Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Dear America, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Citizenship, Belonging, and Identity
Family, Love, and Intimacy
Immigration Politics and Policy
Journalism, Storytelling, and the Power of Truth
Summary
Analysis
“There is no passing alone,” writes Vargas. At every key moment in his life, strangers saved him. The woman at the DMV told him about his fake green card, but didn’t call immigration. The Mountain View High School staff helped him get financial aid. The Seattle Times recruiter didn’t report him, while the Washington Post staff didn’t get him fired. He points out that, if every undocumented immigrant received help from five people, then 66 million Americans would be affected by undocumented immigration.
Vargas emphasizes both the personal and collective significance of his reliance on strangers. Personally, he only managed to succeed because others fought for and cared about him. Collectively, the fact that all undocumented people rely on others—whether friends, family members, or strangers—means that undocumented immigration is a much larger and more significant political issue than it might appear at first. Many Americans view undocumented people as faceless, criminal “others” who are totally separate from the community of U.S. citizens. But in reality, most U.S. citizens probably coexist with and depend on undocumented people, whether they know it or not. Those who do know tend to carry this burden privately—but if they worked together publicly, Vargas suggests, these tens of millions of Americans could form a powerful political bloc.
Themes
