Immigration Laws the Immigration Act

Immigration Laws

The Immigration Act of 1965 was, in effect, a repeal of the restrictive laws that had been passed previously in the United States, in particular the "Johnson-Reed Act" (also known as the "National Origins Act") of 1924. The Immigration Act of 1965 was also more than just another bill in Congress; it was emotionally and politically linked to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, when the country was in a more progressive mood and President Lyndon Johnson was using the legacy of assassinated president John F. Kennedy as momentum to get civil rights-related legislation passed. To gain a full understanding the significance of the Immigration Act of 1965, one needs first to look at the National Origins Act ("Johnson-Reed Act) of 1924, and the history of immigrations policies in the U.S.

The United States Department of State (www.state.gov) published a review of the Immigration Act of 1924 (The Johnson-Reed Act) in federal web pages; the report explains that the Immigration Act of 1924 limited the number of immigrants based on a "national origins quota" system. The law created a policy wherein if a person from Germany, say, wished to obtain a visa, that visa was based on the number of German immigrants already in the United States. Only a number of Germans up to 2% of the existing population of German-Americans were permitted each year. If there were 200,000 German immigrants already living in the U.S., then 4,000 new German immigrants would be given visas to come into the U.S.

The legislation also "completely excluded immigrants from Asia," the Department of State explains. An earlier immigration law in 1917 put in place "restrictive" measures that included literacy tests that required immigrants who were older than 16 to prove they could read (in any language). Also the tax that immigrants had to pay upon entering the U.S. was raised in 1917. The fact that Japanese immigrants were not welcome into the U.S. "offended" many Japanese people; and though the Japanese government protested the exclusion of their people the law remained on the books and indeed it resulted in "an increase in existing tensions" between Japan and America (www.state.gov). The number of immigrants welcomed into the U.S. after the 1924 Act (http://historymatters.gmu.edu) from: Iceland (100); Spain (131); Egypt (100); England and Northern Ireland (34,007); Switzerland (2,081); Norway (6,453). So a person can do the math to figure out pretty closely what the number of immigrants from those countries were already in the U.S. At that time.

Meanwhile, President Lyndon Johnson signed The Immigration Act of 1965 into law on October 3 while he stood beneath the Statue of Liberty, Johnson stated that signing the bill into law "…corrects a cruel and enduring wrong in the conduct of the American nation" (www.america.gov). Not all Democrats in Congress were willing to go along with Johnson in1965; for example, Senator Sam J. Ervin argued that the existing immigration law was not discriminatory but was instead "like a mirror reflecting the United States" (Daniels, 2008). But Ervin's viewpoint was in the minority in Congress and in the country, as Daniels writes "Americans adopted more cosmopolitan views" in the Sixties than they did forty years previously.

Instead of instituting cultural / racial quotes, the 1965 Act "substituted hemispheric caps," Daniels writes in www.america.gov. In the Eastern Hemisphere 170,000 immigrants were allowed in; in the Western Hemisphere 120,000 immigrants were welcomed in, Daniels continues. The law did limit the number of immigrants from "any nation" to 20,000 per year. As for "refugees" the law permitted only 6% of the total number of immigrants to be those considered refugees (Daniels reports that the 6% amounted to about 17,400 visas).

Between 1966 and 2000 about 22.8 million immigrants entered the U.S., and "the bulk" of those twenty-two million were "family members of recent immigrants" (called "chain migration") (Daniels). According to the Center for Immigration Studies the law (technically called "The Hart-Celler Act of 1965") "for the first time" gave a higher priority to "relatives of American citizens and permanent resident aliens than to applicants with special job skills" (www.cis.org).

Some of those preferences included: a) unmarried adult sons and daughters of U.S. citizens; b) members of "the professions and scientists and artists of exceptional ability"; c) married children of U.S. citizens; d) "brothers and sisters of U.S. citizens over age twenty-one"; e) unskilled and skilled workers in jobs "for which there is insufficient labor supply…" among a few other categories. The bill in 1965 was basically designed to put a stop to the blatant discrimination of the previous laws based on national origins, but the Center for Immigration Studies explains that while "some people feared a major increase" in the number of immigrants entering the U.S. others assured the doubters that would not be the case. To wit, Attorney Robert Kennedy wrote a letter to The New York Times: "The time has come for us to insist that the quota system be replaced by the merit system…It deprives us of able immigrants whose contributions we need…" (www.cis.org).