Deport Jose Vargas. Fine the WaPo...

and all the employers who illegally had this man on their payrolls. Absolutely he has a right to tell his story. But he doesn't get out of the consequences of his ... civil disobedience (to put it lightly).

What a slap in the face to every immigrant who worked hard, sacrificed, studied and LEGALLY immigrated to the United States. Who did it the right way, and whose children enjoy the benefits of legal immigration.

If we continue to look the other way toward such confessed continual wrongful behavior, we reward those who would continue to cheat the system. Look where that's gotten the country...

These "mentors"* who "helped" the young man continue to lie and deceive to advance his career? Fine, fine, fine them. Shame them to the high heavens; they're exactly the same in their failure to check documents as those fruit plantations in Florida that would pack dozens of illegal workers into the back of pickups at dawn to head out to the fields, and if the truck crashes into a drainage culvert and all the workers die? Non citizens, the OSHA laws don't apply to them.

Laws with no teeth do little to cause someone to respect the system. (And please, don't give me that Mr. Vargas is so valuable in his journalism work that no Americans would take the jobs his "mentors" illegally inveigled for him to advance**, in position even to win a team Pulitzer. The examples of deliberately active evasion -- cherrypicking states for their drivers licensing rules, for one, show that this was an ongoing pattern of deception, and I don't see once where he worked toward HONEST citizenship, or tried to play by the same rules that all other newcomers to America must in order to gain LEGAL immigrant status....)

He said he didn't know about his citizenship status until four years after he arrived in the US, when he applied for a driver's permit and handed a clerk his green card.

"This is fake," a Department of Motor Vehicles clerk said, according to Vargas' account. "Don't come back here again."

Vargas confronted his grandfather, who acknowledged he purchased the green card and other fake documents.

"I remember the very first instinct was, OK, that's it, get rid of the accent," Vargas told ABC. "Because I just thought to myself, you know, I couldn't give anybody any reason to ever doubt that I'm an American."

He convinced himself that if he worked hard enough and achieved enough, he would be rewarded with citizenship.

His grandfather imagined the fake documents would help Vargas get low-wage jobs. College seemed out of reach, until Vargas told Mountain View High School Principal Pat Hyland and school district Superintendent Rich Fisher about his problem. They became mentors and surrogate parents, eventually finding a scholarship fund for high-achieving students that allowed him to attend San Francisco State University.

Vargas was hired for internships at The San Francisco Chronicle and the Philadelphia Daily News. He was denied an internship at The Seattle Times because he didn't have all the documents they required. But he kept applying and got an offer from The Washington Post.

The newspaper required a driver's license, so Vargas said his network of mentors helped him get one from Oregon, which has less stringent requirements than some other states.

Once hired full-time at the Post, he used the fake license to cover Washington events, including a state dinner at the White House, Vargas recalled.

He wrote that he was nearly paralysed with anxiety that his secret would be found out at the Post. He tried to avoid reporting on immigration policy, but at times, it was impossible. At one point, he wrote about then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's position on driver's licenses for illegal immigrants.

Vargas eventually told his mentor, Peter Perl, now the newspaper's training director. Perl told him that once he had accomplished more, they would tell then-Editor Leonard Downie Jr. and Post Chairman Don Graham together. They kept the secret until Vargas left the paper.

Washington Post spokesman Kris Coratti has condemned their actions.

"What Jose did was wrong. What Peter did was wrong," he said. "We are also reviewing our internal procedures, and we believe this was an isolated incident of deception."

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* Their motivation? I'm sure it went something like this: "What a nice young Hispanic man who doesn't have all the privileges we do. Let's (unethically) help the poor brown-skinned youngster to get a job in our ranks, and at the same time, we get to feel good at helping out the less fortunate and giving minority Hispanic voices a place in our newly diversified profession. What good guys we are!"

