I was off by a year, it was actually the “Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965” aka the Hart–Celler Act.
It dramatically altered immigration flows and is the reason that the demographics of this country have changed radically since the time when Boomers were teenagers.
Before Hart-Cellar America was essentially 90% white European and 10% black. Every other racial group was too small to make any impact.
The Bracero program did come to an end in 1964 but that was unrelated to the Immigration Act of 1965.
Ted Sorenson was Kennedy’s speechwriter and the ghostwriter of JFK’s more famous book “Profiles in Courage”. Sorenson may well have written the immigration book, too. In cases like that the official “author” usually tells the ghostwriter what he wants to say, guides the writing and has to approve it. Writing is time intensive and requires skill that amateurs often lack. Winston Churchill wrote his own books but not many others of his station try it.
Oh. I see. Yes, it had indeed been enacted in 1965.
But was it not (famous immigration historian) Roger Daniels in his seminal work “Coming to America”, who called the Hart-Celler Act “the law of unintended consequences”?
IIRC, it had been maintained - amongst other things - by the lawmakers that America’s ethnic mix would not be upset.
It was maintained that the immigration flow to the USA would become just slightly bigger, as well as just slightly more diverse. “Just slightly” being the key phrase here.
If this prediction had become true, we wouldn’t be having this problem in America now, I bet.
We have seen that one of the two momentous changes in the 1965 law was the abolition of the national quotas, which had been first enacted in the 1920s, and later been maintained by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, the McCarran-Walter Act.
However, the Hart-Celler Act not just did away with the quotas, but also drastically shifted the “immigrant preference system” inherent in the 1952 act:
- the 1952 Act had given priority to skilled immigrants, for whom 50% of all immigrant visa were reserved;
- the 1965 Act massively shifted the preference towards relatives of US citizens and (to a lesser extent) legal permanent residents, for whom no less than 80% of all immigrant visa were reserved.
And this does not even account for spouses, children and (since 1965) parents of US citizens, who were admittable outside of any quota limit (!)
I am nothing more than a maverick in the field of American immigration history, but still I have asked myself whether the shift away from skill-based immigration might not have been the more deleterious of the two “sea changes” which the 1965 brought about...:-(
Oh, I forgot about the third one: the general increase in the number of immigrants due to a generally higher number of immigrant visas, as well as a larger number of nonquota immigrant groups (like the aforementioned parents).
What if the reformers had been more farsighted?
What if the 1965 act had not been enacted, or, at the very least, been crafted far more cautiously, along the lines of Pres. Eisenhower’s proposals in 1953 and 1957 (in his messages to Congress)?
We can only wonder, but I have a gut feeling that it would have been much better for the American nation.
So much trouble and sorrow could have been avoided, I believe...and the worst was the ideology of multiculturalism which came along later, unfolding its full destructive potential.
The late Lawrence Auster’s (yes, he was a controversial author, but I must admit to holding him in the highest esteem for his great erudition) essay “The Path to National Suicide” still makes for insightful reading on this topic.
One could hardly believe that it has been penned 31 years ago, so little has changed.
I cannot recommend it too much.