Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (Hart-Celler Act, INS, Act of 1965, ) abolished the national-origin
quotaQuota may refer to:A level business* Quota samplingAffirmative action* Racial quota* Reservation in India* Quotas in PakistanComputing* Disk quota* Bandwidth cap, the quota for upload or download of dataElectoral systems...
s that had been in place in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
since the
Immigration Act of 1924The Immigration Act of 1924, or Johnson-Reed Act, including the National Origins Act, Asian Exclusion Act, was a United States federal law that limited the number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of people from that country who were already living in the...
. It was proposed by
Emanuel CellerEmanuel Celler was an American politician from New York who served in the United States House of Representatives for almost 50 years, from March 1923 to January 1973....
, co-sponsored by
Philip HartPhilip Aloysius Hart was a Democratic United States Senator from Michigan from 1959 until 1976. He was nicknamed the Conscience of the Senate.-Early Years:...
and heavily supported by
United States SenatorThe United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral United States Congress, the lower house being the House of Representatives. The composition and powers of the Senate and the House are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution . Each U.S state is represented by two senators,...
Ted KennedyEdward Moore "Ted" Kennedy was a United States Senator from Massachusetts and a member of the Democratic Party. First elected in November 1962, he was elected nine times and served for 46 years in the U.S. Senate. At the time of his death, he was the second most senior member of the Senate, and...
.
An annual limitation of 170,000
visaA visa is an indication that a person is authorized to enter the country which "issued" the visa, subject to permission of an immigration official at the time of actual entry. The authorization may be a document, but more commonly it is a stamp endorsed in the applicant's passport...
s was established for immigrants from
Eastern HemisphereThe Eastern Hemisphere, also Eastern hemisphere or eastern hemisphere, is a geographical term for the half of the Earth that is east of the Prime Meridian and west of 180° longitude. It is also used to refer to Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia, vis-à-vis the Western Hemisphere, which includes...
countries with no more than 20,000 per country. By 1968, the annual limitation from the
Western HemisphereThe Western Hemisphere, also Western hemisphere or western hemisphere, is a geographical term for the half of the Earth that lies west of the Prime Meridian , the other half being the eastern hemisphere...
was set at 120,000 immigrants, with visas available on a
first-come, first-servedFirst-come, first-served is a service policy whereby the requests of customers or clients are attended to in the order that they arrived, without other biases or preferences...
basis. However, the number of
family reunificationFamily reunification is a recognized reason for immigration in many countries. The presence of one or more family members in a certain country, therefore, enables the rest of the family to immigrate to that country as well....
visas was unlimited, and it is only now that there are any country-origin quotas for spouses of US citizens, and numerical quotas for other relatives of US citizens.
Congressional consideration
In the Democratic-controlled Congress, the House of Representatives voted 326 to 69 (82.5%) in favor of the act while the
SenateThe United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral United States Congress, the lower house being the House of Representatives. The composition and powers of the Senate and the House are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution . Each U.S state is represented by two senators,...
passed the bill by a vote of 76 to 18. Opposition mainly came from Southern legislators. In 1965, President
Lyndon B. JohnsonLyndon Baines Johnson , served as the 36th President of the United States from 1963 to 1969 after his service as the Vice President of the United States from 1961 to 1963...
signed the legislation into law. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 became law on July 1, 1968. Along with the act of 1952, it serves as one of the parts of the United States Code until this day.
Ted Kennedy involvement
During debate on the
SenateThe United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral United States Congress, the lower house being the House of Representatives. The composition and powers of the Senate and the House are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution . Each U.S state is represented by two senators,...
floor, Kennedy, speaking of the effects of the act, said, "First, our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually. Under the proposed bill, the present level of immigration remains substantially the same.... Secondly, the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset.... Contrary to the charges in some quarters, [the bill] will not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area, or the most populated and deprived nations of Africa and Asia.... In the final analysis, the ethnic pattern of immigration under the proposed measure is not expected to change as sharply as the critics seem to think.... The bill will not flood our cities with immigrants. It will not upset the ethnic mix of our society. It will not relax the standards of admission. It will not cause American workers to lose their jobs." The act's supporters not only claimed the law would not change America's ethnic makeup, but that such a change was not desirable.
Immigration shift
By equalizing immigration policies, the Act resulted in new immigration from non-
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains , and the Black Sea to the southeast...
an nations that changed
the ethnic make-up of the United StatesAs of October 20th 2009, the United States has a total resident population of 308 million. It is a very urbanized nation, with 81% of the population residing in cities and suburbs as of mid-2005 . The mean population center of the United States has consistently shifted westward and southward, with...
. Immigration doubled between 1965 and 1970 and doubled again between 1970 and 1990. The most specific effect of the 1965 Immigration Act was to shift immigration from Europe to Asia. Immigration from the Western Hemisphere was unlimited under the 1924 Act, so the 1965 Act actually somewhat mitigated the inflow from Latin America; the large increase in immigration from Latin America to the United States in the latter part of the 20th century was due to natural population growth and not the 1965 Immigration Act.
Long term results
A
Boston GlobeThe Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993. Its chief print rival is the Boston Herald....
article attributed
Barack ObamaBarack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office, as well as the first president born in Hawaii...
’s win in the
2008 U.S. Presidential electionThe 56th quadrennial United States presidential election was held on November 4, 2008. Outgoing Republican President George W. Bush's policies and actions and the American public's desire for change were key issues throughout the campaign, and during the general election campaign, both major party...
to a marked reduction over the preceding decades in the percentage of
whitesWhite people is a term which usually refers to human beings characterized, at least in part, by the light pigmentation of their skin...
in the American electorate, attributing this
demographic changeDemography is the statistical study of all populations. It can be a very general science that can be applied to any kind of dynamic population, that is, one that changes over time or space...
to the Act. The article quoted
Simon RosenbergSimon Rosenberg is the founder of the New Democrat Network, an organization formerly allied with the Democratic Leadership Council, and was a candidate for the Democratic National Committee Chair in 2005...
, president and founder of the
New Democrat NetworkThe New Democrat Network is a United States think tank that promotes progressive Democratic candidates, especially those in a more centrist vein, although this focus has waxed and waned...
, as having said that the Act is "the most important piece of legislation that no one’s ever heard of," and that it "set America on a very different demographic course than the previous 300 years."
See also
- History of laws concerning immigration and naturalization in the United States
This is a history of laws concerning immigration and naturalization in the United States.-18th Century:The first naturalization law in the United States was the Naturalization Act of 1790, which restricted naturalization to "free white persons" of "good moral character" who had resided in the...
- Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952
External links