** You know what part of the Clinton sexx scandal really got my goat? When it was revealed he had Vernon Jordan shopping Monica around for journalism jobs, as part of the hush-hush-and-goodbye package he was trying to set up when their trysts were over. That doesn't harm others who worked hard and played by the rules? (without wearing the kneepads to advance as Monica apparently did.)


ADDED: Naturally, WaPo writer and Journolist founder Mr. Ezra Klein feels sorry for the poor fella. Says in his view, Vargas has special skills so that he should be treated, well, special. As a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, he’s an extraordinarily high-achieving, driven individual. He’s sufficiently unusual that we should be leery of drawing overly broad conclusions from his experiences. What worked for him might not work for someone else.

Here's what the first commenter thinks, though:

The thing is, Ezra, he may have talent, but he broke the law, repeatedly. You may say he had no choice. He had a choice. He could have returned to his country, or hired a lawyer and sought relief in the courts somehow. Everytime he got a job, including with the Post, he forged papers which the Federal Government relied upon.

And more to the point, he stole jobs from US citizens. I don't care about the Pulitzer, he was one of a group of reporters and I don't think that makes him uniquely qualified somehow. The Post keeps telling us that illegal aliens take jobs US citizens won't do. How many 2011 graduates of journalism schools are unemployed right here right now?

And here's my reply to that one (as of yet, unworthy of being put up on the WaPo site, it seems...):

Spot on!
As the daughter of a legal immigrant, who graduated with a journalism degree and who has also paid my dues (teenage jobs, working my way up -- legally -- in the field), it is utter liberal nonsense to say this man has skills that no American can match.

He is also gay. Makes me wonder, what exactly was the impulse that led his "network" of conspirators to continue encouraging him to try and deceive the system. They actually changed the high school field trip, denying other students the chance to travel abroad, because the illegal immigrant kid didn't have the right papers.

Let's be honest: were this an illegal Eastern European immigrant, he NEVER would have had so many doors illegally held open for him at newspapers. Only because they were so desperate to recruit brown-skinned diversity were the American immigration laws routinely overlooked. Except not "overlooked" so much but many, many times ACTIVELY broken -- in gaining the false documents needed.

This young man might have once upon a time been a victim in being brought here illegally. But clearly, according to his words, he made the active CHOICE not to follow legal advice and return to the Phillipines for 10 years (the advice given in 2002 -- 9 full years ago.)

He is a slap in the face to every LEGAL immigrant who played by the rules and worked hard to advance themselves and their families. No amount of teenage jobs, good writing, or active deception in breaking the laws can make up for the fact that by continuing to play his games, he stole from others. From the students denied the chance in high school to travel abroad, from the journalism students who missed out on the chance to compete -- LEGALLY -- for the internships and jobs he took under false pretenses... and on and on.

I really hope they make an example of this man. Plus, for all those who favor the DREAM Act, this man will not help the cause. Plenty of those children, upon learning they were brought here illegally, do NOT cheat, lie and falsify their way up.

This man -- as an adult -- chose to continue, again and again, breaking the laws. He should be deported, and get in line, behind all those who have/are playing within the immigration rules.

Yes, you can immigrate legally. Yes, it takes a lot of perseverance and hard work. A true shame that this aspiring young man put his energies into building a network of deception, instead of concentrating on what he could do -- within the rules -- to make his situation legal.

Going away for 10 years, (plenty of immigrants have waited/worked on it for longer) would mean that in one more year, he would have been eligible to come here and compete legally for journalism jobs and immigration status. LEGAL immigration status.

The only people crying tears for this man are liberals who would help some at the expense of others. And of course, they get to define what makes one worthy. (brown skin. gay. ambitious. ?)

Nope, the law is the law is the law. You don't like the rules liberals, work to change them. Don't think you have some special rights to pick and choose who gets in, and gets to work, according to your own personal preferences.

One question, Ez: Was this man a card-carrying preferential member of that exclusive Journolist you used to host, before you too got caught and had to shut it down?