Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965: Good idea or bad?

BrainGlutton · September 7, 2012, 12:54am

Spinoff from this thread on the Ted Kennedy video at the DNC – particularly, this exchange:

And then everybody called LonesomPolecat out on that (he has not yet responded that I can see). But, it raises an interesting question, I guess, that has nothing to do with Ted Kennedy.

In 1965, U.S. immigration law was based on the Immigration Act of 1924, as somewhat modified by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. There was a National Origins Formula which was explicitly designed to maintain the existing ethnic composition of the U.S.; it favored immigrants from northwestern Europe and disfavored all others.

The Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 was a lot more controversial at the time than is much remembered now – just as white-supremacist racism was a lot more prevalent and confident in America than is much remembered now – and, in fact, very inaccurate predictions were used to sell the immigration reform to the public:

Background

The 1965 act marked a radical break from the immigration policies of the past. The law as it stood then excluded Asians and Africans and preferred northern and western Europeans over southern and eastern ones. At the height of the civil rights movement of the 1960s the law was seen as an embarrassment by, among others, President John F. Kennedy, who called the then-quota-system “nearly intolerable”. After Kennedy’s assassination, President Lyndon Johnson signed the bill at the foot of the Statue of Liberty as a symbolic gesture.

In order to convince the American populace - the majority of whom were opposed to the act - of the legislation’s merits, its liberal proponents assured that passage would not influence America’s culture significantly. President Johnson called the bill “not revolutionary”, Secretary of State Dean Rusk estimated only a few thousand Indian immigrants over the next five years, and other politicians, including Edward Kennedy, hastened to reassure the populace that the demographic mix would not be affected; these assertions would later prove wildly inaccurate.[2]

And, yes, in the political context of the time, we can fairly read an assurance that “the demographic mix would not be affected” as “America would remain mostly-white.”

In the event, however:

Long-term results

Immigration did change America’s demographics, opening the doors to immigrants from Mediterranean Europe, Latin America and Asia. By the 1990s, America’s population growth was more than one-third driven by legal immigration, as opposed to one-tenth before the act. Ethnic and racial minorities, as defined by the Census bureau, rose from 25 percent in 1990 to 30% in 2000. Per the 2000 census, roughly 11.1% of Americans were foreign-born, a major increase from the low of 4.7 percent in 1970. A third of the foreign-born were from Latin America and a fourth from Asia. The act increased illegal immigration from Latin America, especially Mexico, since the unlimited legal ‘bracero’ system previously in-place was cut.

The waves of immigration has raised both possibilities and problems. Many immigrants have taken advantage of the abundance of opportunities in the US. The Vietnamese refugees from 1975 have an average income above the national average. Asians and Pacific Islanders constituted one-fifth of the students in California’s public universities by 2000. Immigration helped stimulate the sunbelt boom. The problems have centered on questions of multicultural identity as opposed to the melting-pot idea, debates on the economic impact of immigration, impact of illegal immigration, and fears of becoming a polyglot nation with English not the primary language.[5]

As a result of these changes in legal immigration among other factors, America is expected to have less than 50 percent non-Hispanic whites in the total population by the year 2042.[6]

However, “inaccurate” does not necessarily mean “dishonest.” NPR reports:

“The law was just unbelievable in its clarity of racism,” says Stephen Klineberg, a sociologist at Rice University. “It declared that Northern Europeans are a superior subspecies of the white race. The Nordics were superior to the Alpines, who in turn were superior to the Mediterraneans, and all of them were superior to the Jews and the Asians.”

<snip>

“This bill that we will sign today is not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions,” Johnson said at the signing ceremony. “It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives or add importantly to either our wealth or our power.”

Looking back, Johnson’s statement is remarkable because it proved so wrong. Why? Sociologist Klineberg says the government’s newfound sense of egalitarianism only went so far. The central purpose of the new immigration law was to reunite families.

Klineberg notes that in debating an overhaul of immigration policy in the 1960s, many in Congress had argued that little would change because the measure gave preference to relatives of immigrants already in America. Another provision gave preference to professionals with skills in short supply in the United States.

“Congress was saying in its debates, ‘We need to open the door for some more British doctors, some more German engineers,’” Klineberg says. “It never occurred to anyone, literally, that there were going to be African doctors, Indian engineers, Chinese computer programmers who’d be able, for the first time in the 20th century, to immigrate to America.”

Predictions Based on Ignorance?

In fact, expert after expert testified before Congress that little would change. Secretary of State Dean Rusk repeatedly stressed that the number of new immigrants coming to the United States was not expected to skyrocket. What was really at stake, Rusk argued, was the principle of a more open immigration policy.

