hello, everyone. welcome to "amanpour & co." here's what's coming up. a slew of new books portray a reckless foreign policy, the trump administration hollowing without american diplomacy. i get the real deal with the veteran u.s. diplomat, william burn. as america's powerful reckon with the #metoo tsunami, sally field opens up about her own history of abuse. also today, coming out as an illegal immigrant. our alicia menendez talks to pulitzer prize winning journalist jose antonio vargas.

>> uniworld is a proud sponsor of "amanpour & co." when bee tollman found a collection of boutique hotels, she had bigger dreams, and those dreams were on the water. a river, specifically. multiple rivers that would one day be home to uniworld river cruises and their floating boutique hotels. today that dream sets sail in europe, asia, india, egypt, and more. bookings available through your travel agent. for more information, visit uniworld.com. >> additional support has been provided by recognizance lyndh p. walter. bernard and irene schwartz. sue and et guard wachenheim iii. the sheryl and philip milstein family. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. welcome to the program. i'm christiane amanpour in new york. there were hugs and hand shakes?

pyongyang today as the south korean president moon jae-in arrived there for his third summit with the north korean leader kim jong-un. the two koreas are pushing ahead with their purity of peace on the peninsula, amid-mix the message from washington and facts on the ground that denuclearization talks are stalled and evidence that north korea is still developing its nuclear weapons program. across all fronts from trade to nato to the middle east, american diplomacy under president trump is unpredictable to say the least. his leader-to-leader personal negotiating style leaves his senior staff scrambling, and even undermining the president's promises. veteran diplomat william burn says the hollowing out of u.s. leadership risks undermining the institutions upon which the international order rests. now after a distinguished career serving at the highest levels of the foreign service, burns is now president of the carnegie

endowment for international peace and he's joining me now. welcome to the program. >> great to be with you. >> so i started by saying there's a slew of books as you well know from bob woodward and the enormous article, a lot focus on national security and the trump global agenda. do you agree that it portrays a recklessness, and that fear is the guiding foreign policy agenda here? >> i think one of the broad themes in this administration has been a reckless detachment from the kind of responsibilities that we exercise for a long time and a dismissiveness. he was asked about the number of vacancies, and he said i'm the only one that matters. that's the diplomacy of narcissism. >> so you've talked, i mentioned about the danger of hollowing

out american leadership. it's not just foreign policy, it's actually american leadership, which is at stake. do you really see that happening or is america still leading or be it in a way you don't think is particularly constructive? >> what sets us apart from powers like china is also and our capacity to build coalitions and we're hollowing out professional diplomacy as well. and that, i think, comes at a cost. at a moment on the international landscape when so many things are changing anyway, and it's important for the united states to exercise disciplined leadership. >> so many, many people around the world praise president trump for going the extra mile for meeting kim jong-un and to try to do something that's failed, ending the nuclearization. recently there have been dueling

comments from the president and his own senior staff like national security adviser john bolton about president trump praising kim jong-un, john bolton casting doubts on his intentions. let's just play a couple of sound bites. >> i just came on stage and i was told that kim jong-un said some terrific things about me. he said i have faith in president trump. think of this. you don't hear that from them. [ cheers ] and just moments ago they put on that he said, very strongly, that we want to denuclearize north korea during president trump's tenure. he just said it. >> we're still waiting for them now. the possibility of another meeting between the two presidents obviously exists, but president trump can't make the north koreans walk through door he's holding open.

they're the ones that have to take the steps to denuclearize and that's what we're waiting for. >> so i wonder how you read that because on the one hand, if you're north korea and you get all these big promises from the leader of the country, from the president himself, the leader of the free world, and on the other hand the much more hard line, hardcore national security adviser is seeking, looking like he's putting the brakes on those promises and we know he's disappointed the north koreans aren't denuclearizing. >> the problem with that is it allows you to be manipulated. if you're kim jong-un you want to focus on conversations with the president, the president prematurely declared mission accomplished when he tweeted to americans we don't have anything to worry about when, in fact, it's the beginning of a hard process. it's not like the history of the last 25 years was filled with

