good evening from los angeles. i'm tavis smiley. tonight, a conversation with journalist and immigration activist jose antonio vargas. he's written about his own struggles as an undocumented immigrant. he was in texas to call the attention of plight of tens of thousands of migrant children.+x his documentary living in this country without papers is titled "docume "documented." and then a conversation with singer, drummer and per accusationist sheila e., she's collaborated with prince, lionel richie and others to name a few. we're glad you've joined us. those conversations coming up right now.

♪ ♪t jose antonio vargas arrived in this country from the native philippines some 21 years ago.

since then he's made his mark as a pulitzer prize winning journalist and outspoken activist. his documentary "undocumented" chronicles what it's like to live in this country without papers and an experience he shares with 11 million others in this country. jose details with an angry man who challenges -- talked to an angry man who challenged his right to, in fact, be here. >> bye-bye. bye-bye. get your papers or get out. that's what -- you've got your papers? got your papers? >> what if i told you i didn't? >> you need to get going then. that's what i say. >> okay.jt >> that would be my response. >> go home. >> no we're not going nowhere. you shut up. shut your face. >> don't embarrass me. >> you took the steps to be --

>> there's no steps. >> there is a couple steps. >> like what? there's no steps, man. my mom wanted to give me i guess a better life. i was 12. she sent me to live with her parents in california. >> right. there you lived with them. >> yeah. i lived with them and found out i was illegal. >> how many americans do you think he speaks for, get your papers or get out? >> enough that we can't get immigration reform passed. so i've done -- i've traveled to 44 states, maybe about 300 events, about 120 college campuses in the past 3 years, and i completely underestimated the gap between the reality and the perception. i always assumed it was big. i just didn'tl realize it was like oceanic. >> yeah. >> did not. and to be in alabama, right, to be in birmingham, you know, and we shot that october 2011. it had just -- the anti-immigration bill in alabama had just been law of the land

that it was a felony for me to even just be in alabama. that if you were driving me, it would be a felony for you to be driving me. in alabama? in 2011? like, what is this? so it -- i have to say, like, this is where i think we need culture and we need media and journalists to really kind of clear, get people cleared up on what the issue is and what thei facts are. >> and what do you think, let's indict the media for what they're not doing. when's the media not doing and do you think that by not doing it, the media is come police it? >> absolutely come police sit. as somebody who journalism was my way of life. i only became a journalist because my name would be on a piece of paper. by jose antonio vargas. if you're not here legally, you don'tte have the right papers, thought what if i'm on the papers? i have to say that lacking in

context, right, the fact that undocumented, the social security administration said that undocumented workers in the past decade paid $100 billion into social security.k most of that we're not going to get back. we have paid about $11.2 billion of state and local taxes just in 2010. do you ever hear these figures? no, you don't. the fact that, you know, it's very important i think to remind ourselves of our own history coming to this issue. why is it that this issue categorized as a mexican border security issue? full 1 million of the 11 million undocumented people are asian. we don't talk about undocumented africans and caribbeans which is a big population of people. i'm not actually surprised our own president doesn't really touch upon it in that way. right? i think lacking in context and getting this out of the political partisan lens in which it's often, you know, framed in.

i think it's been very, very detrimental. how do you legalize people who aren't legal? you don't. the fact that "the new york times" and "the washington post" refer to it as illegal, that's why i'm showing the film. the psychological and many mental toll of this was for me an imxurimperative. >> i take your point but for anybody who may have missed that distinction that you made between being here illegal versus as a human being. >> yes. >> being illegal, unpack that distinction for me. >> well, ellie visel said you don't call a people illegal. that's what the nazis did to the jews. think about it s. there any

