PHOTOS: Jose Antonio Vargas Among Friends

It was a bit like old home week for Jose Antonio Vargas, returning the night of Thursday, Mar. 1 to answer questions about his years living underground and in plain sight, winning a Pulitzer prize and writing for the New Yorker.

Residents of Los Altos and Mountain View, and even some students from UC-Santa Cruz came out to listen to the interview with and ask questions of, the 2000 graduate of MVHS. Some in the audience shared their own feelings of uncertainty with unsettled immigration status, and wondered aloud about the polarization and mean-spiritedness that marks many discussions about immigration.

Afterwards, staff members of the Oracle, the MVHS paper that Vargas once worked on, posed with him. Vargas had , six weeks before his essay was published in the New York Times Magazine about reaching great heights in profession, all the while worrying about his undocumented status.