Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965

Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965
Great Seal of the United States
Long title An Act to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act
Acronyms (colloquial) INA of 1965
Nicknames Hart–Celler Act
Enacted by the 89th United States Congress
Effective June 30, 1968
Public law Pub.L. 89–236
Statutes at Large 79 Stat. 911
Codification
Acts amended Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952
Titles amended 8 U.S.C.: Aliens and Nationality
U.S.C. sections amended 8 U.S.C. ch. 12 (§§ 1101, 1151–1157, 1181–1182, 1201, 1254–1255, 1259, 1322, 1351)
Legislative history
  • Introduced in the House of Representatives as H.R. 2580 by Rep. Emanuel Celler (D-NY)
  • Committee consideration by Judiciary
  • Passed the House on August 25, 1965 (318–95)
  • Passed the Senate on September 22, 1965 (76–18)
  • Agreed to by the House on September 30, 1965 (320–70) and by the on  
  • Signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on October 3, 1965

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (Pub.L. 89–236, 79 Stat. 911, enacted June 30, 1968), also known as the Hart–Celler Act,[1] abolished the National Origins Formula, which had been in place in the United States since the Emergency Quota Act of 1921. Representative Emanuel Celler of New York proposed it, Senator Philip Hart of Michigan co-sponsored it, and Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts strongly promoted it.

The Hart-Celler Act abolished the quota system based on national origins that had been American immigration policy since the 1920s. The new law replaced the quota system with a preference system that focused on immigrants' skills and family relationships with citizens or US residents. The bill set numerical restrictions on visas at 170,000 per year, with a per-country-of-origin quota, not including immediate relatives of US citizens or "special immigrants" (including those born in "independent" nations in the Western Hemisphere, former citizens, ministers, and employees of the US government abroad).[1]

Background

The Act marked a radical break from the immigration policies of the past. The law until then excluded Latin American and Asians and preferred individuals of Northern European ancestry.[2] At the height of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the law was seen as an embarrassment by, among others, President John F. Kennedy, who called the then-quota-system "nearly intolerable."[3] After Kennedy's assassination, the new president, Lyndon Johnson, signed the bill at the foot of the Statue of Liberty.

To convince skeptical Americans, especially in the South, to support the Act, its proponents assured voters that passage would not influence significantly America's culture. President Johnson called the bill "not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions,"[4] and Secretary of State Dean Rusk and other politicians, including Edward IngnnedyKennedy, John's brother, that the bill would not affect America's demographic mix; the assertions would later prove to be false.[5]

The bill still prohibited the entry into the country of "sexual deviants" including homosexuals. By doing so it formalized the existing policy of the INS to reject homosexuals as immigrants on the grounds that they were "mentally defective" or had a "constitutional psychopathic inferiority". The Immigration Act of 1990 rescinded the provision discriminating against gay people.[6]

Foreign workers

According to the rules under the Act, US organizations are permitted to employ foreign workers temporarily or permanently to fulfill certain types of job requirement. The Employment and Training Administration (ETA), under the US Department of Labor (DOL), is the body that usually provides certification to employers, forcing them to hire foreign workers to bridge qualified and skilled labor gap in certain business areas. The workers are willing to perform in a job in return of wages at or exceeding the present wage paid by the employers for the same occupation in the intended area of employment. However, some unique rules are applied to each category of visas:

Passing in Congress

October 3, 1965: Johnson visits the Statue of Liberty to sign the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.

The House of Representatives voted 320 to 70 in favor of the act, and the Senate voted in favor 76 to 18. In the Senate, 52 Democrats voted in favor, 14 against, and 1 abstained. Of the Republicans, 24 voted in favour, 3 voted against, and 1 abstained.[8] In the House, 202 Democrats voted in favor, 60 voted against, and 12 abstained, 117 Republicans voted in favor, 10 voted against, and 11 abstained, with 1 unknown representative voting in favor.[9] In total, 74% of Democrats and 85% of Republicans voted for passage of the bill. Despite the fact that the most prominent supporters of the Act, including all mentioned in this article, were Democrat, Republicans were more likely to support it. Opposition was mostly from the American South, which was then still strongly Democrat and still had few Republicans. Many whites in that region feared mass immigration of even more nonwhites at a time that blacks were gaining political power there.

