Documented

Jose Antonio Vargas began his immigrant journey at age 12, when he was sent to the United States from the Philippines by his mother to live with his grandparents in Mountain View, California. After attending San Francisco State University, Vargas pursued a print journalism career -- landing jobs at newspapers in San Francisco, Philadelphia, New York City, and Washington D.C. for the Washington Post -- all the while, managing to keep his true citizenship status a secret. In 2008, Vargas was awarded a Pulitzer as part of the team of Washington Post journalists who reported on the 2007 shooting massacre at Virginia Tech University. Vargas began working on DOCUMENTED shortly before "outing" himself as undocumented in a ground-breaking New York Times Magazine essay, "My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant." He then traveled around America, telling his story in solidarity with the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the country. As he connected with his subjects through the similarities of their journeys, particularly those who, like Vargas, came to the United States as children, his personal reflections compelled him to reconnect with his mother, whom he had not seen in 20 years. (jakelijan virallinen teksti)