achievements and korea diplomacy. the problem is talking past one another and having much different views of what denuclearization is, and the truth is we haven't seen meaningful concessions on either of the missile programs yet from north korea. >> did you think it was significant that their 70th anniversary military parade which was just held that didn't include the usually icbm drag past parade? >> i wouldn't dismiss it. but i think we have to operate without illusions. they are concessions in rolling back the programs and that we haven't seen yet. and the danger is we see china trade war taking their foot off the pedal and enforcement of sanctions, the south koreans moving off on their other pathway on rapprochement, and what's at stake is our strategic

alliances in northeast asia. >> you mentioned something that's obviously front and center of everyone's mind, the tariffs on china and the tat for tat tariff from china a whole new slew put on by president trump last night. hundreds of millions of dollars. where do you think that particular strategy in terms of geopolitics in that region is going to lead? >> he's been right to focus on the importance of improving access to the chinese economy. the question is how you go about pursuing those aims. the transpacific partnership, the big trade agreement would have been a big asset in knitting together lots of players who share our concerns. in pushing back against the chinese on those issues, we have natural partners in the european union and japan. but instead we're embarking on second and third front trade wars with them. so it's not the goals i take issue with at all, it's how we're going about pursuing it.

>> so you're talking about second and third trade wars with them partly tariffs because of their exports but particularly with regard to the iran nuclear deal. so europeans stand to have sanctions put on them if they continue to do business under the deal with iran. and they're very concerned about it. you were there at the creation when iran was brought into the fold to make this deal. where do you think this is headed? i mean, president trump doesn't want this deal. wants to collapse it, it seems. >> i think it was a major mistake to abandon the deal for the united states to pull out, and i think we have followed that step with what i believe is a deeply flawed strategy. i think the purpose of our policy as i understand it is not so much to produce a better deal, it's to cause the iranian regime either to implode or to a pit late and we're

overestimating our ability to renew the kind of economic pressure that brought the iranians to the table seriously years ago simply because in the midst of a trade war with china it's hard to conceive they're going to easily agree to cut their oil imports from iran as well. i think we're adding to the fissures between us and our european allies and doing putin's work for him, and i think we're adding to the risk of escalation in a part of the world that has fragility. >> can i just just be provocative for a second and throw a devil's advocate question at you? would i be correct in assuming and sum mizing neither the u.s. government nor the israeli government under benjamin netanyahu actually fear an iranian nuclear program? because if they did, they wouldn't have pulled out of this deal. >> i think there's been a genuine concern that an unstrained iranian nuclear program is going to add to risk in the middle east, and that was what i thought was the advantage

of pursuing a nuclear agreement that president obama and john kerry achieved. it continues to be a risk in terms of iranian actions that threaten our interests of our friends in the middle east. there's a smart and did you mean way against pushing back against that behavior. >> and this is a dumb way why? >> because we've isolated ourselves rather than the iranians, which is what we spent so many years trying to do. and i think we've in a sense let the iranians off the hook because i think it's going to be very hard to rebuild the kind of economic pressure we had before. and i think there's collateral damage as well. by pursuing sanctions in the face of so many other countries including our closest allies, we're going to increase their incentive along with the russians and chinese to reduce their dependency on the dollar. he mentioned the problem of adding to the fissures. >> the united states has done something kind of incredible.

it has withdrawn all its funding for civilian humanitarian programs that help the palestinians, whether it's the u.n.-related ones or ngos, programs like helping palestinian and israeli girls play soccer today, bridge building, tension reducing kinds of programs. how is that going to help bring the palestinians to the peace table or tamp down the real tensions in that area because jared kushner, he believes that punishing the palestinian civilians will enable peace, not stall it. >> i just think that's a flawed approach. i think it's politically counterproductive and i think it's morally bankrupt to cut the kinds of assistance you described before. it's based on a false premise that you can punish the palestinians into accepting something less than a real state, and i think it's also based on a number

of other notions that over time you can rent the akie sense of palestinians. as you know very well, there's a sense of political distinct. there's also the flawed prem that somehow you can go over the heads of the palestinians and the saudis and others in the arab world who share israel's concern about iran, are going to make concessions with regard to israeli/arab peace and ignore the palestinians. i think that's flawed too. >> it does look and there's plenty of articles around this and plenty of evidence around it, that this particular israeli government sees a sort of like minded, a kindred spirit in donald trump and is doing a lot to push american foreign policy, which is pushing america out of the role of honest broker. where do you come down on this? how much of an influence does benjamin netanyahu when it comes

to iran policy, palestinian policy, the gulf policy, american policy? >> i think there's a confluence of interests obviously over iran, over the palestinian issue right now, but as someone who for a long time was a supporter of israel, as friends we need to be honest. how israel's long term interests, its interest in sustaining what's so important which is its existence and health and prosperity as a jewish democratic state can be preserved when jews are in the minority. i think it creates realities we need to pay attention to. >> i guess the last question on this particular issue is, i assume that under international law as an occupying power, israel would be forced to pony up to help the palestinians with all this international money, u.s. money being pulled out.