other instance of referring to people as illegal? no. and for me, the biggest tragedy is traveling around the country, people assume i'm mexican because my name is jose. it's called, you know, colonialism. the spanish colonialized the philippines and when people find out i'm not mexican they feel okay to bash mexicans in front of me and the biggestu tragedy s probably hearing people use illegal and mexican interchangeably. interchangeably. as if all undocumented people are mexicans, something wrong with being mexican and all of latin america is mexico. i'm sorry. didn't mexico used to own parts of the united states? there's that. and the fact that being here in this country without papers illegally is a civil offense. and not a criminali one. so calling somebody illegal is actually factually incorrect. >> i'm glad you raised this, jose, because i was going to get to this. i wonder how you think if you

think the conversation about immigration reform in this country would, in fact, change if we didn't see it as just a mexican issue because you're right about -- again, no doubt about the fact a significant number. >> absolutely. >> not the complete number. >> not the complete number. >> i won't restate that. if more people knew that and if the president and others to your brilliant point incorporated that into the conversation about undocumented, you know -- >> people in this country. >> yeah. how might that change the conversation? >> i think it would really open it up and allow us to have a conversation instead of a debate. all tough do is watch fox, msnbc and see people get in their own lanes and rarely really have a discourse. even that scene you showed, once i tell that man i pay taxes, he was like, oh, i didn't know that. well, that's good and then he says i'm a contractor, a blue

collar guy. these people come in and charge less. well, that's a really valid point. right? and look. i can't ask for empathy if i can't empathize with other people but what he failed to mention is who's to blame in that scenario? employers. we are a country always addicted to cheap qzlabor. who built the south? talk to you about that. >> not just cheap labor, free labor in my case. >> absolutely. >> black america. >> but that's why, i mean, look at it this way. what sign is outside of the u.s.-mexico border? keep out. in ten yards in, who do we say, help wanted? we have a way of dealing with. sometimes i wonder, is the broken system really broken or is it deliberate? is it deliberate? we want second-class citizens of people that do the work we don't want to do. or, in this country, again, i don't need to tell you this. we have always wanted someone to beub the other.

and in some ways, the other in this country especially post- 9/11 has been the immigrant, the illegal alien. right? we're taking over your town. here's to me what was so interesting doing this film going all around the south. i spent a month in alabama. here i am, i look latino. my name is asian. i'm gay. i go to birmingham and tuscaloosa and talking to them and start realizing, they haven't really even fully come to grips with the whole black and white thing and i'm adding things on top of it and no wonder why people are confused. no wonder -- i mean, really. no wonder, no wonder when you go around the country in the midwest, in the south, in places that are really demographically changing. georgia added a million immigrants to the state. right? people feel a real sense of anxiety about their own ident y identity.

my next film project will be on whiteness in america. what means to be young and white in a country that's less and less white. what's sfwhit growing up in the philippines, i didn't know what white or black was. i got here and found out that u black. >> yeah. >> but then he looked white and i was like -- you know? i feel like6l1w this country invented white and black. and now that you're dealing with all these quote/unquote immigrants we have to come to a better grip of who we are and define american. >> to your point then, how much of this then do you think because you mentioned the next film you'reworking on, what it means to be white in america as the country is less and less white. >> yes. >> whether it cuts that bay or bashing immigrants and undocumented workers, how much do you think is less about skin color, less about country of origin, less about accent and fundamentally about the fact that too many americans engage

in the con tesation of other people's humanity? >> i really don't know what i would have done without james baldwin. >> oh lord, yeah. that makes two of us. >> i discovered him when i was in high school through a woman of audrey mcdonald. i love pbs and she was one of these live pbs musical things and she was a concert. i saw it when i was at home and the last song she sang was "some days" and a poem of james baldwin. and then this is before google. so like i go to the library and who's this james baldwin and read "notes of the native son" and he gave me the kind of language and the kind of psychological framework to think about what it means to be other in this country. >> yeah. >> and to kind of internalize what that otherness means. >> he left her some point as you well know. >> yes. unfortunately. >> he was -- >> god, can you imagine if we had, you know -- sometimes i wonder what he would think and

say of barack obama.>l right? that would be tremendous to hear him talk about that but baldwin to me was really key in understanding that people like me, i get called an illegal faggot. what it says about me is more than i could ever say about me and i think your point about -- as you know, you see this in the ut a way of looking at an unprecedented time in this country. you know? we have the most dysfunctional congress we have ever seen. we are looking at a media infrastructure that's as fractured as it's ever been and the most demographic shift that the -- the most dramatic demographic shift making people go into their own corners and i think the illegal or immigrant right in the middle of all of this. >> since you referenced james baldwin, you have done a lot of work and research own snick.

