NBC Sitcom Reveals Network TV's First Undocumented Asian Immigrant

Mateo, portrayed by Nico Santos, in the NBC sitcom 'Superstore.' (Vivian Zink/NBC | 2015 NBCUniversal Media, LLC)

A particularly lively election season in the United States has provided the nation's biggest issues a platform for discussion — and few issues are more talked about than that of immigration, particularly the plight of the country's undocumented residents. Last week, NBC's Superstore, a sitcom about a ragtag group of employees at a Walmart-like megastore, joined the expanding immigration conversation by kicking-off its second season with a groundbreaking storyline for one of its central characters.

In the episode titled "Olympics," a gay Filipino employee named Mateo, played by Nico Santos, confesses to his supervisor he is an undocumented immigrant after discovering that his green card is counterfeit. Mateo's supervisor Glenn, played by Mark McKinney, misconstrues the confession as an insecurity about not being "American enough" during the patriotic celebration of the Rio Games happening at the store. Glenn responds by reassuring Mateo, saying, "Mateo, you're an American, and I'm Filipino! And everybody is everything, so it's like nobody is anything, and that's beautiful." Glenn pins himself with the flag of the Philippines and with that, Mateo decides not to push the subject any further.

While it is unclear if the issue will be addressed again in epsiodes to come, Mateo’s story arc has drawn comparisons to the real-life experience of Filipino activist, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, and undocumented immigrant Jose Antonio Vargas. Like Mateo, Vargas discovered his status by accident, when at the age of 16 his application for a drivers' license was denied because his papers were counterfeit. On Saturday, Vargas himself posted a clip from Superstore on his Facebook account, saying the scene was "breaking ground and representing" an issue that is very close to him. Here's the clip:

Vargas now works as an immigration reform activist, educating the public about the millions of immigrants living in the shadows of the system. Though the Superstore storyline takes on a different approach using levity to demystify the issue, it appears to achieve the same thing that Vargas’ work does — encouraging open discussion. 

“I always assumed there was a big gap between what people like me live through and what people think it is,” Vargas said during a discussion at Asia Society in New York in 2014. “I didn’t realize it was the size of the Atlantic Ocean.”

Vargas' conversation at Asia Society followed a screening of the film Documented, in which Vargas discusses how mainstream media "has really largely failed” to encourage education on the question.

“We live in an age of disruption, and the job of the film is to disrupt what people think of this issue.”

Watch the full discussion with Vargas in the clip below.