is that correct? and i understand also that prime minister netanyahu agreed to the u.s. pulling out this humanitarian aid and civilian aid against the advice of his own security operations. >> what's striking is in the past whenever in congress movements would develop to cut off funding for humanitarian assistance for palestinians was oftentimes the israeli government quietly would suggest this is a bad idea, which made a lot of sense. what's striking now is that you don't have that being offered and i think it's both politically counterproductive and morally bankrupt. >> going back to iran, because they believe that this kind of hard line pressure on iran will change its behavior. president trump said iran's behavior has already changed since i pulled the u.s. out of the nuclear deal. but has it really? because right now we're sitting on the brink of potentially a last offensive by syria into the last sort of safe area, which is idlib.

and iran obviously would be part of that, i guess, push. do you see iran having changed its activity in the region for the better? >> i don't. i mean, it's a healthy thing had a iran has continued to comply with the nuclear agreement. but in the region i think their behavior, their actions have continued to be threatening. in internal terms, what we've done in the short term is strengthen the hand of hard liners and people like the supreme leader who have always been wanting to say, i told you so, you can't trust the americans. finally diplomat to diplomat, curtain secretary of state podium has accused former secretary of state john kerry of inappropriately engaging with iranian officials. where do you come down on that? >> i disagree. i think there's lots of precedent for former senior officials whether republicans or democrats or professional diplomats like me continuing conversations with people with whom they worked. i think the problem in our approach to iran now is not about those contacts. it's about policy.

>> you served many different administrations, republican and democrat. >> i have. >> ambassador bill burns, thank you. a mid-those dramatic developments across the world, here at home people are riveted by the drama that's playing out on capitol hill. brett kavanaugh's fast track tro confirmation as the next supreme court justice has stumbled on his own #metoo moment. allegiances which he denies of sexual molestation dating back to his high school days. it's the latest chapter in a public accounting that started this time last year in hollywood and spread across the country and across the world. now the celebrated actress sally fields has come forward with traumatic stories from her own past. she is one of hollywood's best known actresses whose career stretches from teen stardom to her award winning work with hollywood's

greatest actors and directors. take a look at this iconic moment from her oscar winning in the 1979 movie ""norma rae." it's hard to hear under the factory noise, but you'll definitely get the point. >> forget it. he's going to take you -- to get me out of here. [ inaudible ] >> we'll get sally field to describe that in a moment. she's written a new memoir coming out today called "in pieces" which much for the first

time hollywood's all-american girl shares the dark secrets of her past. sally field, welcome to the program. >> thank you. >> before i get to the body of your book, which is really quite troubling, actually, and quite brave to recount, i just want you to remind us all of the drama of that moment in "norma rae," not only a great film performance, but it was a real political and social and cultural moment. >> made by a wonderful mad who made films like that, marty rip. it is the moment when she is willing to stand up for what she really ultimately finally realizes she stands for, what she believes in, what she's willing to lose her life, her job for. and that is to be treated equally, to be treated fairly by management. and she boldly stands up and refuses to be quiet and slowly but surely you see everyone shuts their machines down in

support of her. it's really her slow growth into finding her own voice. >> it sort of leads me right into you finding your own voice because for a long time you felt invisible as you recount in this book, but also the book is being published today, and i read that even ahead of publication you still were quite nervous about it coming out, wondering whether you had done the right thing. >> constantly. it took me seven years to write it. when my mother passed away i was so disquieted by something, that i couldn't find. i thought i had done all the right things, and there was this urgency in me growing that i couldn't see in front of me. so i had to lay out all the pieces to see if i could put them in place for myself and for no one else. i had a woman to support me i

reached out to early on in new york, a literary agent who wasn't sure i could do it but kept asking how are you doing, how are you doing, and i said to her, molly, i'm going to write this for myself, but i don't know i'll ever have the guts to publish it. and she said after she read 200 pages about three years ago, she said i'm going to be the one urging you to publish this. >> it is as i said, really troubling, but it's an amazing that it comes out at this time when it seems like the world is ready to hear these stories and ready to hold the purpose traytors accountable. you tell a story about your stepfather. we're show pictures of you and your family when you were younger. you suffered sexual molestation at his hands. can you describe that?

