F ifty years after the signing of the landmark Immigration and Naturalization Act, a total of 59 million people have migrated to the United States, according to a new report. [37][25], On October 3, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson officially signed the Immigration and Nationality Act. The coercion continued. It added a labor certification requirement, which dictated that the Secretary of Labor needed to certify labor shortages in economic sectors for certain skills-based immigration statuses. During Congressional debates, a number of experts testified that little would effectively change under the reformed legislation, and it was seen more as a matter of principle to have a more open policy. The immigration system set up specifically to reunite families is so overwhelmed with applicants, that relatives who wait their turn must endure being divided for years. And, of course, the Statue of Liberty was built facing to the east. The National Origins Formula had been established in the 1920s to preserve American homogeneity by promoting immigration from Western and Northern Europe. That's a very important data point, that rates of crime among the immigrant population are lower than among the native population. Johnson. It was the first law that, by ethnicity, restricted immigration to the United States and said that a certain class, a certain ethnic class, was excluded. As per the rules under the Immigration and Nationality Act, U.S. organizations are permitted to employ foreign workers either temporarily or permanently to fulfill certain types of job requirements. There was a feeling sort of in the context, really, of the civil rights movement that that notion of national origin quotas really suggested that there were kind of second-class people, that there were second-class nationalities, that there were less desirable nationalities. The seven-category preference system is divided by family preferences and skill-based preferences. hide caption, An Italian woman and her children arrive at Ellis Island in 1905. An immigrant who is 14 years or younger has been considered an immediate relative of a U.S. citizen. "[1] Secretary of State Dean Rusk and other politicians, including Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), asserted that the bill would not affect the U.S. demographic mix. And it ended up this chain migration, this emphasis on family unification as the most important principle in U.S. immigration policy, really produced in the end a flood of immigration from the very countries that people were uncomfortable with in the beginning. Among the key changes brought by the Hart-Celler Act: Comparing 1965 to 2015, the Hispanic population rose from 4 percent to 18 percent; and Asians grew from 1 percent to 6 percent. What did the Immigration Act of 1965 do? All of Europe had 356,000. Italians were among those who complained that U.S. immigration laws discriminated against them. Once the demographics of immigration were changing, there were policies put in place to reduce immigration to exclude individuals of certain ethnicities and races. There just wasn't a real effort to enforce the immigration laws, you know, for a long period of time. Looking back, Johnson's statement is remarkable because it proved so wrong. In June 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court overrode both appeals courts and allowed the second ban to go into effect, but carved out an exemption for persons with "bona fide relationships" in the U.S. He reflects on the politics that helped push the overhaul through then -- and on the current debate over immigration -- in an interview with NPR's Jennifer Ludden, exclusively on npr.org: Smuggling & Espionage Along America's Borders. An immigrant and their dependent who is/was a United States government employee abroad. DAVIES: And did the law impose any limits on numbers? "A family is very important not just to the social and emotional well-being, but also to the economic well-being of these communities," she says. And bit by bit, every time you gave a visa to a student from Africa or an employment visa to somebody from South Asia, behind them were dozens and dozens of family members who wanted to follow to the United States. But there is very broad agreement that reform is overdue in our immigration system. This is FRESH AIR. In the early '80s, the maintenance staff at the airport was almost entirely African-American. It wasn't partial to Asians either, a point made clear in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. DAVIES: So legal immigration was mostly limited to Europeans throughout the 19th century. The 1965 act actually changed that dynamic as well because for the first time, people coming from that part of the world had an option. 2580. I think that is something that actually would have bipartisan support. "It never occurred to anyone, literally, that there were going to be African doctors, Indian engineers, Chinese computer programmers who'd be able, for the first time in the 20th century, to immigrate to America.". Immigrants accounted for just 5 percent of the U.S. population in 1965 and now comprise 14 percent. DAVIES: Tom Gjelten is a correspondent on NPR's National Desk. (Under past immigration policies, Asian immigrants had been effectively barred from entry.) Our guest is NPR national desk correspondent Tom Gjelten. So I think that, you know, if we ever get to the point that we really do revise our immigration laws, I think it's highly likely that we will probably restrict some of those categories of family unification and give more attention to people who can come here and fill a need that is not being filled because of, you know, particular skills, particular training, particular education. Sociologist Klineberg says the government's newfound sense of egalitarianism only went so far. "[38], The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 amended the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (known as the McCarranWalter Act). Sep 22, 1965 . DAVIES: Right. [8] The 1965 act also imposed the first cap on total immigration from the Americas, marking the first time numerical limitations were placed on immigration from Latin American countries, including Mexico. In fact, Ndubisi has a long