When asked about the number of people from India who would want to immigrate to the United States, Rusk told the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization: “The present estimate, based upon the best information we can get, is that there might be, say, 8,000 immigrants from India in the next five years. In other words, I don’t think we have a particular picture of a world situation where everybody is just straining to move to the Unites States.”

Historian Otis Graham, professor emeritus of the University of California at Santa Barbara, says that when he first started studying the 1965 immigration law, he assumed that politicians at the time had lied about the law’s potential consequences in order to get it passed. But he says he has since changed his mind.

“In the research of my students, and in the research I’ve been able to do,” Graham says, “so many lobbyists that followed this issue, so many labor-union executives that followed this issue, so many church people — so many of those involved said the same thing. So you find ignorance three-feet deep. Maybe ignorance is the answer.”

Still, based on lies or based on ignorance – in hindsight, and judging by the results, it wasn’t such a bad idea, was it? So we get Harold and Kumar, what’s the harm?

Does anybody care to argue that we/they should have left the American immigration system just as it was, clarity-of-racism and all?

dropzone · September 7, 2012, 3:51am

We didn’t just get Harold and Kumar, we got their ethnic cousins. I think we won.

Trinopus · September 7, 2012, 4:00am

It’s sad, but true, that there are still a lot of people who believe that culture is genetic.

We see this absurdity, today, in issues of whether adoptive parents children of Chinese origin, living in, say, Louisiana, ought to make an effort to raise these children with an immersion in Chinese culture.

(One of the most joyful stories I ever saw was a tv show about just such a child – a happy little girl – who looks as Chinese as anyone – who decided she wanted to get involved in Irish Dancing! And she did! At first, there was reluctance, but everyone pretty much realized: there was no reason not! Why shoe-horn her into Chinese dance, or American dance, if she saw Irish dance and wanted to do it. I call it freedom, and I say hooray for it.)

Ibn_Warraq · September 7, 2012, 4:12am

Of course it was a good idea.

The laws it overturned, which set very strict quotas on the number of Eastern and Southern Europeans and virtually banned the immigration of “Asians” were racist, offensive and unAmerican.

In 1952, when the US changed the law to no longer limit naturalization of immigrants to those who were “free white persons”(which was why Chinese, Japanese, and Jamaican immigrants weren’t allowed to become US citizens until the 1950s) and the the striking down of the racist immigration laws was a continuation of this.

From NPR.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5391395

“The law was just unbelievable in its clarity of racism,” says Stephen Klineberg, a sociologist at Rice University. "It declared that Northern Europeans are a superior subspecies of the white race. The Nordics were superior to the Alpines, who in turn were superior to the Mediterraneans, and all of them were superior to the Jews and the Asians."

By the 1960s, Greeks, Poles, Portuguese and Italians were complaining that immigration quotas discriminated against them in favor of Western Europeans. The Democratic Party took up their cause, led by President John F. Kennedy. In a June 1963 speech to the American Committee on Italian Migration, Kennedy called the system of quotas in place back then " nearly intolerable."

After Kennedy’s assassination, Congress passed, and President Lyndon Johnson, signed the Immigration and Naturalization Act. It leveled the immigration playing field, giving a nearly equal shot to newcomers from every corner of the world. The ceremony was held at the foot of the symbolically powerful Statue of Liberty. Yet President Johnson tried to downplay the law’s significance.

“This bill that we will sign today is not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions,” Johnson said at the signing ceremony. “It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives or add importantly to either our wealth or our power.”

Looking back, Johnson’s statement is remarkable because it proved so wrong. Why? Sociologist Klineberg says the government’s newfound sense of egalitarianism only went so far. The central purpose of the new immigration law was to reunite families.

Klineberg notes that in debating an overhaul of immigration policy in the 1960s, many in Congress had argued that little would change because the measure gave preference to relatives of immigrants already in America. Another provision gave preference to professionals with skills in short supply in the United States.

“Congress was saying in its debates, ‘We need to open the door for some more British doctors, some more German engineers,’” Klineberg says. “It never occurred to anyone, literally, that there were going to be African doctors, Indian engineers, Chinese computer programmers who’d be able, for the first time in the 20th century, to immigrate to America.”

BrainGlutton · September 7, 2012, 4:47am

Nitpick: They were racist, offensive, and extremely American. Our “higher” national qualities/values/aspirations are not always those that can fairly be said to define us.

DrCube · September 7, 2012, 2:46pm

Everyone who wants to should be allowed to move to the US (barring non-political fugitives), and after being a resident for some period (6 months, a year?) should automatically be considered a citizen, with all rights that entails.