i want you to read actually, from your own book. >> oh, boy. >> is it too much? i'll read it to you. >> no. okay. i walked on his back until he rolled over, commanding me to keep going, one foot in front of the other up his chest. his hands slid over my legs then moved up. i walked on this much-loved nonfather of mine carefully trying to avoid where he was aiming my feet. >> how did that affect you? he did not rape you, but he molested you. how did you cope with that as a kid? >> you know, it was my whole life and it grew and grew and grew into more kind of erot tick play as i got older and older. and as a child at seven, eight,

nine, ten, i knew that there was something inside me that wanted it to stop. but i didn't know it was any different than any other child. i didn't know that it was something i had a right to scream about and that this feeling wasn't just because i was wrong. the one of the complications of child abuse, whether it's, you know, sexual or physical or verbal is that the child is so complicated in its need to be loved. certainly i was mixed up in how much i adored him and how much he terrified me. what wired in my brain is that, therefore, what love was is that you have to also be terrified.

you were seen and how valued, but you were terrified and deeply felt you were in danger. so the patterns that get set in a child's mind, then, is they forever after you are looking for that kind of example as love? no. as adults our whole lives we're trying to undo some of the we say that are holding onto us in childhood. >> so when you see what's going on right now today with brett kavanaugh and these laengallega that he denies that come from the 1970s when they were 17 years old be people say it was a long time ago. >> it no longer counts, and that's not right. trust me. it never goes away. it never goes away. whether it's, you know, an abusive stepfather that is throughout your childhood or

it's your young adulthood when, you know, somebody believes they have rights that aren't theirs. it never goes away. i believe that these women that have lived with it and swallowed it and tried to submerge it and forget about it, you don't forget about it and it colors your relationships. trust me. trust me, i trust no one, and that's the truth. i have a very difficult time really letting down and saying, okay, i trust you. >> the book makes it very clear you had very troubled personal relationships, and you had a very difficult relationship with your career as you moved from, you know, teen actress to then tv and films and all this, and finally you won two oscars and it's brilliant, you have great films o your name and you're iconic in america, but the journey was very, very difficult for you.

>> yes, absolutely. what i also wanted to point out is that that journey, that handed down pattern in my life really never went away. so it was hard for me to see any success. it never penetrated my mind. >> you know what? you write about that as well, about the difficulty in seeing the success. first, i just want you to read a little bit and then i promise i'll stop making you read. but one of the things that really for wont of a better word, saw your career soar to heights was the flying nun. we loved it and i was shocked to read how much you didn't love it. >> no. >> and how ridiculous you felt doing it. >> yes. >> read that because it is quite profound. >> i couldn't tell if the flying nun was the joke or i was. couldn't distinguish between the bell of my past and the chimes

of the present. i felt deeply disgraced as if everyone was laughing at me. it was all gibberish, not inspired comedic anonymous, meaningless twaddle with nothing real to relate to. >> how long did it take you to get over that feeling about not the flying nun, but everything, your work? >> i was lucky enough to be taken detouring flying nun, in the first year when i was terribly depressed. i would buy madeleine sher wood who played mother superior literally stuff a note in my hand one day and said meet me there, tuesday night. you have no excuse, i'll see you there at the actors studio and it began to transition my life because i met and started working with lee straussburg so that i then could reach out for what i really wanted. when i was 12 years old was the first time i stepped on stage and at that something, something

happened. that's why the arts should be in every school for a troubled child, the bells rang, the fog cleared. i could hear myself. and then it was gone. and i was just a kid who didn't know what to do with their hands. but i found at the actors studio for the first time there was a method that i could learn, techniques that i could learn to take me where i wanted to go. >> it is a remarkable transformation. and then, of course, you did films that are stuck in our memory. i want to play a little clip of forest gump where you were tom hanks' mom. >> yes. >> well, i happen to believe you make your own destiny. you have to do the best with what god gave you. >> what's my destiny, mama?

