This afternoon, Tuesday February 26th, Jose Antonio Vargas spoke at California State University Northridge as part of his Define American campaign.

To summarize rather quickly (as I’m rather tired and emotionally drained): it was thrilling.

Mr. Vargas took questions after his emotional presentation. I asked a question that has been in the back of my mind for a few years now, since I first heard about the DREAM act.

It’s a simple question, which I’ll elaborate and paraphrase on here:

What happens to all those of us who fell through the cracks? The ones who couldn’t become English fluent, the ones who got involved with drugs or gangs, the ones with records, the ones sitting in a prison cell waiting only to be released into the custody of ICE/USCIS, the ones who got pregnant at 16, the ones who got shoved out of college or high school by circumstance? What happens to all those Dreams?

 

How do we advocate for and plead the cases of our friends, neighbours and classmates who weren’t as fortunate as we were to have fulfilling opportunities, loving guardians and caring teachers?

 

Do they not deserve a chance at a fair life?

I think Mr. Vargas was surprised by the question. He used a word which I thought was poignant: “survivor guilt”. Guilt of having made it through something which has quite literally driven many of our brothers and sisters to madness, to despondency, to suicide. His answer startled me.

I don’t think he knew then how to answer or what an answer looked like. Neither do I, now, in my comfortable bed with my driver’s license and a new job. All I know is I want us all to move forward.

Todos o ningunos. All of us or none of us. It has to be this way. Anything else is a sham, is a Dream deferred.

A quick reaction and micro-update about what’s been happening with me. Things I’ll Never Say is the contest for which I was selected a winner. You can read my story, watch a short Q&A (I was nervous, okay!), and read the stories of the other amazing winners. What company to be in!

A quick blurb regarding the title of my story: We, Saracens

“Saracens” was a word used by the Greeks and Romans to describe the diverse peoples who lived in what we would call the Middle East. For later societies the meaning changed and it instead referred to Muslims, to Arabs. Despite the semantic shift, the unfair, insulting connotation remained the same: people on the edge of civilization.

When I had finished the story, I thought to the characters in the safe house, huddled together in the desert on the periphery of empire. I thought of my nation, my home country and its characterization in Anglophone media and literature. We, meaning all immigrants from the developing world, are a teeming people at the edge of the desert, a tribe that is constantly threatening to subsume the known world—not because we are barbarous, but because we are so poorly understood.

We are Saracens. When we cross, whether on foot, by boat, or by plane and when we awaken and speak, We, Saracens regain control of our own lives and our portrayal.