Define American with Jose Antonio Vargas

How can you miss someone you haven't seen in 31 years?

When I was 12 years old, my mother sent me to live in California with my grandparents, for a better life. Because of America's broken immigration system, we have not seen each other in person since.

Soon after, my mother applied for a green card. Decades later, it’s finally her turn.

It’s a bittersweet moment. As our family finally comes together, families all across this country are being torn apart.

But there are still people in America welcoming immigrants. This is a country of welcomers, and we have to insist on staying a country of welcomers.

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We’re in a moment when two pillars of the American Dream — immigration and higher education — are under attack like never before in our country’s modern history. There was a time — which feels both like yesterday and a lifetime ago — when it felt like there was real bi-partisan momentum towards providing a path to citizenship for DREAMers — undocumented young people brought to the US as children who are essentially American in every sense except paperwork. But that momentum is stalled, leaving Dreamers in limbo. There are more than 3 million Dreamers living in the US, and more than 100,000 undocumented DREAMers graduate from US high schools each year — with no access to federal grants and loans for college.My guest today is someone who has helped more DREAMers afford higher education than anyone else — Don Graham. He’s the chairman of Graham Holdings, a diversified conglomerate, and the former owner of The Washington Post — where I had my first real job after college. In addition to his business endeavors, Don has a deep passion for education. He spent decades on the board of the District of Columbia College Access Program — which supports higher education for students from low-income families — and, more than a decade ago, co-founded TheDream.Us — the largest scholarship fund for undocumented students. (Full disclosure: I’ve served on the Advisory Board of TheDream.us since its inception in 2012.)Don and his team — led by Gaby Pacheco, one of our early guests in this podcast — has raised nearly $350 million dollars to support more than 11,000 students in achieving their dream of higher education.

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If you have a caregiver in your life who you depend on — a home health aid, a nanny for your kids — chances are, that person is an immigrant.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, nearly 20 percent of domestic workers in the United States are non-citizens. “Domestic workers are more than 2.5 times as likely to be immigrants than the typical worker,” according to the Department of Labor.

The Trump administration’s attack on immigrants is threatening to strain a care system that is already extremely overburdened and underfunded.

By now it’s become increasingly clear that the Trump administration is not just targeting so-called “hardened criminals” for their mass deportation efforts. Immigration officials have targeted undocumented people , whether or not they’ve been convicted of crimes.

They have even been revoking visas and green cards from people for even the most minor infractions, or for no infraction at all — just speaking out against the administration and its policies. And this is having devastating effects on domestic workers and the American citizens who depend on their care.

With us to break down how mass deportations are disrupting the care economy is Ai-jen Poo. She is the executive director of Caring Across Generations and the president of the National Domestic Workers Alliance — the leading organization that promotes the rights of domestic workers in the United States; a decade ago, she was a recipient of the MacArthur "Genius" Award, and has been a committed advocate for women, domestic workers, and immigrants for more than 30 years.

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One of the biggest myths about undocumented immigrants is that they don’t pay taxes and are a drain on the United States economy — when in reality, the opposite is true. Undocumented people pay federal income tax, state and local taxes, sales tax — contributing tens of billions of dollars each year. They pay Social Security and unemployment tax, even though they are ineligible to receive those benefits — essentially subsidizing the system. Now, the Trump administration is weaponizing tax data against immigrant communities. The ‪@WashingtonPost‬ recently reported on a new agreement in the works between the IRS and ICE in which the tax agency would share information with immigration officials to confirm the names and addresses of people facing deportation orders.In this eye-opening interview, we speak with Francine Lipman, William S. Boyd Professor of Law at UNLV in Las Vegas, about how much undocumented immigrants contribute in taxes and the potentially devastating impacts of IRS and ICE collaboration — on both immigrant families and on our economy. Here's the Washington Post article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-pol...And here's a seminal paper by our guest Francine Lipman: The Taxation of Undocumented Immigrants: Separate, Unequal, and Without Representationhttps://scholars.law.unlv.edu/facpub/...Join us 🤗💬  / defineamerican  💬  / defineamerican  💬  / defineamerican  💌https://www.defineamerican.com/subscribe🖥️https://www.defineamerican.com

I'm in Washington, D.C., talking to Democratic members of Congress about what they can do to fight back against Trump's regressive anti-immigrant policies. If you were feeling hopeless before, well, the struggle is real. But thankfully, we have fighters like my friend and representative, Congresswoman Lateefah Simon. 

Rep. Simon represents my home district, California's 12th congressional district, which includes Berkeley, Oakland and much of the East Bay area. It is a district where more than two thirds of residents are people of color — where more than 150 different languages, including Tagalog, my native language can be heard.

