Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965

Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965
Great Seal of the United States
Long title An Act to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act
Acronyms (colloquial) INA of 1965
Nicknames Hart–Celler Act
Enacted by the 89th United States Congress
Effective June 30, 1968
Public law Pub.L. 89–236
Statutes at Large 79 Stat. 911
Codification
Acts amended Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952
Titles amended 8 U.S.C.: Aliens and Nationality
U.S.C. sections amended 8 U.S.C. ch. 12 (§§ 1101, 1151–1157, 1181–1182, 1201, 1254–1255, 1259, 1322, 1351)
Legislative history
  • Introduced in the House of Representatives as H.R. 2580 by Rep. Emanuel Celler (D-NY)
  • Committee consideration by Judiciary
  • Passed the House on August 25, 1965 (318–95)
  • Passed the Senate on September 22, 1965 (76–18)
  • Agreed to by the House on September 30, 1965 (320–70) and by the on  
  • Signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on October 3, 1965

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (H.R. 2580; Pub.L. 89–236, 79 Stat. 911, enacted June 30, 1968), also known as the Hart–Celler Act,[1] changed the way quotas were allocated by ending the National Origins Formula that had been in place in the United States since the Emergency Quota Act of 1921. Representative Emanuel Celler of New York proposed the bill, Senator Philip Hart of Michigan co-sponsored it, and Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts helped to promote it.

The Hart–Celler Act abolished the quota system based on national origins that had been American immigration policy since the 1920s. The new law maintained the per-country limits, but it also created preference visa categories that focused on immigrants' skills and family relationships with citizens or U.S. residents. The bill set numerical restrictions on visas at 170,000 per year, with a per-country-of-origin quota. However, immediate relatives of U.S. citizens and "special immigrants" had no restrictions.[1]

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 while it gave preference to northern and western Europeans over southern and eastern Europeans.[2] 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.[3] In the United States, the national-based formula had been under scrutiny for a number of years. In 1952, President Truman 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 blue print for the Hart–Celler Act.[4] 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".[5] 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.[6]

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.[7]

Immigration and Nationality Act - 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 follow:

Legislative history

October 3, 1965: President Lyndon Johnson visits the Statue of Liberty to sign the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.

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.[9] 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.[10] In the Senate, 52 Democrats voted yes, 14 no, and 1 abstained. Among Senate Republicans, 24 voted yes, 3 voted no, and 1 abstained.[11] In the House, 202 Democrats voted yes, 60 voted no and 12 abstained, 117 Republicans voted yes, 10 voted no and 11 abstained. One unknown representative voted yes.[12] 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".[13]

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".[14]

Long-term impact

The proponents of the Hart–Celler Act argued that it would not significantly influence America's culture. President Johnson called the bill "not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions."[15] Secretary of State Dean Rusk and other politicians, including Senator Ted Kennedy, asserted that the bill would not affect America's demographic mix.[16] However, scholars point out that the immigration act shifted the ethnic composition of immigrants.[17][18] The Hart–Celler Act allowed people to migrate to the United States from Asia, Africa, the Middle East as well as Southern and Eastern Europe.

The Latin American population 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.[19][20] By the 1990s, America's population growth was more than one-third driven by legal immigration and substantially augmented by illegal immigration, primarily from Latin America and other parts of the developing world. Before passage of the Hart–Celler Act, immigration accounted for only ten percent of population increase in the U.S. Ethnic and racial minorities, as defined by the US Census Bureau. This percentage rose from 25 percent of the US population during the year 1990 to 30 percent in the year 2000 and to 36.6 percent as measured by the results from the 2010 census.[21] Similarly, during the same time period the non-Hispanic white population in the United States decreased from 75 percent of the overall US population in 1990 to 70 percent in 2000 and finally to 63.4 percent during the year 2011.[21]

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. According to the 2000 census, roughly 11.1 percent of the American population was foreign-born, a major increase from the low of 4.7 percent in 1970. A third of the foreign-born were from Latin America and a fourth from Asia. The passage of the Hart–Celler Act contributed to increased illegal immigration from Latin America, especially Mexico, since the unlimited legal bracero program previously in place was eliminated.