there's a new book of stokely by joseph, a great book. speaking of snick, to what extent do you think that the dreamers of today, these young organizers of today are informed or should be informed by the work of snick and other young people back in the civil rights 5)zññ >> i think they're deeply informed about it. and actually, i have to say that that was for me some -- i mean, i wish that people like baldwin and harvey milk could see this and like smile from wherever they are and say this is what we've helped create. john lewis, i had a conversation with him about this. because we'rey trying to figure out how to better connect the thoughts and have the dreamers honor all these civil rights icons and what they paved, the road that they have helped pave. i think for us, history is a way to give us peace and a way the kind of tell us how we push this country to a better place. >> his name is jose antonio vargas. new piece is "documented."

jose, thank you for your work. >> thank you so much. i appreciate it. coming up, a conversation with singer and percussionist sheila e. stay with us. sheila e. performed with everybody from prince to beyonce to duke, hans zimmer and just a few along the way with an emmy and multiple grammy nominations and began her career at ripe old age of 5 performing at the former sands ballroom in oakland and invited on stage by her wonderful and brilliant father and now thankfully written a book of "the beat of my own drum." first, a look at a cut of sheila's latest cd called "icon" released earlier this day. the track is called "lovely day."

♪ ♪ >> you still love the process of making music as opposed to performing muse snik. >> both. >> yeah? >> yeah. if i didn't love it, i would have quit already. >> yeah. >> do what i do every day, every chance i get, are you kidding? whoo! what a blessing. >> you've never felt burnt out? i don't care who you are or how good you are at what you do, if you do it from the age of 5, some point i would think that

you wake up one day, i'm done with this. i'm going to go try something else. you never felt that way? >> well, i mean, my first that i ever performed was with pops at 5 years old but i8o didn't real start performing professionally until i was 15. >> ooh, excuse me. 15. >> 15. i know, right? >> yeah. >> and that is very young, yeah, to be doing it this long. the older we get, to do what i do, it is not easy performing and playing but the traveling is just getting crazy. it is hard and then, you know, that not getting any sleep doesn't work anymore. >> yeah. and every artist, you know, at their best puts all of themselves in the performance. but your performances are so physical. >> they are. >> you're jumping up and down and banging on those -- you exert a lot of energy. >> i do, i do. now i'm doing even more on the new show with the new ror. sometimes i'll start out playing

congos, a solo. hitting it right at the beginning. i play drums, bass, guitar, singing, dancing, yeah. by the time we're done with the show, i'm exhausted. >> yeah. i would think so. >> yeah. >> yeah. why a memoir now? >> we get older and start realizing, you know, is there something to talk about? what's my purpose? am i doing the right thing? you know? telling my story. i started in -- at the age of 30-something i?+ started to wri my memoir and i stopped but a couple of years ago my sister-in-law, she said, sheila, if you want to write i'll help you. just talk an i'll just type everything out. that's kind of basically how i started the book. so that took about a year but simon and schuster said they would put it out and brought in wendy holden and she put it together as a book and then it comes out and it's like, wow. there were things that i wanted

to share in the book. there's, you know, almost like things that people wouldn't even know, you know, from engagements to sexual abuse to music, family, spirituality and those things that are important and who i am as a person, why i've become who i am and in the process what's happened throughout that and being a woman in the music business so these are the things that i share in the book. >> was there any trepidation on your part making the decision or about making the decision to be so transparent about the sexual abuse? >> no. i mean, for me, because i started that at 30-something, a friend had said to me, you know, why don't you share your testimony? we're having bible study tonight. i'm like, oh heck no. there's no way. but that was a beginning of my healing was to actually talk about it and say, i need to let this go because why am i so angry? why is it this? why do i rea tkt way i do?

