http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merle_Haggard
He was in prison. He was also pardoned by California Gov. Ronald Reagan.
Ted Kennedy’s Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965
A Boston Globe article attributed Barack Obama’s win in the 2008 U.S. Presidential election to a marked reduction over the preceding decades in the percentage of whites in the American electorate, attributing this demographic change to the Act.[3] The article quoted Simon Rosenberg, president and founder of the New Democrat Network, as having said that the Act is “the most important piece of legislation that no one’s ever heard of,” and that it “set America on a very different demographic course than the previous 300 years.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Act_of_1965