How a 1965 Immigration Law Forever Changed the Makeup of America

The Hart-Celler Immigration Amendments Act of 1965, enacted 55 years ago this week, struck down the race- and nationality-based quota law. When Lyndon B. Johnson signed the law, he modestly stated, “(T)his bill that we will sign today is not a revolutionary bill.” Yet, the nation’s foreign-born population rose from 9.6 million in 1965 to a record 44.8 million in 2018.

According to the Pew Research Center, new immigrants, their children, and their grandchildren accounted for 55 percent of U.S. population growth from 1965 to 2015. The post-1965 act immigrants were much more diverse racially because immigrants arriving from Africa and Asia increased both in percentages and numbers. Immigrant admissions from the Americas increased in sheer numbers after 1965, particularly the Caribbean and Central America.

In the years that followed, LBJ and the congressional sponsors of the legislation have been roundly criticized for understating how the repeal of the national origin quotas law would alter the racial and ethnic composition of the United States. The bill’s supporters were not unimaginative or misguided. Rather, they minimized the bill because it did not accomplish all that they originally set out to do, particularly in the areas of high-skilled immigration and refugee admissions.

The supporters, of course, knew it would create a more diverse flow of immigrants; ending racial discrimination that favored immigrants from Northern and Western Europe was the objective. {snip}

The supporters of the legislation also knew it would increase future flows, but they estimated that the increases would be modest — about 60,000 to 65,000 annually. Their calculations were based upon prior levels and existing backlogs. It was a “straight line” view of immigration that did not take into account other factors that might accelerate the flow, or other provisions in the legislation that might potentially alter future flows. This simplistic approach led to projections that overstated flows from some parts of the world and understated flows from other parts of the world.

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The legislation that became law on Oct. 3, 1965, was much more modest than earlier proposals.  The law did not include the original emphasis on high-skilled immigration, nor did it provide for a system of refugee admissions. Advocates for immigration reform had to accept compromises in order to end the national origins system. It would be another 15 years before Congress passed the Refugee Act and 25 years before Congress expanded high-skilled immigration.

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