The Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, also known as the Hart-Celler Act, abolished an old quota system based on national origin and established a new immigration policy based on the joining of immigrant families and the attraction of skilled labor to the United States. Over the next four decades, policies implemented in 1965 would significantly alter the demographic makeup of the American population, as immigrants entering the United States under the new legislation increasingly came from countries in Asia, from Africa and Latin America, as opposed to Europe. .
Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965
President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Immigration Bill of 1965.
In the early 1960s, calls for reform of American immigration policy grew, largely due to the growing strength of the civil rights movement. At the time, immigration relied on the national origins quota system in place since the 1920s, under which each nationality was assigned a quota based on its representation in past U.S. census counts. The civil rights movement’s emphasis on equal treatment regardless of race or nationality led many to view the quota system as backward and discriminatory. In particular, Greeks, Poles, Portuguese, and Italians—an increasing number of whom sought entry to the United States—claimed that the quota system discriminated against them in favor of northern Europeans. President John F. Kennedy he even rallied to the cause of immigration reform, giving a speech in June 1963 calling the quota system “intolerable.”
Did you know? A report released in early 2009 by the DHS Bureau of Immigration Statistics estimated the number of “unauthorized immigrants” in the United States at 10.7 million, up from 11.6 million in 2008. The recent decline in Immigration has coincided with the economic downturn in the United States, but the numbers are still up from 2000, when the number of illegal immigrants was around 8.5 million.
After Kennedy’s assassination in November, Congress began debating and ultimately passed the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, co-sponsored by Representative Emanuel Celler of new York and Senator Philip Hart of Michigan and strongly supported by the late president’s brother, Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts. During debates in Congress, a number of experts said that the reformed legislation would not change much and that a more open policy was instead seen as a matter of principle. Indeed, when the law was signed in October 1965, the president Lyndon B. Johnson said the law “is not a groundbreaking bill. It will not affect the lives of millions of people…It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives or add significantly to our wealth or power.
Immediate impact
In reality (and in hindsight), the bill signed in 1965 marked a radical departure from past immigration policy and would have an immediate and lasting impact. In place of the national origins quota system, the law provided that preferences would be granted based on categories, such as parents of U.S. citizens or permanent residents, those with skills deemed useful to the United States, or refugees violence or unrest. Although it abolished quotas per se, the system imposed caps on immigration by country and total, as well as caps for each category. As in the past, family reunification was a major goal, and the new immigration policy would increasingly allow entire families to uproot themselves from other countries and resettle their lives in the United States.
In the first five years after the bill’s passage, immigration to the United States from Asian countries – particularly those fleeing war-torn Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Cambodia) – would more than quadruple. (Under previous immigration policies, entry of Asian immigrants was effectively barred.) Other Cold War conflicts during the 1960s and 1970s saw millions flee poverty or hardship in communist regimes in Cuba, Eastern Europe and elsewhere to seek their fortune. on American shores. In total, in the three decades since the passage of the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, more than 18 million legal immigrants entered the United States, more than three times the number admitted over the previous 30 years.
By the end of the 20th century, the policies implemented by the Immigration Act of 1965 had significantly changed the face of the American population. While in the 1950s more than half of all immigrants were European and only 6 percent were Asian, by the 1990s only 16 percent were European and 31 percent were of Asian origin, while that the percentages of Latin American and African immigrants had also increased significantly. Between 1965 and 2000, the largest number of immigrants (4.3 million) to the United States came from Mexico, in addition to some 1.4 million from the Philippines. Korea, the Dominican Republic, India, Cuba, and Vietnam were also major sources of immigration, each sending between 700,000 and 800,000 during this period.
Continuing source of debate
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, illegal immigration has been a constant source of political debate, as immigrants continue to flood into the United States, primarily by land, through Canada and Mexico. The Immigration Reform Act of 1986 attempted to address the problem by providing better enforcement of immigration policies and creating more opportunities to seek legal immigration. The law included two amnesty programs for unauthorized aliens and collectively granted amnesty to more than 3 million illegal aliens. Another immigration law, the Immigration Act of 1990, amended and expanded the 1965 law, increasing the total level of immigration to 700,000 people. The law also provided for the admission of immigrants from “underrepresented” countries in order to increase the diversity of immigration flows.
The economic recession that hit the country in the early 1990s was accompanied by a resurgence of anti-immigrant sentiment, including among low-income Americans competing for jobs with immigrants willing to work for lower wages . In 1996, Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Accountability Act, which addressed border control and immigrants’ use of social programs.
Immigration in the 21st century
American immigration since 1965
Following the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Homeland Security Act of 2002 created the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which took over many immigration and law enforcement functions previously carried out by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). With some modifications, the policies put in place by the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 are the same as those governing U.S. immigration in the early 21st century. Non-citizens currently enter the United States legally in one of two ways, either through temporary admission (non-immigrant) or permanent admission (immigrant). A member of the latter category is classified as a legal permanent resident and receives a green card giving them the right to work in the United States and possibly apply for citizenship.
There could perhaps be no better reflection of the impact of immigration than the 2008 parliamentary elections. Barack Obamason of a Kenyan father and an American mother (from Kansas), as the country’s first African-American president. At 85% white in 1965, the country’s population was a third of a minority in 2009 and is on track to reach a non-white majority by 2042.