line of relatives still in Nigeria who'd love to come. 1965 Immigration Law Changed Face of America : NPR DAVIES: Well, Tom Gjelten, thanks so much for speaking with us. Are people talking about a clearer definition of what represents an asylum claim? [4] Later, Senator Philip Hart (D-MI) introduced the Immigration and Nationality bill, S.500, to the Senate. And it was that - so it was sort of a different dynamic that limited immigration from the Western Hemisphere. [9] It also defined "special immigrants" in six different categories, which includes: It added a quota system for immigration from the Western Hemisphere, which was not included in the earlier national quota system. It abolished quotas. We are a nation of settlers. We often hear that there are 12 million undocumented workers in the United States. However, their parent(s) cannot take care of them for multiple reasons, including death, abandonment, and so on. many people wanted to emigrate despite restrictions. 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 reestablish their lives in the U.S. It's called "Nation Of Nations: A Great American Immigration Story." (SOUNDBITE OF MILES DAVIS SONG, "IF I WERE A BELL"). The Enduring Importance of the 1965 Immigration Act So on the one hand, they agreed to get rid of the national origin quotas but only on the condition that the priority of the law, the new priority, should change, not giving priority, not giving preference to people who had particular skills and training and education but giving preference to people who already had relatives here, the idea being that if you gave preference to people who already had family members here, you would basically just replicate the structure of the society that you already had. It created the bracero program. Meanwhile, Asia had 492, Africa - 359. I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross, who's off this week. 1. It will not relax the standards of admission. Back then, border crackdowns focused on Chinese and other foreigners barred from entering the United States -- not on Mexicans and other Latinos. This fast-growing immigrant population also has driven the share of the U.S. population that is foreign-born from 5 percent in 1965 to 14 percent today and will push it to a projected record 18 percent in 2065, the report continues, noting that no racial or ethnic group will claim a majority of the U.S. population. "This bill that we will sign today is not a revolutionary bill. So in the 1960s, there was an effort to change the basis of immigration, make it more fair, less dependent on countries of national origin. Another piece of immigration legislation, the 1990 Immigration Act, modified and expanded the 1965 act, increasing the total level of immigration to 700,000. It was a kind of a seasonal flow. And in fact, it really wasn't important because there really was no mass migration of people from other parts of the world to the United States. What effect did the Immigration Act of 1965 have on immigration from Mexico? GJELTEN: Well, they're obviously getting a lot more difficult, and it sort of rises and falls in part with the demand for that type of work. GJELTEN: In 1924, there was a new law passed that assigned quotas to all the countries in the world and - you know, much more generous quotas for, as you say, people from Northern and Western Europe. [4] When President Lyndon B. Johnson became president on January 8, 1964, he pressured Congress to act upon reform in immigration. And it was quite explicit. In a June 1963 speech to the American Committee on Italian Migration, Kennedy called the system of quotas in place back then " nearly intolerable.". The Hart-Celler Act created Asian America as we know it today. "All you need to do is go to the embassy, any embassy, and see long, long lines of people who want to come here.". I mean, we have seen, for example, during periods of economic recession that there is a lot less migration to the United States. Basically, all nationalities were treated equally. [27] Many also believed that this act would highly benefit the United States economy because the act focused on allowing skilled workers to enter the United States. At the same time, the skilled preferences include individuals and their dependents who have extraordinary ability or significant knowledge in the arts, sciences, business, or entertainment; skilled workers in sectors facing labor shortages; investors willing to make large-sum investments in the U.S. economy; religious workers; and foreign nationals who have served in the U.S. military. He says action by Congress in 1965 established new rules allowing immigrants in the country to sponsor relatives to come to the U.S., a practice which brought far more immigrants from the developing world. ***. DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. National Archives What restrictions applied when the first immigration laws went into effect, I guess, the late 18th century? Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, illegal immigration was a constant source of political debate, as immigrants continue to pour into the United States, mostly by land routes through Canada and Mexico. DAVIES: Most would agree we need some rules for who gets to enter the country. Fifty Years On, the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act Continues to That change in policy instead resulted in chain migration dominating the subsequent patterns of immigration to the United States. Congress demands a report on illegal immigration. I hope they will be here soon.". Immigration reform was also a personal project of John F. Kennedy, Chin notes, whose pamphlet written as a senator was published after his assassination as the book A Nation of Immigrants, and argued for the elimination of the National Origins Quota System in place since 1921. We'll talk more after a short break. [10] The Immigration and Naturalization Service continued to deny entry to prospective immigrants who are in the LGBTQ+ community on the grounds that they were "mentally defective", or had a "constitutional psychopathic inferiority" until the Immigration Act of 1990 rescinded the provision discriminating against members of the LGBT+ community. (1965).
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