Why is Jose Antonio Vargas such a happy man these days?

Jose Antonio Vargas, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Filipino-American journalist who has become the face the immigration movement in the US, is a happy man these days — he just passed his driver's license test in California.

"One of the happiest days of my life: a real, legit, government-issued California-approved driver's license, which I did not get by lying, or keeping a secret, or living in fear," Vargas said in a post on Facebook.

He said he got the license "because I am part of this community—as are my fellow undocumented Americans here in California and across the country."

Vargas was among the nearly 30,000 motorists who applied for driving licenses in California on the first weekend of a new law offering them to undocumented immigrants in the US.

Under the AB60 law, which was approved in 2013, anyone who can show they are California residents—such as through bills or rental agreements—can now apply for a license, regardless of immigration status.

Undocumented

In 1993 at the age of 12, Vargas said goodbye to his mother and left the Philippines to join his grandparents in California. Four years later, he learned that he was in the US illegally

In June 2011, Vargas, now 33, said he was an undocumented immigrant in an essay in the New York Times Magazine.

In his Facebook post announcing his passing the driver's license test, he described the US as “our home, this is where we pay taxes, this is where we work, where many of us have created businesses.”

"We've always known—I've always known—that we are more than pieces of papers. We are human beings. But I cannot overstate what this piece of government-issued paper—I'll get the ID in the mail in the next two weeks—means to me, or to my family and friends," he said. —KBK, GMA News