Immigration And Naturalization Act Of 1965 Research Paper

The Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, also known as the Hart-Celler Act, abolished an earlier quota system based on national origin and established a new immigration policy based on reuniting immigrant families and attracting skilled labor to the United States. “The passage in 1965 of the landmark Immigration Act along with the Voting Rights Act and the laws creating Medicare/Medicaid, make that year the legislative high point of late-twentieth-century liberalism” (134). The 1965 law adopted a ceiling of 290,000 visas annual according to hemispheric limits. Those visas were to be distributed according to a system of preferences similar to one from 1952 act. As had been the case with McCarran-Walter act, two parallel systems were

The 1965 law did not work in the way it was expected to: by the 1980s more than six million legal immigrants entered the United States, and four-fifths of them came either from Asia or Latin America. The act intended to redress the grievances of European ethnic groups and to give a little more representation to Asians has turned traditional immigration patterns to the United States upside down (139). The steady rise of legal immigration was accompanied by a rise in illegal immigration, mostly the Irish and the Mexicans, who became the major beneficiaries of different immigration programs in 1986 (140). The liberalization of immigration policy reflected in the 1965 legislation can be understood as part of the evolutionary trend in federal policy after World War II to end legal discrimination based on race and ethnicity, so often the immigration bill was seen as an symbolic extension of the civil rights

The beginning of 21st century and a new president were suppose to bring more liberalization to immigration police, but terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon triggered enduring economic downturn and put those intensions on hold. But the September 11, 2001, has not changed the social and economic forces that produces increased immigration in the late 20th century (263). The only change was the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which took over many immigration service and enforcement functions formerly performed by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), but in reality did not change much. When the Census Bureau reported on the foreign-born population a year after 9/11, immigration flow stayed the same (265). Despite moments of growing nativism, numerous legislative attempts to “get tough” on immigration, and the attacks of September 11, 2001, immigrants continue to come to the United States in large numbers. Overall, immigration has a positive influence on American economy and better understanding of the economic importance of immigration is weakening the strength of nativism