and the way i treat people and being mean and angry and even though i had a great life. not that it was bad. but i just noticed that i had changed and i didn't want to be that person anymore. an i didn't like who i was so if you don't like who you are, at some poin=t you got to reach in and go, what do i need to do to change this because i personally don't want to live like this anymore. so that part of being transparent is let me just talk about it. and as i spoke about it, it felt like, man, the layer of guilt and shame and all of the other things you carry not of god peel off and i started to feel whole even though god said i made you whole. you have to let it go. and then the next biggest part of that transformation was to say, even i didn't say it to his face, but to say and get on my hat? doesn't matter. i am going to forgive this person for what he's done to me

or those who have harmed me. and i have to let that go so then i can grow and heal. otherwise, i'd be stuck in a place of just ugliness and i didn't want to do that anymore. >> memoirs allow us, allow the writer to correct things that are in the public's perception that have anowed you for quite sometime. give me one or two things you wanted to correct for the record that you did correct in the book. >> oh wow. >> i can think of one. i can think of the -- i mean, it is pretty clear that you loved prince and you guys have been friends for years, worked together. i think you have annoyed over the years thinking that prince made you or gave you your start or put you out there. i mean, in truth, you had been doing this sometime before you connected with him. >> right. well, yeah, that probably would have been one. when i first met him, he had been following my career with george duke. you know? yeah, people think he discovered you. it wasn't really the case but

but on their side of it, being parents who would want to hear their 5-year-old daughter gets raped by ayú& babysitter? it's devastating. so, the part of it is that i explained to them that the more that i talk about it the more that people get healed by me"g talking about it because then it opens up the door for someone else to say i thought it was just me. i don't want to feel like that. if sheila can do it, i can do it. he didn't read that section of it and the same thing with moms. she got to one part and she cried and she's like i can't read the book. we talked about it. you have to read the book. you have to read it. >> yeah. how do you want -- your career is long from over and many more records in you and performances in you, thank god, but how do you want -- do you think about how you want to be regarded musically? what do you want folk to say about your musical gift, your artistry? >> well, for sure, god has given

me this gift. >> right. >> for sure. the people that don't believe in god don't believe that but i'm telling you. i know that this is a gift. that's one thing. the other thing is to be born with parents that i have, musically to share the music that they loved that all the music they brought in has allowed me to be who i am. i don't want to be known to say she was or is the greatest because i can never get to that point because i feel i've never even reached that place or that plateau. if i say i teem greatest, there's nowhere for me to go so i want them to know that i'm an artist7b and muse siician that continues to stretch and grow and move on as a person and say, man, she never stopped, she never gave. she kept going even if people told her no. i will do it. >> that's a great way to be respected and regarded. for those of you who are fans, i

count myself among the millions of us in this country and around the world, she's finally written a book and you can learn more about sheila than perhaps even she wanted you to &+know. quh s when she first sat down to write this. it's too late now. it's out. "the beat of my own drum." what else would you call it? a memoir by this wonderful, wonderfully talented artist, congrats on the book and good to have you on the program. >> thank you. >> that's your show for tonight. thanks for watching. and as always, keep the faith. >> join me next time for a conversation with hillary swank about the new movie "you're not you" next time. we'll see you then.

♪ and their buns are something i have yet to find anywhere else. >> i'm not inviting you to my house for dinner. >> breaded and fried and gooey and lovely. >> in the words of arnold schwarzenegger, i'll be back! >> you've heard of connoisseur. i'm a common-sewer! >> they knew i had to ward off some vampires or something.