(PNS reporting from HOLLYWOOD) SpongeBob SquarePants is an undocumented immigrant whose family drifted into Bikini Bottom, Hawaii, from Mexico when he was child, the Nickelodeon star revealed this morning.
SquarePants (real name: Bob Esponja) made the announcement at packed press conference called by Animal Actors for Reform and Fairness (AARF), a pro-immigration reform group.
The reality TV actor plans to apply for President Obama’s Deferred Action program so he can work and drive legally.
“Sure — I’m absorbent. And porous. And as yellow as can be,” he said, his voice cracking, “but that doesn’t mean I should live in a piña under the sea.”
“You see me working at the Krusty Krab as a fry cook? I have a master’s degree in oceanography from Stanford, but frying up Krabby Patties is the only job this Mexican could get without papers!” the colorful invertebrate told reporters. “And for extra cash, I let a crew follow me around 24/7 for a childrens’ reality show. That’s the kind of mierda you have to soak up when you’re a ‘mojado!'”
The amarillo actor said he had worked in Eugene Krabs’s fast food restaurant for over a dozen years but has “never been trusted enough” to handle the cash register. “He lets a squid handle the money! A squid! With the tentacles! Ai yai yai!”
Retired actor W. E. Coyote, a Native American activist, insisted on attending the press conference, despite the heat and his infirmity. “Bob is my compadre from another madre,” he explained.
Confined to a wheelchair for over a decade, Coyote, 78, has only recently been recognized as America’s leading painter of trompe l’eoil tunnels.
“I may have worked on the Warner Brothers lot,” Coyote told PNS, “but I was never anyone’s bro. I was always ‘the coyote,’ never a character in my own right. It was ‘meep meep, meep meep’ every day and I had to [expletive deleted] scramble.”
Spokesmen for Nickelodeon and Immigration, Customs and Enforcement (ICE) refused to comment on the revelation, but a Nickelodeon insider with knowledge of the SquarePants deal said the network only has a contract with SquarePants, Inc. to produce the show and that Esponja is not a Nickelodeon employee.