As a young woman, Congresswoman Simon was caught up in the juvenile justice system. She was in and out of school. She was a teen mom. Now, against all odds, she's a member of Congress.

Although she is only in her first term, she's considered a rising star in the progressive wing of the party, where she serves as vice chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. After Trump's speech to Congress, Simon was chosen by the Working Families Party to give a progressive rebuttal. 

In this wide ranging interview, we talk about Rep. Simon’s longtime friend and mentor Kamala Harris and how the Democratic Party fell short on immigration last election cycle. We also discuss how decades of American imperialist policies have created the conditions that exacerbate migration, as well as what an alternative, positive vision of immigration policy could look like in this country.

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When it comes to Trump’s plans for mass deportation, “the worst is yet to come,” says Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal. So what can Democrats do to fight back?

Congresswoman Jayapal is the representative for Washington’s 7th district, which encompasses the Seattle metro area, where almost 20 percent of residents are foreign-born. Born in Chennai, India, she is one of about two dozen immigrants in the U.S. House of Representatives, and is the ranking Democrat on the House Immigration Subcommittee.

In our latest episode of Define American with Jose Antonio Vargas, Jose talks to Rep. Jayapal about how she felt listening to Trump’s address to Congress earlier this week, policies like the Laken Riley Act and the executive order on birthright citizenship, and the Democrats’ strategy for the next four years. The two also have a moving personal exchange about being separated from their families under our broken immigration system.

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Tomorrow, I will reunite with my mother and little sister for the first time in 31 years. We have not been in the same physical space since I was 12. My sister was barely 2.A couple of years ago, during COVID,  my mother's green card was finally approved after decades of waiting to “get in line” “the legal way.”This whole event — this decades-long reunion — feels bigger than language. I am beyond excited. I’m also relieved, after decades and decades of waiting. And I’m also scared. How do you say I miss you to people you’ve been missing your whole life? How do you say I miss you to people — your mother, your sister, your family — you haven’t felt or touched or smelled or seen in 31 years?Watching the news, living in this anti-immigrant era, not only here in the United States but around the world, you’d think migration is all about walls and borders and mass deportations — what politicians and propagandists keep hammering about, as if human beings are nothing but political problems.What gets lost in the narrative of migration is that we're dealing with human beings. The politics of it leave no room for complexity and contradictions.I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. I might melt into a puddle. I might faint. I might feel nothing.I hope you circle back to watch what happens, though.

On his first day back in office, Donald Trump signed an executive order that would end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants and temporary residents. That night, the ACLU filed a lawsuit, calling Trump’s order unconstitutional. In 1857, the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision ruled that Black Americans were not U.S. citizens. In the wake of the Civil War, the 14th amendment overturned that decision, guaranteeing citizenship to all people born or naturalized in the America, a right that was later upheld by the Supreme Court in the case of Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco to Chinese parents. So what is Donald Trump’s argument against this core tenet of American democracy? What is the ACLU’s strategy in this case? And what does it mean for how we define American? Subscribe for more videos on #Immigration and the American identity: bit.ly/subscribedefineamerican

With both the Republicans and Democrats completely missing the mark on immigration reform, what other options do we have for meaningful change? 

In this episode, Jose Antonio Vargas sits down with Andrew Yang, an author, entrepreneur, and founder of the Forward Party, to discuss immigration, political polarization, and solutions beyond the two-party system. Yang, who first became a household name during his 2020 presidential run advocating for universal basic income, shares his thoughts on how congressional math and political gridlock stall real immigration reform.

This data-driven conversation covers:

🎥 Watch or listen to the full episode for fresh insights on immigration reform, political gridlock, and political innovation.

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As we begin Donald Trump’s second term, it’s painfully clear that many journalists are failing to meet the challenge of covering immigrants and immigration in this Trump era.

While some exceptions exist, mainstream news outlets continue to repeat Trump’s narratives, framing immigration around “criminals” rather than acknowledging the reality: under his first administration, Trump’s policies targeted families, separated children at the border, and even went after legal immigrants and naturalized citizens.

This time, Trump has already signed an executive order to end birthright citizenship for children of noncitizens and shut down the CBP One app, which asylum seekers use to apply for legal entry into the U.S. Meanwhile, Democrats have largely ceded the immigration debate, even attempting to pass a border bill that would have dramatically increased funding for immigration enforcement.

Here to talk to Jose about all these issues and more is the legendary Maria Hinojosa, a Pulitzer Prize-winning and Peabody Award-winning journalist. As the longtime anchor and executive producer of Latino USA on NPR and the founder of Futuro Media Group, Maria has spent over 30 years covering immigration with integrity and truth. 

In this episode, they discuss:

🎥 Watch or listen to the full episode for fresh insights on immigration reform, political gridlock, and political innovation.

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