>> you're going to have to figure that out for yourself. life is a box of chocolates, forest. you never know what you're going to get. >> that's so cool. life is a box of chocolates. everybody quotes it. >> yes, i know. >> how do you feel seeing that? how did you enjoy that ole. >> i never look at this. at the time when we were doing it and i was in my 40s, i guess, and i thought, boy, they really aged me. i just look so old and i thought, looking at it now, boy, do i look young. now i could be doing it. it was certainly a wonderful experience in my life to have the opportunity to play that character. and to age like that, for an actor to be able to experiment with starting younger than what i was and without prosthetics to even age some unknown age that when mama gump leaves him.

>> it's really sad. >> my tomboy anytime. >> really quite poignant. such a great film. but, of course, right now since butter reynolds died, the focus has been very much on your relationship with him, and of course with your book and you write about it, which is, again, really interesting. i'm going to read this from your book about butter reynolds who you dated for a long time. butter started to fill me in about his life, the kind of thing you do when you want someone to know who you are, and i wanted to tell my sides, little bits of me. i got subtle hints that he didn't want to know. i found someone to love, to pour my heart into, someone i felt frightened off and i was seeking to be loved in the only way i knew how, by disappearing. he died before this book came out. >> yes. >> are you pleased, not pleased that he didn't get to read what you felt? >> probably if i were to be really honest i would say i'm

plead he didn't read it because it would have hurt him probably, even though i don't think that i paint an egregious picture of a terrible guy, i paint a irrelevant of my own process of not being able to get out of it. but it would have hurt him because he wanted to be a hero, and he was a human. that's, i think, sometimes more important than being a hero. or maybe what i mean is that real humans and being able to be vulnerably, wrongly flawed human is a hero. >> you mentioned on the set of smokey and the bandit, he is quoted as saying it was love at first sight. he said she's the girl for me. he says he fell head over heels for you, but you describe not just this paragraph, but in some of the roles you chose, some of the award ceremonies you wanted to go to, him not being supportive. walk us through some of those.

>> you know, i think i describe it in the book a relationship we just fell into like we had known each other all of our lives that was preformed rut in my road literally. it was a pattern i was december ki -- destined to repeat. he was more important than anything i had to do, so if he needed me, then it meant drop everything that i valued so that i could about there and be kind of diminished. in reality, i was kind of asking to be diminished because i was diminishing myself. >> and he didn't believe in the "norma rae" script, he didn't think you could do it or that it would be any good. >> he never said he didn't think i could do it, he just thought it was a piece of trash and thought it was -- that i would

be playing a w.h.o.re, which she isn't. and i honestly think he didn't -- and i'm speaking for him and he can't speak for himself. he didn't want to lose this little mate i was with unconditionally loving him. i needed nothing in return. i was asking for nothing, just being everything he needed me to be because somehow that's what i was taught to be. so i think he didn't want to lose that little help mate. but the one part of me that i would not tampaer with was that part of me. when he insulted norma, i stood up for norma, and not myself. >> and then myou won an oscar fr that role, and then you won another oscar for places in the heart in 1985. and that was when your oscar speech went viral if we could have gone viral in those days,

these amazing pictures of you exactly tant. we're not allowed to play it but i can say i haven't had an orthodox career and i wanted miranda warning anything to have your respect you told the audience. this time i feel it and i can't deny the fact you like me. right now you like me. >> right. >> how did you feel at that time when people thought you had gone over the top? >> you know, i think i had a survival system that my childhood both harmed me with and helped me with in the profession i chose because i have an ability to dive into a fog bank where i just choose not to see what overwhelms me. it's what i learned to do as a child. i think it's what i'm probably doing right now in my life, but i think i did it then. i just said, well, it's not a good conscious thought.

