As I’ve noted previously, Vargas came here from the Philippines as a child but knowingly broke multiple laws as an adult in order to stay in the country. After being supplied with a fake passport with a fake name, a fake green card, and a bogus Social Security number, he committed perjury repeatedly on federal I-9 employment-eligibility forms. In 2002, while pursuing his journalism-career goals, an immigration lawyer told him he needed to accept the consequences of his lawbreaking and return to his native Philippines. He ignored the counsel and instead used a friend’s address to obtain an Oregon driver’s license under false pretenses. It gave him an eight-year golden ticket to travel by car, board trains and airplanes, work at prestigious newspapers, and even gain access to the White House — where crack Secret Service agents allowed him to attend a state dinner using his bogus Social Security number.

The Vargas stunt will backfire because it is a smug and emblematic middle finger to everyone outside the D.C.-Manhattan bubble who believes in following the rules. As legal immigrant Asoka Samarasinghe wrote to me on Monday, “Michelle, this guy is a slap to the face of all us legal immigrants and citizens.”

As for “due process,” celebrity illegal alien Vargas will undoubtedly get more bites at the immigration-court and federal-appeals apple than law-abiding citizens will ever enjoy (see Zeituni Onyango).