Immigration And Immigration Act Essay

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, also as known as the Hart-Cellar Act, was a crucial act about immigration policy of the United States in the twentieth century. This act was enacted by the 89th United States Congress. It became effective on June 30, 1968. The 1965 Immigration Act caused a steady increase in immigration. It made some major adjustments about immigration’s target population. It created the basic standards for new admissions of immigration which were mostly still applicable today. It also had significant influence on the United States’ labor market and welfare system. Paul Johnson only mentioned the effects of the Hart-Cellar Act a few times in his textbook, mainly just about the increase in immigration population.

However, before the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, the amount of new admissions of permanent legal immigrants to the United States changed dramatically from time to time. As a result of multiple changes regarding immigration policy in a relatively short period of time, there were full of ups and downs. The trend of new admissions was unpredictable. All these alterations in late nineteenth century and early twentieth century happened for good reasons, but what was special about the Hart-Cellar Act was that this act put an end to all of these frequent major adjustments about immigration policy in the United

Who can move to the United States as a new permeant legal immigrants? The criteria have not been changed much for more than half a century. Certainly, there were still some minor adjustments happened to the immigration standards after the 1970s. For instance, the Immigration Act of 1990 put on some restrictions on unskilled workers; and the United States Patriot Act in 2001 amended the Immigration and Nationality Act to broaden the scope of aliens ineligible for admission or deportable due to terrorist activities. Nevertheless, immigration criteria have remained similar ever since the day the Hart-Cellar Act became