i fog everything out. also, you know, you read it so accurately of what i said. i immediately correspondi they always say i said you like me, you really like me. i can't deny that right now you like me, meaning this could leave tomorrow, but i want to own this second because these are fleeting moments for anybody in the arts. they're fleeting moments, and right now i own this. >> you know what, in reading your book i fully understand why you said that even without the clarification because you had gone through such hell on the way to that point, and you had such little confidence in yourself that it seems to me it was this amazing recognition. >> it wasn't that -- i have a lot of confidence in myself in reality. there was a part of me that felt

unstoppable. but i had warring factions in myself, pieces of myself that were not connected to each other. so one part was terribly confident and would not be stopped, and the other part wanted to hide. >> the warring factions appear in your book because you dodged the good bits, so to speak, of your life in your book. you've written why is it easier to write about the times that were humiliating or shameful, is it because those are the things that haunt me? do i hold on to those dark times as a badge of honor? are they my identity? >> yes, i think i try to answer my own question in there because i think to a degree they have been. i think i talk about how i became my own lore to myself, my own fable, this is who i am. and having to write this and forcing myself to go to the

places i didn't want to go just as an actor and trying to do a character i would go to places i didn't want to go and unearth things. so i think it forced me to look at the places that i had been culpable in really harmful activities. >> and finally, your life forced you to confront your mother as she was dying, and you had all these horrendous feelings about the abuse you had suffered and her role in at least, i mean, not only -- >> not knowing what it ever was. >> tell me, how did you make peace with that? >> well, the tail end of the book, i think the real reason i wrote it is to put all of that together which cull minimum natures with the last conversation that i had with her the last real conversation where i tell her. things that she had mentioned

that i had throughout the years that i wrote in my journal that i kept journeys for 40 years and immediately erased from my mind that i had gone back because i was writing this book to uncover things i didn't know. but i asked her, i told her what had happened, and ultimately what she did in return is simply triumphant. >> what did she do? >> well, if i tell you that, it will spoil the end. you'll know whodunit. >> all right, sally field. i'll let people read it, but it's a really compelling book and it's clearly taken a lot out of you and a lot of years. thank you. >> thank you. now we turn to the immigration crisis that continues to tear at america's soul. the u.s. government is now holding a record number of immigrant children in custody,

12,800 to be precise. this broken system is unsparing from the most vulnerable children to those closest to power. jose antonio vargas was already an accomplished journalist when he wrote a blockbuster essay for "the new york times." my life as an undocumented immigrant. he's now the founder of the nonprofit define american trying to reframe the conversation and even the terms we use. and he's author of a new book "dear america, notes of an undocumented citizen." alicia menendez teamed up to start that organization. here is their conversation. >> what i remember most about your coming out was that you were very prepared for those who are anti-immigrant would say, - of the immigrant rights community would think about you. >> and progressives in general.

as a journalist i never identified as either. i'm guy, i'm undocumented, i'm filipino. probably for some people that would mean i'm a progressive. but since i never voted, i never really claimed a party in that way. so being thrust into this immigrant rights racial justice progressive moment was really new to me, especially on the other side. >> what was new you to and there were people who were resentful that you had not shown up sooner. >> yeah. they were like, we've been protesting since high school while you were lying and making money at "the washington post" and the mcconnechronicle. there was not only resentment but just uncertainty about what is he going to do. >> was that fair? >> look, was that fair?

noly for me it wasn't. people cling to what they fear because it's a lot easier. in college i majored in african-american studies and political science. so, so much of what i learned from america was the perspective of people who had always been challenging america. i was coming from a place where we're challenging the definition. this is not blind patriotism. and patriotism, what is wrong with patriotism? there's nothing wrong with saying, i think, right, that i am proud to be an american. i am proud of it. but i think with that pride comes the criticisms and the fact that this country is not only imperfect, but we're living in a criesis. those two things can coexist. >> bill o'reilly called you the most famous illegal in america. quite the juxtaposition of words. how has your notoriety protected. >> you i'm sure it's protected me. i'm definitely sure of that and the guilt i carry because of

that, in the book i write about the first time what happened when i was afford in texas summer of 2014 and how i got out. i was detained for eight hours in mcallen where the kids are being caged and locked up and separated from families. and i got out after eight hours. and i didn't really want to know how i got out, but in writing the book i had to figure out who he called and why. the guilt about i get arrested, it's breaking news on cnn, and people care. people are getting arrested and detained every day. >> a mom gets her kid ripped from the border and she's anonymous. >> she's anonymous and we're getting to a point in this country where i don't know about you, but it's so much that i can't process everything, and yet i have to keep looking at it, i have to keep reading it, i have to keep watching. we should not be desensitized from it. so that has been hard.

