Journalist Jose Antonio Vargas will visit the University of Illinois campus this week to deliver two lectures about his life as an undocumented immigrant.
Vargas established the organization Define American, http://www.defineamerican.com [2], after writing about being an undocumented immigrant in a magazine article.
During his career, Vargas has written for The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone and more. He was part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team that covered the Virginia Tech shootings in 2008. He's also covered the 2008 presidential campaign, profiled Al Gore and Mark Zuckerberg and produced a documentary on the AIDS epidemic in Washington.
Last year, he wrote an essay in the New York Times Sunday Magazine in which he disclosed he is an undocumented immigrant. Since then, he founded Define American and works to raise awareness about immigration issues.
Vargas will deliver a lecture, "My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant," at 7 p.m. Thursday at 1092 in Lincoln Hall, 702 S. Wright St., U, on campus.
Then at noon on Friday, he will deliver a talk as part of the University YMCA's Friday Forum series held at the Y, 1001 S. Wright St., C. The lecture is part of the Y's fall series called, "Beyond the Rhetoric: Key Issues in the 2012 Elections."
Lectures are free and open to the public.
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