This past Sunday, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas "outed" himself as an "illegal alien" in the pages of The New York Times Magazine. The reaction of many in the media establishment has been to dwell on Vargas's practices of deception that allowed him to "pass" for so long. In doing so, these pundits obscure and normalize the apartheid-like system which denies unauthorized immigrants many basic rights, and their complicity in its perpetuation.