when bill o'reilly said that, i think in the same interview he said to me that i don't deserve to be in america, which gets us to this question of wait a second, what has bill o'reilly done to deserve to be in america too? just kind of flipping the question around. so when i wrote that, i really wanted to pose the questions to the readers and the audience about this process of earning and what that's about. like, you are a u.s. citizen because you were born here, right? so is that it? congratulations. the accident of birth? and we're telling people across the country that, you know, they have to earn their citizenship while we talk about them like insects off you are on our back and we treat them like criminals? what are we doing? i have three questions. where did you come from? how did you get here? who paid? if you can't answer those three

questions, you have no right to talk to anyone about what borders they cross, or with a they're breaking. >> you're 12 years old, your mom takes you to the airport in the philippines and she puts you on a plane. why were you not able to do come to the united states legally? >> because my grandparents couldn't petition me. ichbts considered a close enough of a relationship even though they were citizens to petition a grandson. >> do we know how much your mother paid? >> my mother couldn't pay. it was my grandfather. it was $4,500. >> where did he get that money? >> saved. can you imagine? can you imagine how much time was spent trying to save that money? when i think back on it now, i'm trying to understand how long they had planned it and how much my mother who didn't have the money really understood what she was doing.

when she said, yeah, he can come, does she really know what that incent i don't know. my grandmother was a food server. she made maybe $4.50 an hour, maybe $5. my grandfather was a security guard, maybe $6 or $7 an hour. it was interesting when you add it up, the fact that they had to take care of a family here including me, and then at the same time provide for a family back in the philippines, which, again, is the reality for so many immigrants in this country, right? and then the kind of cycle of dependency that gets created. they take care of my mom, so now i take care of my mom and then the cycle goes on and on and on. >> how long did it take before you realized she was never coming? >> i didn't realize that until i found out i was here illegally, which was four years later when i tried to apply for a driver's license. is there anything more american

than driving? so i was 16. my friend was like i'm getting tired of driving you around in the nicest possible way he said that. that's when all the lies i had been told started unraveling. and that's why for me -- in writing the book, there are 11 million undocumented people in this country, although i would argue there's far more than 11 million people. if we documented the undocumented white, black and asian people we rarely talk about, it's more than 11 million people. in writing the book, i really struggled with trying to figure out how do i write this in a way that other people who may not share my specific circumstances could relate to it. so coming up with this idea with my editor that these phases we live through, we lie, we pass, we try to pass, and we hide. >> up until 16 you're not lying. you're in the dark, and i think people would watch and say, jose, you're very smart.

how did you make it to 16 and not put the pieces together? >> at that point that was four years of probably the most innocent time i had for myself. when i look back at that time, i was a sponge. i just absorbed everything. no one around me was undocumented. and mind you, at that time there was no social media, there was no internet. whenever anybody said anybody was, quote/unquote, illegal or whenever anybody talked about the wall or the border or immigration, it was always about mexican people. so this was never -- i just never thought of it as, quote/unquote, my problem. >> you came out there was response from the progressive moment, from your peers, your journalist peers. and the fundamental question was can you write about politics and immigration when you have such a personal story that is at the heart of the issue?

>> that was certainly the question back in 2011. originally it was supposed to come out in "the washington post," and the "washington post" ended up killing the story and i had to, like, you know, rally to get it to "the new york times." and the "washington post," of course, had to write a story about why they killed my story, and the headline was, why did "the washington post" deport vargas vargas' story? i had to read it. i hadn't read it until writing the book. i read it when it first came out, but i didn't want to read it because it was so painful. journalism is sacred to me. journalism is why i exist. it's the way i've been able to write myself into america, and i felt at that time when i was deported from my own industry, it was so painful and these people i respected say how do you trust a liar. back then people were saying it

was a conflict of interest. those same people now i think are finally understood we're talking about a human rights issue. >> do you ever recall believe, though, that journalists have changed their stance that now having a personal experience doesn't prohibit you from write about it? >> i think that process as started. it's the same process that we went through during the civil rights movement in the '50s and '60s and during the gay rights movement that's still happening. journalists have to figure out what are we really talking about here. why are experiences being politicized. you're seeing "the new york times," npr and "washington post" question. "the washington st" sets the agenda, tistill refer to peoples illegal immigrants. so that hasn't stopped yet and absolutely we will keep

