Thursday, October 8, 2015

How A 1965 Immigration Law Changed America And The World

Fifty years ago on Oct. 3, 1965, the most liberal immigration law in the world — the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) — was signed by President Johnson under the Statue of Liberty.
It was the last of the major Great Society laws to be passed during the emerging civil rights era. It became Sen. Ted Kennedy's lifetime legislative legacy. It truly changed the face of America. It has had a huge impact as well as on immigration laws throughout the Western world.
Its many unintended consequences can be seen today in the heart-wrenching, chaotic immigration crisis in Europe and on our southern border.
Immigrants from Europe arriving at Ellis Island
The story of the 1965 immigration law actually began in the 1920s, when our most selective and first comprehensive immigration law was passed — the National Origins Quota Act. That law allowed Northern European immigrants to come in without limit, while all other nationalities but Mexicans were placed on a highly restrictive quota.
In the context of the times, passage of the highly restrictive immigration law was understandable. It came about after 40 years (1880s-1920s) of the largest surge (still) of unregulated immigrants in U.S. history. Migrants were fleeing from intolerable turmoil in their homelands.
New Progressives, led by Republican President Theodore Roosevelt, were concerned about the working and living conditions of millions of unprotected low-wage immigrant workers in rich Roaring '20s urban enterprises.
There were threats of another world war that war-weary Americans wanted to avoid. Many Americans feared an invasion by an alien political force — Communism. All this worry created a mood in America to control the borders (if this sounds ominously familiar to our times, there may be a lesson here).
On the other hand, the 1965 Act was passed in an entirely different time. There was a euphoric post-WWII economic boom. America had won world leadership. Immigration levels were low.
And there was guilt: over the denial of refuge for millions of Jews who died in the Holocaust and over discrimination facing loyal WWII African American soldiers and their families in the South by onerous Jim Crow laws. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbade discrimination based on race, religion, creed and national origin. Obviously an immigration law based on nationality quotas had to go.
But the 1965 immigration law, aka the Hart-Celler Act, also passed because of the passionate bipartisan leadership of America's top leaders: President Johnson and Sen. Ted Kennedy. They not only worked tirelessly for this bill but also gave credit to others when it passed: Sen. Philip Hart of Michigan, a civil rights advocate known as "the conscience of the Senate," and Rep. Emanuel Celler, elected in 1923, a Jewish congressman from Brooklyn; he had spent 45 years fighting the national quota act, which excluded persecuted Jews. Ironically, all four of them denied that the INA would affect U.S. demographics.
The 1965 Immigration Act made two seismic changes to our immigration policy. First, it treated all immigrant nationalities equally; no nationality could have more than 7% of all permanent visas given out in one year. Cultural compatibility per se was no longer a criterion.
The second major change was that the majority of permanent immigration visas now go for "family unification." After 1965 and to this day, the majority of permanent visas go to extended family members as long as they fall under the 7% nationality rule.
Read the rest of this IBD Perspective HERE.

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2 comments:

cimbri said...

Yes and not so coincidentally, wages have been stagnant for at least 40 years, once the full effects of the immigration surge had kicked in. Of course the devastating effects of free trade are equally responsible for the gutting of America. This is why Trump has been on top of the polls for many months. These are the two issues that dwarf all others, and only Trump is convincingly addressing them.

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