Name: 3 questions to ask yourself about US citizenship | Jose Antonio Vargas
Uploaded: 2020-10-23T18:18:35.000Z
Duration: 8 min 49 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Four years after arriving in the United States,

After I showed the clerk my immigration papers, my green card,

That's how I found out I was in America illegally.

that what most people don't understand about immigration

is what they don't understand about themselves:

their families' old migration stories and the processes they had to go through

before green cards and walls even existed,

or what shaped their understanding of citizenship itself.

When I was 12, my mother sent me to live with her parents,

When he legally emigrated to America and became a naturalized citizen,

after Ted Danson from the TV show "Cheers."

Lolo's favorite song was Frank Sinatra's "My Way,"

and when it came to figuring out how to get his only grandson, me,

According to Lolo, there was no easy and simple way to get me here,

that's a lot of money for a security guard

who made no more than eight dollars an hour --

and for a smuggler to bring me to the US.

I can't tell you how many times people tell me that their ancestors

has been changing ever since the first ship of settlers dropped anchor.

America as we know it is more than a piece of land,

particularly because the land that now makes up the United States of America

used to belong to other people in other countries.

America as we know it is also more than a nation of immigrants.

There are two groups of Americans who are not immigrants:

Native Americans, who were indigenous to this land

and African Americans, who were kidnapped, shipped and enslaved

one that only exists because the first settlers came here freely

All across America, in front of diverse audiences --

high school students and senior citizens --

As a person of color, I always get asked where I'm from,

So I've asked white people where they're from from, too.

After asking a student at the University of Georgia

"I know," I said, "but where are you from?"

I don't think you can talk about America as America

without answering those three core questions.

how this country has replenished itself for centuries,

from the settlers and the revolutionaries who populated the original 13 colonies

to the millions of immigrants, predominantly from Europe,

Even though Native Americans were already here

and had their own tribal identities and ideas about citizenship,

they were not considered US citizens until the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act.

The landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act that Black Americans fought for

inspired the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act,

which ended America's race-based exclusionary system

whether immigrants of the past or the present,

know of these crucial parts of American history?

How much of this history makes up the actual US citizenship test?

and government officers ask applicants up to 10 of the 100 questions.

To pass, applicants must get at least six answers right.

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3 questions to ask yourself about US citizenship | Jose Antonio Vargas

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