pressuring them to do that. >> for much of your life you defined yourself by your writing, you defined yourself by journalism. >> in a way it became kind of my own wall. it was to it was easy to write about other people than myself. when i wasn't that anymore to people, all of a sudden i'm like, who am i? so i had to deal with that. >> and after you lie and pass and hide for so long, how do you answer that question? >> i think you answer it by being as uncompromising as possible in trying to understand what motivates your actions and why you do what you do. why do i do what i do? why haven't i just left? sometimes people on twitter, god i love people who take time to write you e-mails, you know? they see something on twitter and they hate me or whatever and they write me an e-mail.

one time someone said, you're being really selfish. your mom may die and if she dies, you're not there. or when somebody says why don't you just leave? and then i ask myself, why don't i just leave? well, because this is -- america is where i became who i am. migrating to this country is not simply looking at the statue of liberty and wanting the american dream. the many of us come here because you were in our countries. what has the u.s. done to horrendous and guatemala. what does u.s. foreign policy have to do with foreign migration patterns. i consider it a natural progression of history. if the western world can come to our countries, to those

countries, and move to those countries, forcibly move to those countries to build their economies, why can't people move now? >> i want to read from the book. you write the truth is if mama had known then when she knows now that calling her on the phone is difficult because i can't pretend. i look at you now, the person you've become, and how can i have any regrets. i'm sure she meant it as a statement, but it sounded like a question. the truth is there's a part of me who is still on that airplane wondering why mama put me there. have you forgiven your mom? >> oh, my god, yes. i actually think the question now is, i wonder if she's forgiven me. i wonder if -- i wonder if she

understands it's more than the money i send or the clothes or the lan comb makeup things that she likes from macy's, that i don't make sense without her and that the sacrifices and really for a mother the ultimate sacrifice she made is something i'm trying to honor by doing what i do. i got to tell you, though, i can't wait to see her in person and thank her in person without any cameras or without anybody else seeing it. >> i want to ask about that because at the end of the book you do give her the last word. and she says, maybe it's time to come home. >> yeah. >> and i wonder if you are a person for whom there is a home. >> i think defining home is something that's going to be the work of my life. i think defining home for people

who feel like they're not at home -- we're in new york. we live in a country where puerto ricans in this country even though they're citizens of the country legally, they don't feel like they are. i would argue that the black lives matter movement is about citizenship and who gets to belong in this country and who getso call it what it is. that question of home is something that all of us gram with, and i think that is going to be the work of my life, figuring that out. >> jose, thank you so much. >> thank you for having me. >> and the sacrifices for citizenship that he talks about are so poignant. his unrevolvsolved relationshiph his mother. so many of the immigrants that come here are because of what u.s. foreign policy was towards their own countries historically. it's a really important point. and the question of home is even

more pressing as with millions of displaced people all over the world, the trump administration plans to slash the number of refugees allowed into the u.s. to just 30,000. it's kind of a record low, that, at a time when the as you say saying the crisis of refugees, the surge in the number of refugees around the world is unprecedented. tomorrow i'll talk to the head of the u.n. secretary-general guterres guterres. that is fit for our program tonight. thanks for watching "amanpour & co." on part-time job and join us again tomorrow. >> uniworld is a proud sponsor

of "amanpour & co." when bee coleman founded a collection of boutique hotels, she had bigger dreams and those dreams were on the water. a river specifically, multiple rivers that would one day be home to uniworld river cruises and their floating boutique hotels. today that dream sets sail in europe, asia, india, egypt, and more. booking through your travel agent. for more information, visit uniworld.com. >> additional support has been provided by recognizance lyndh p. walter. bernard and irene schwartz. sue and ed car wachenheim iii. the sheryl and philip milstein family. >> and my contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

♪ - today on milk street we're here in madrid to do something, well, kind of crazy. we're meeting with two very famous chefs, but they're known for their fusion cooking and we're going to ask them to do something traditional, something that actually translates well to america. now the first is abraham garcia. he's going to make carcamusas. that's essentially a stew with three different kinds of meat made in a skillet in just half an hour. the next guy is joaquin felipe.