Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965

Background

The Hart–Celler Act of 1965 marked a radical break from the immigration policies of the past. Previous laws restricted immigration from Asia and Africa, and gave preference to northern and western Europeans over southern and eastern Europeans. In the 1960s, the United States faced both foreign and domestic pressures to change its nation-based formula, which was regarded as a system that discriminated based on an individual’s place of birth. Abroad, former military allies and new independent nations aimed to delegitimize discriminatory immigration, naturalization and regulations through international organizations like the United Nations. In the United States, the national-based formula had been under scrutiny for a number of years. In 1952, President Truman had directed the Commission on Immigration and Naturalization to conduct an investigation and produce a report on the current immigration regulations. The report, Whom We Shall Welcome, served as the blueprint for the Hart–Celler Act. At the height of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, the restrictive immigration laws were seen as an embarrassment by, among others, President John F. Kennedy, who called the then-quota-system "nearly intolerable". After Kennedy's assassination, President Lyndon Johnson signed the bill at the foot of the Statue of Liberty.

The bill still prohibited the entry into the country of "sexual deviants", including homosexuals. By doing so it crystallized the policy of the INS to reject homosexual prospective 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 The Immigration Act of 1990 rescinded the provision discriminating against gay people.

Provisions

The Hart–Celler Act amended the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (McCarran-Walter Act), while it upheld many provisions of the Immigration Act of 1924. It maintained per-country limits, which had been a feature of U.S. immigration policy since the 1920s, and it developed preference categories.

Wages under Foreign Certification

As per the rules under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), U.S. organizations are permitted to employ foreign workers either temporarily or permanently to fulfill certain types of job requirement. The Employment and Training Administration (ETA) under the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) is the body that usually provides certification to employers forcing them to hire foreign workers in order to bridge qualified and skilled labor gap in certain business areas. Workers willing to perform in a job in return of wages that either meet or exceed 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. They are as follows:

Legislative history

The Hart–Celler Act was widely supported in Congress. Senator Philip A. Hart introduced the administration-backed immigration bill which was reported to the Senate Judiciary Committee's Immigration and Naturalization Subcommittee. Representative Emanuel Celler introduced the bill in the House of Representatives, which voted 320 to 70 in favor of the act, while the Senate passed the bill by a vote of 76 to 18. In the Senate, 52 Democrats voted yes, 14 no, and 1 abstained. Among Senate Republicans, 24 voted yes, 3 voted no, and 1 abstained. In the House, 202 Democrats voted yes, 60 voted no and 12 abstained, 118 Republicans voted yes, 10 voted no and 11 abstained. In total, 74% of Democrats and 85% of Republicans voted for passage of this bill. Most of the no votes were from the American South, which was then still strongly Democratic. During debate on the Senate floor, Senator 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".

Michael A. Feighan and other conservative Democrats had insisted that "family unification" should take priority over "employability", on the premise that such a weighting would maintain the existing ethnic profile of the country. That change in policy instead resulted in chain migration dominating the subsequent patterns of immigration to the United States and consequently a more ethnically diverse population.

On October 3, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the legislation into law, saying, "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".

Long-term impact

The proponents of the Hart–Celler Act argued that it would not significantly influence United States culture. President Johnson called the bill "not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions." Secretary of State Dean Rusk and other politicians, including Senator Ted Kennedy, asserted that the bill would not affect US demographic mix. However, the ethnic composition of immigrants changed following the passage of the law. Specifically, the Hart–Celler Act allowed increased numbers of people to migrate to the United States from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Southern and Eastern Europe.

Prior to 1965, the demographics of immigration stood as mostly Europeans; 68 percent of legal immigrants in the 1950s came from Europe and Canada. However, in the years 1971–1991, immigrants from Hispanic and Latin American countries made 47.9 percent of immigrants (with Mexico accounting for 23.7 percent) and immigrants from Asia 35.2 percent. Not only did it change the ethnic makeup of immigration, but it also greatly increased the number of immigrants—immigration constituted 11 percent of the total U.S. population growth between 1960 and 1970, growing to 33 percent from 1970–80, and to 39 percent from 1980–90.

The Latin American population overall has also dramatically increased since 1965, though this was more due to the various unexpected results of this act rather than due to this act itself. One of the main reasons was the introduction of immigration quotas to Latin America, whereas there were previously no immigration quotas for the Western Hemisphere in the National Origins Formula.

It is estimated that by the year 2042, white people not referring to themselves as Hispanic 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.

Since the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, the new immigrants have encountered both opportunities and challenges. Many immigrants have been able to take advantage of the abundance of opportunities in the United States. However, immigrants also face hostility based on the rapid change of the United States' ethnic and cultural makeup, debates on the economic impact of immigration, and the presence of large numbers of foreign citizens and, less commonly, stateless individuals, sought by U.S. authorities for deportation.

In January 2017, president Donald Trump's Executive Order 13769 made reference to the "Immigration and Nationality Act".