The current 10-year, $10,000, if-you’re-from-the-right-country process is absolutely appalling. I didn’t pay anything, fill out any forms (except a birth certificate, which I suppose is analogous to an immigrant establishing residency), be a certain race, or have to take any test to be a citizen and neither should anybody else.

Neidhart · September 7, 2012, 4:53pm

If they wanted the law to not change the country’s demographics, they should have a) inserted an absolute (and fairly low) cap on immigration for all reasons, with no exceptions for family reunification, (200,000 sounds about right) and b) specified that no more than 15% of the total immigrants in any given year may be of non-European ethnicities. (15% being the approximate nonwhite percentage of the US population as of the 1960 census.) Simple, no?

I wonder what kind of shape the country would be in today if THAT bill had been enacted into law . . .

Bridget_Burke · September 7, 2012, 5:05pm

How many people are siding with moonshot & the polecat? Not I…

Texas has never been all that white. We’ve got African-Americans, descended from those who were building the state as slaves–even before it was a “state.” And we’ve got Mexican-Americans, some of whom were on this side of The River before it was The Border–even before Mexico won its independence. All of this happened long before my own people left that soggy island…

Now, in addition to Soul, Creole, Tex-Mex & Mexican restaurants, we’ve got Vietnamese, Indian, Korean, etc. And plenty of places that serve fusion cuisines…

Good idea! Some of my best friends are older white guys–but they aren’t, bitter, twisted & fearful of change…

BrainGlutton · September 7, 2012, 5:40pm

And Comanches, yes?

Revtim · September 7, 2012, 5:56pm

I’d be interested in hearing a non-racist reason someone could consider this act “treasonous”. LonesomePolecat, can you elaborate? I’m assuming of course you aren’t simply an admitted racist.

Iggy · September 7, 2012, 8:54pm

Doing away with the bracero system without replacing it with some sort of temporary work visa system for non-degreed persons was, IMHO, a mistake.

I think the US needs a simplified work visa program that is temporary in nature and much easier to qualify for. Tie the number of such visas to unemployment.

By getting such workers into a legal visa category I think more inroads can be made against the abuses and exploitation these workers sometimes face. With a legal visa I think farm workers would be more willing to cooperate with law enforcement and allow us to shift spending away from a punitive approach to immigration enforcement.

rat_avatar · September 7, 2012, 11:04pm

I agree with Iggy,

Without a temp worker program or a labor immigration program we have labor needs that are not met through legal channels.

This pool of labor has been instrumental in the growth of this country through it’s entire history. The lack of legal means produced the entire illegal immigration issue which hurts native born workers, immigrant workers and the country as a whole.

Removing the eugenics based quotas is completely a completely “American” and “Patriotic” act.

BrainGlutton · September 8, 2012, 11:51pm

:rolleyes: Does neither of you remember what happened when W tried to implement a guest-worker program? A program that would allow big-biz, especially agribiz, to have their cake and eat it by using cheap foreign labor that could be sent away when no longer needed? It was a nonstarter and it deserved to be. If we need more foreign workers we can damned well give them green cards and paths-to-citizenship, and we can damned well let them work under the minimum-wage laws like everybody else.

rat_avatar · September 8, 2012, 11:57pm

The guest worker program was mostly killed by 9/11 and xenophobia/racism.

They would have been under minimum-wage laws and yes green cards would be better but both parties have reasons to prevent that from happening.

Anything that improves the horrid system we have know would be better.

ElvisL1ves · September 9, 2012, 12:06am

Might as well state the obvious. It seems quite possible that the “treason” that LonesomePolecat was referring to wasn’t the more traditional treason to one’s country, but rather treason to one’s race.

BrainGlutton · September 9, 2012, 12:06am

Like what?

rat_avatar · September 9, 2012, 12:19am

I’ll retract that statement just to prevent a derail on this thread.

Iggy · September 9, 2012, 12:33am

I work on a temporary work visa with no prospects for permanent residency or citizenship. The program works to fill the needs of the labor market. No minimum wage laws apply… just market rate depending upon the job and worker’s skills.

First choice for jobs goes to citizens. I could be deported if a qualified citizen wants to take my job. My employer must advertise my post every time my contract (and thus visa) is up for renewal.

However I don’t work in the US.

magellan01 · September 9, 2012, 1:44am

How about we legalize the work, enforce minimum wage laws, and allow workers to come and go for the growing season or building season? Why must legal work require citizenship or a path to it? This is what seems to serve Canada well.