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Immigration reform activist Jose Antonio Vargas is calling on Western North Carolinians to redefine what it means to be an American. The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and filmmaker spoke to a packed house at Warren Wilson College Tuesday night, receiving a standing ovation.(Photo: Warren Wilson College / Special to the Citizen-Times)

SWANNANOA Immigration reform activist Jose Antonio Vargas is calling on Western North Carolina to redefine what it means to be an American.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and filmmaker spoke to a packed house at Warren Wilson College Tuesday night, receiving a standing ovation.

Vargas is one of the most high-profile, undocumented immigrants in the country.

The challenge is to connect the struggle of immigrants today with the historical narrative of immigration in America, Vargas told a crowd of more than 350 people.

The narrative needs to be modified, he said. The question should be asked of white America: Where are you from?

"So long as people call us illegal, so long as they obsess over the physical border, not the border in our minds, nothing is going to change," said Vargas, who urged people of all races and ethnicities to join together and broaden the immigration debate.

"A new South is being born, and how we make that as inclusive as possible, I think that is the challenge," he said.

North Carolina's immigrant population rose from 1.7 percent in 1990 to 7.6 percent in 2013, according to the Immigration Policy Center. That year, the state was home to at least 750,000 immigrants, nearly 32 percent of whom were naturalized U.S. citizens.

Unauthorized immigrants made up around 3.6 percent of the state's population, or 350,000 people, in 2012, according to data from the Pew Hispanic Center.

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Immigration reform activist calls on WNC to redefine 'American'