Chapter 1: The Nation’s Immigration Laws, 1920 to Today
Fifty years ago, the U.S. enacted a sweeping immigration law, the Immigration and Nationality Act, which replaced longstanding national origin quotas that favored Northern Europe with a new system allocating more visas to people from other countries around the world and giving increased priority to close relatives of U.S. residents.
Just prior to passage of the 1965 law, residents of only three countries—Ireland, Germany and the United Kingdom—were entitled to nearly 70% of the quota visas available to enter the U.S. (U.S. Department of Justice, 1965).4 Today, immigration to the U.S. is dominated by people born in Asia and Latin America, with immigrants from all of Europe accounting for only 10% of recent arrivals.
The 1965 law undid national origin quotas enacted in the 1920s, which were written into laws that imposed the first numerical limits on immigration. Those laws were the culmination of steadily tightening federal restrictions on immigration that began in the late 1800s with prohibitions or restrictions on certain types of immigrants, such as convicts, in addition to a ban on Chinese migrants and later virtually all Asian migrants.
http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/09/28/chapter-1-the-nations-immigration-laws-1920-to-today/
Re: “The Nation’s Immigration Laws, 1920 to Today”
You forgot to mention one key fact, Rome.
The 1965 INA limited immigration to 170,000 per year.
However, NO limits were imposed on family “Chain Migration.”
Because of Chain Migration, LEGAL immigration into the USA has been close to, or above, 1 million per year for almost the last 20 years.