During debate on the Senate floor, Edward Kennedy, speaking of the effects of the act, said, "our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually.... Secondly, the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset."[10]

The act's supporters claimed not only that the law would not change America's ethnic makeup, which turned out to be false, but also that such a change was not desirable. On October 3, 1965, when Johnson signed the legislation into law, he said, "This [old] system violates the basic principle of American democracy, the principle that values and rewards each man on the basis of his merit as a man. It has been un-American in the highest sense, because it has been untrue to the faith that brought thousands to these shores even before we were a country."[11]

Results

Immigration changed US demographics by opening the doors to immigrants from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The Latin American population has also dramatically increased since 1965, but that was more due to the various unexpected results of this act rather than from this act itself (it is worth noting that the act introduced immigration quotas to Latin America, but there had previously been no immigration quotas from the Western Hemisphere; also see National Origins Formula).[12] By the 1990s, America's population growth was more than one-third driven by legal immigration and substantially augmented by illegal immigration, primarily from Latin America and other parts of the developing world.

Before passage of the Hart-Celler Act, immigration accounted for only ten percent of population increase in the US. Ethnic and racial minorities, as defined by the US Census Bureau, rose from 25 percent of the US population in 1990 to 30 percent in 2000 and to 36.6 percent as measured by the results from the 2010 census.[13] Similarly, during the same time period the non-Hispanic white population in the United States decreased from 75 percent of the overall US population in 1990 to 70 percent in 2000 and finally to 63.4 percent in 2011.[13]

It is estimated that by 2042, non-Hispanic white people will no longer constitute a majority but rather only a plurality of the population of the United States. Minority groups, led by Hispanic Americans (mainly Mexican Americans), Black Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Pacific Islander Americans would together outnumber non-Hispanic White Americans. According to the 2000 census, roughly 11.1 percent of the American population was foreign-born, a major increase from the low of 4.7 percent in 1970. A third of the foreign-born were from Latin America and a fourth from Asia. The passage of the Hart-Celler Act contributed to increased illegal immigration from Latin America, especially Mexico, since the unlimited legal bracero program previously in place was eliminated.

The waves of immigrants have encountered both possibilities and problems. Many immigrants have been able to take advantage of the abundance of opportunities in the US although some immigrant groups continue to face major challenges. For example, Asian Indians have a higher average income and lower poverty rate than the national average, but Vietnamese Americans (mostly from refugee backgrounds) have median earnings less than the national average and a higher poverty rate.[14] Asians and Pacific Islanders (including international students from Asia) constituted 30 percent of the student population in California's public universities by 2000, and over 38% of the student population by 2011. The problems have centered on questions of multicultural identity as opposed to the melting-pot idea, debates on the economic impact of immigration, impact of illegal immigration, and fears of becoming a polyglot nation with English no longer the primary language.[15]

See also

Footnotes

  1. 1 2 Sarah Starkweather. "US immigration legislation online". University of Washington, Bothell Library. Retrieved January 1, 2012.
  2. ↑ "A Nation of Immigrants". NSIDE SA. September 2012.
  3. ↑ "235 - Remarks to Delegates of the American Committee on Italian Migration". The American Presidency Project. June 11, 1963. External link in |publisher= (help)
  4. ↑ Johnson, L.B., (1965). President Lyndon B. Johnson's Remarks at the Signing of the Immigration Bill. Liberty Island, New York October 3, 1965 transcript at lbjlibrary.
  5. ↑ Jennifer Ludden. "1965 immigration law changed face of America". NPR.
  6. ↑ Tracy J. Davis. "Opening the Doors of Immigration: Sexual Orientation and Asylum in the United States". Human Rights Brief 6 (3).
  7. ↑ #http://www.dol.gov/compliance/topics/wages-foreign-workers.htm Wages under Foreign Labor Certification Retrieved 3 December 2015.
  8. ↑ Keith Poole. "Senate Vote #232 (Sep 22, 1965)". Civic Impulse, LLC.
  9. ↑ Keith Poole. "House Vote #177 (Sep 30, 1965)". Civic Impulse, LLC.
  10. ↑ Bill Ong Hing (2012), Defining America: Through Immigration Policy, Temple University Press, p. 95, ISBN 978-1-59213-848-7
  11. ↑ "Remarks at the Signing of the Immigration Bill, Liberty Island, New York". October 3, 1965. Retrieved January 1, 2012.
  12. ↑ PDR 38.1 Massey-COLOR.indd. (PDF). Retrieved on June 29, 2013.
  13. 1 2 "USA QuickFacts from the US Census Bureau". Quickfacts.census.gov. Retrieved June 6, 2013.
  14. ↑ U.S. Census Bureau (December 2004). "We the People:Asians in the United States" (PDF). Retrieved September 14, 2013.
  15. ↑ Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies, Portland State University (August 2011). "Immigration & Naturalization Act of 1965: Origin of Modern American Society". Retrieved January 1, 2012.

Further reading

External links

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