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 U.S., although some immigrant groups continue to face major challenges. For example, Indian Americans in the U.S. have a higher average income and lower poverty rate than the national average, while Vietnamese Americans, many of them from refugee backgrounds, have median earnings less than the national average and a higher poverty rate.[22] Asians and Pacific Islanders (including international students from Asia) constituted 30 percent of the student population in California's public universities by 2000, and over 38% of the student population by 2011. The problems have centered on questions of multicultural identity as opposed to the melting-pot idea, debates on the economic impact of immigration, impact of illegal immigration, and fears of becoming a polyglot nation with English not the primary language.[23]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Sarah Starkweather. "US immigration legislation online". University of Washington, Bothell Library. Retrieved January 1, 2012.
  2. ↑ "A Nation of Immigrants". NSIDE SA. September 2012.
  3. ↑ "The Geopolitical Origins of the U.S. Immigration Act of 1965". migrationpolicy.org. Retrieved 2016-03-01.
  4. ↑ "Whom we shall welcome; report". archive.org. Retrieved 2016-03-01.
  5. ↑ "235 - Remarks to Delegates of the American Committee on Italian Migration". The American Presidency Project. June 11, 1963. External link in |publisher= (help)
  6. ↑ Tracy J. Davis. "Opening the Doors of Immigration: Sexual Orientation and Asylum in the United States". Human Rights Brief 6 (3).
  7. ↑ Keely, Charles B. (Winter 1979). "The Development of U.S. Immigration Policy Since 1965". Journal Of International Affairs 33, no. 2.
  8. ↑ #http://www.dol.gov/compliance/topics/wages-foreign-workers.htm Wages under Foreign Labor Certification Retrieved 3rd December 2015.
  9. ↑ Association of Centers for the Study of Congress. "Immigration and Nationalization Act". The Great Society Congress. Association of Centers for the Study of Congress. Retrieved 6 April 2016.
  10. ↑ Association of Centers for the Study of Congress. "Immigration and Nationalization Act". The Great Society Congress. Association of Centers for the Study of Congress. Retrieved 6 April 2016.
  11. ↑ Keith Poole. "Senate Vote #232 (Sep 22, 1965)". Civic Impulse, LLC.
  12. ↑ Keith Poole. "House Vote #177 (Sep 30, 1965)". Civic Impulse, LLC.
  13. ↑ Bill Ong Hing (2012), Defining America: Through Immigration Policy, Temple University Press, p. 95, ISBN 978-1-59213-848-7
  14. ↑ "Remarks at the Signing of the Immigration Bill, Liberty Island, New York". October 3, 1965. Retrieved January 1, 2012.
  15. ↑ Johnson, L.B., (1965). President Lyndon B. Johnson's Remarks at the Signing of the Immigration Bill. Liberty Island, New York October 3, 1965 transcript at lbjlibrary.
  16. ↑ Jennifer Ludden. "1965 immigration law changed face of America". NPR.
  17. ↑ Ngai, Mae M. (2004). Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princenton: Princeton University Press. pp. 266–268. ISBN 978-0-691-16082-5.
  18. ↑ Law, Anna O. (Summer 2002). "The Diversity Visa Lottery - A Cycle of Unintended Consequences in United States Immigration Policy". Journal Of American Ethnic History 21, no. 4.
  19. ↑ Massey, Douglas S. (2015-09-25). "How a 1965 immigration reform created illegal immigration". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2016-04-20.
  20. ↑ Massey, Douglas S.; Durand, Jorge; Pren, Karen A. (2016-03-01). "Why Border Enforcement Backfired". American Journal of Sociology 121 (5): 1557–1600. doi:10.1086/684200. ISSN 0002-9602.
  21. 1 2 "USA QuickFacts from the US Census Bureau". Quickfacts.census.gov. Retrieved June 6, 2013.
  22. ↑ U.S. Census Bureau (December 2004). "We the People:Asians in the United States" (PDF). Retrieved September 14, 2013.
  23. ↑ Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies, Portland State University (August 2011). "Immigration & naturalization act of 1965: Origin of modern American society". Retrieved January 1, 2012.

External links

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