To be in America illegally is actually a civil offense and not a criminal one..

You have to stand for something bigger than yourself..

I remember the first thing I did when I found out I was illegal was to get rid of my thick Filipino accent. I figured that I had to talk white and ta….

I am not the 'illegal' you think I am, and immigration is not what you think it is..

Immigration is by far the most controversial yet least understood issue in America. Frankly, given the way we're talking about immigration, given the….

For Filipino Americans, it's a battle for recognition, for identity in a culture where, for the mainstream, Asians tend to fade into a monochromatic ….

A broken immigration system means broken families means broken lives. That's what is at stake..

Together, undocumented people like me and our relatives, friends and allies wait for broader immigration reform, not just for Dreamers but also for u….

Citizenship to me is more than a piece of paper. Citizenship is also about character. I am an American. We're just waiting for our country to recogni….

I have no control over what people call me. The only thing I have control over is my work, and that's really all I can be judged on..

The DREAMers are the safe ones, right? It's okay to advocate for the DREAMers because they're the English-speaking, college-educated ones, right? It'….

When people call me illegal, calling me illegal says more about you than it does about me..

The only reason I became a writer was so I could exist on a piece of paper..

The greatest gift that we have as human beings is our ability to empathize. That's why I think personal stories matter so much. That's someone's mom.….

There's always to me a universality - one of the things I learned early on as a journalist and a writer is that there's a universality in specifics. ….

I feel like people expect me to give them easy answers, but there aren't really easy answers. There are only harder questions. And unless we get to t….

If I could, I'd go city by city, county by county, town by town, and talk to people to explain to them what immigration is really about - that this i….

Like other undocumented people in this country, I want a green card, and I want a driver's license, and I want a passport. What, to me, is the immigr….

I always felt like I had the word "illegal" tattooed on my forehead..

The hardest stories we tell are always about ourselves. How do you explain that you have been missing your mother for 20 years? I don't know how to e….

I'm not excusing the illegal act. I am here illegally. I'm here illegally, without authorization. That's a fact. That's nothing you can call the Orwe….