In this week’s cover story of TIME, José Antonio Vargas writes about the growing immigration rights movement and the ins and outs of the citizenship process. Vargas himself is an undocumented immigrant who revealed his status about a year ago. Here, TIME looks at Vargas’ life through his own family photos.
I am blessed to have two families in my life: the family I was born to, the Abaga and Salinas families of my maternal grandmother and grandfather, who legally emigrated from Iba, Philippines to the United States in the mid-1980s; and the family I found thousands of miles away, in Mountain View, Calif., where I went to school. Together with my family of friends, I have been able to live and survive in America, my home.