The act put an end to long-standing national-origin quotas that favored those from northern and western Europe.
Published: August 12, 2019
When the U.S. Congress passed—and President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law—the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, the move was largely seen as symbolic.
"The bill will not flood our cities with immigrants,” lead supporter Sen. Edward “Ted” Kennedy (D-Mass.) told the Senate during debate. “It will not upset the ethnic mix of our society. It will not relax the standards of admission. It will not cause American workers to lose their jobs.”
That sentiment was echoed by Johnson, who, upon signing the act on October 3, 1965, said the bill would not be revolutionary: “It does not affect the lives of millions … It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives or add importantly to either our wealth or our power.”
But the act—also known as the Hart-Celler Act after its sponsors, Sen. Philip Hart (D-Mich.) and Rep. Emanuel Celler (D-N.Y.)—put an end to long-standing national-origin quotas that favored those from northern and western Europe and led to a significant immigration demographic shift in America. Since the act was passed, according to the Pew Research Center, immigrants living in America have more than quadrupled, now accounting for nearly 14 percent of the population.
In 1960, Pew notes, 84 percent of U.S. immigrants were born in Europe or Canada; 6 percent were from Mexico, 3.8 percent were from South and East Asia, 3.5 percent were from Latin America and 2.7 percent were from other parts of the world. In 2017, European and Canadian immigrants totaled 13.2 percent, while Mexicans totaled 25.3 percent, other Latin Americans totaled 25.1 percent, Asians totaled 27.4 percent and other populations totaled 9 percent.
The 1965 act has to be understood as a result of the civil rights movement, and the general effort to eliminate race discrimination from U.S. law, says Gabriel “Jack” Chin, immigration law professor at University of California, Davis and co-editor of The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act: Legislating a New America.
Immigration reform was also a personal project of John F. Kennedy, Chin notes, whose pamphlet written as a senator was published after his assassination as the book A Nation of Immigrants, and argued for the elimination of the National Origins Quota System in place since 1921.
Ted Kennedy, along with Attorney General and Sen. Robert Kennedy (D-N.Y.), were both proponents of the bill, in part to honor their brother and also because it was consistent with their general interest in civil rights and international cold war politics, Chin adds.
“I think every sensible person in 1965 knew that the sources of immigration would change,” Chin says. “The more fundamental change, and the more fundamental policy, was the articulation by many legislators that it simply did not matter from where an immigrant came; each person would be evaluated as an individual. That kind of argument was novel, but consistent with the anti-racism of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”
The act, Edward Kennedy argued during the Senate floor debate, went to the “very central ideals of our country.”
“Our streets may not be paved with gold, but they are paved with the promise that men and women who live here—even strangers and new newcomers—can rise as fast, as far as their skills will allow, no matter what their color is, no matter what the place of their birth,” he said.
Among the key changes brought by the Hart-Celler Act:
