home. Yet even though I think of myself as an American and consider America my country, my country doesn’t think of me as one of its own.”

The statement in the beginning of Vargas article shows two problems:

1. The general problem of the USA in sustaining a historically grown, economically integrated and sizable group of undocumented immigrants.

2. The paradoxical life-situation of these immigrants as being part of a social whole, without being legally recognized.

Where is this boundary of recognition drawn? Is it really just a matter of a piece of paper? This . . .

Read more: Who is an American? Reflections on Jose Antonio Vargas