Mom tells Jose Antonio Vargas via Skype: ‘I did this for you, anak’

The ‘doctored’ driver’s license that enabled Jose Antonio Vargas to go on road trips around California

Two summers ago, Jose Antonio Vargas defied the advice of immigration lawyers and fearful relatives when he publicly announced he was an undocumented immigrant.

In the documentary film, “Documented,” which he wrote and directed, the Pulitzer Award-winning Vargas unveils how his life has unfolded since his courageous confessional appeared in The New York Times. How he has traveled across the country engaging people in conversation on immigration reform. How he was chased out of a Mitt Romney campaign in Iowa. How he listened to a story about a woman from Britain whose immigration process was fast-tracked with the help of a U.S. senator.

The film’s high point was the appearance of Vargas’s mother, Emelie Salinas, who is in the Philippines. It depicted their estranged relationship of many years, and how the film has been one “emotional journey” for both of them.

It took three years before he accepted her Facebook friend request. In the end, she says to her son who is 10,000 miles away: “I did that for you. Mahal na mahal kita, anak.”

“The fact that I have seen more of my mom in the past three to four months editing this film than in the past 20 years…sometimes I have to get out of the editing room,” Vargas told The FilAm Metro D.C. in a voice choked with emotion. “It’s painful.”

He said the film is not intended to be a “self-serving narcissistic soap opera.”

“I don’t want to do a ‘Maala-ala Mo Kaya’ version of this,” he said. “I want to make sure that the story is told with as much integrity and sensitivity as possible.”

The film, two years in the making, was originally meant to be a documentary on DREAM Act youth, said Vargas. “I had five young people that I was going to document.”

“It became much more personal” in the course of fleshing out the project. Still, there remained a certain reticence because Vargas, who has not seen his mother for 20 years, was “most afraid of dealing with that (the emotional aspect).”

Director of photography, Clarissa de los Reyes, spent four days with Salinas.

“At some point it became a very emotional interview because they haven’t seen each other in 20 years. There were so many things unsaid. The distance created this gap between them,” she told this reporter.

The heart-tugging scene came when mother and son ‘Skyped’ for the first time.

Vargas received a standing ovation from about 400 guests that filled the Nan Tucker McEvoy Auditorium of the National Portrait Gallery in Downtown D.C. His hope, he told his audience, is for ‘Documented’ to stir an even bigger conversation — that immigration affects lives and the issue is more than just border security.

He said, “This is not about politics, this is not about Republican or Democrat, this is not about border security. This is about broken families and broken lives. That’s the message I want to send.”

Vargas still dreams of one day seeing his mom, hugging her and spending a quiet moment together, recalling a childhood in a Zambales beach “eating rice, vinegar and fish off banana leaves.”

Emelie Salinas on Skype