National Origins Quota System Research Articles

Undocumented Irish Need Apply

AbstractIn the late 1980s, amid immigration reform in the United States, legislators and lobbyists secured generous visa allotments for Irish immigrants, whose path to legal residency in the United States narrowed after the 1965 Hart-Celler Act abolished the national origins quota system. Claiming that the new law discriminated against Europeans, Irish advocates framed their campaign as an effort to diversify the post-1965 immigrant pool, which was predominantly Asian and Latin American. By examining the rhetoric deployed in congressional hearings and media appearances, this article considers how groups like the Irish negotiated the terms of their whiteness in the post–civil rights era. It also addresses the global dimensions of this case study, including Irish lobbyists’ coalition with other (nonwhite) immigrant groups, concurrent immigration reform in Australia and Canada, the effect of the Northern Irish civil war and US-Irish diplomatic relations, and its legacies in a newly multicultural contemporary Ireland.

Tod G.HamiltonImmigration and the Remaking of Black AmericaNew York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, 2019. 314 p. $35.00 (paper).

Since 1965, when the Hart-Cellar Act eliminated the national origins quota system, Blacks from the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa have experienced an easier time migrating to the United States. The last three decades of the twentieth century saw significant immigrant flows from Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, and other English-speaking Caribbean nations. Since 2000, more than half of black immigrants have come from African countries. By 2014, the number of black immigrants reached 4 million, 9.2 percent of the black population; more change is likely since 16 percent of black children now have immigrant parents. But Tod Hamilton, assistant professor of sociology at Princeton, does more than simply depict this compositional change. He directly addresses a controversial question surrounding this influx: why do black immigrants have better occupational, educational, and health outcomes than black Americans? Some have offered a “cultural” explanation for this differential: black Americans have a weaker work ethic than black immigrants. Others point to differential discrimination, and to the selectivity that comes with migration. Hamilton sets out to provide a methodologically and theoretically sophisticated answer to this question. First, he does note that migrants, whether international or internal, are a self-selected group. An extreme example can be found in Nigerian immigrants, 63 percent of whom had at least a bachelor's degree in 2014. And when Hamilton compares black immigrants to black American movers (those who live in a state different than that of their birth), he finds that socioeconomic differentials are significantly reduced, although not totally eliminated. He then looks at the possible impact of the time period when most black immigrants arrived in the United States: post-1965, after major civil-rights legislation had begun reducing the effects of institutionalized racism in schools, housing, and the workplace. When looking at 1910–1940 data for New York City, which had numerous black immigrants from the Caribbean at the time, Hamilton found little evidence that immigrants differed from the city's black population in measures of social well-being. These differentials come to the surface during the post-1965 period. Recent black immigrants never experienced the harsh racist system that many black Americans experienced: inferior education, segregated living arrangements, predatory policing, the consequences of which still affect black Americans’ life-chances. Also, recent black immigrants picked certain areas of the country in which to settle—they are 30 percent of the black population in the Northeast—and their economic and educational opportunities differ from black Americans accordingly. Through his systematic study of how race, migration, and nativity interact in black Americans lives, Hamilton has produced a more nuanced understanding of the achievement gaps existing between black immigrants and black Americans. His framework, based on careful choice of comparison groups, also provides a blueprint for research that might better understand the general achievement gap between black and white Americans.

A Miami Misterio: Sighting San Martín de Porres at the Crossroads of Catholicism and Dominican Vodú

The supernaturalism associated with San Martín de Porres places him at the crossroads of institutional Catholicism and the Vodú of the Dominican Republic and its Miami, Florida migrant community. Despite Martín's official May 6, 1962 canonization as an emblem for the Second Vatican Council's updated sensibilities on racial and social justice, Martín's racial heritage and his mystic associations positioned Martín as an emergent folk saint (misterio) for practitioners of Vodú in the 1960s. This uptick of San Martín de Porres "sightings" within Dominican folk religion reveals the dialogic reformations of Dominicanidad (Dominican national-religious identity) in consequence of the momentous changes wrought by the 1960s. The assassination of dictator Rafael Trujillo (1961), the ensuing Dominican Civil War and U.S. occupation (1962–1965), and the abolishment of the U.S.'s national-origins quota system (1965) each worked in tandem to create a mass-exodus of Dominicans to the United States. Within the Church, the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), the Medellín Conference (1968), and their approach to popular religion and liberation theology further transformed Dominican identity and experience. This study is situated in the Archdiocese of Miami, Florida, a geographic and cultural hub for the Afro-Catholic diaspora. There Dominican Vodú spiritism is a practice that illustrates the sacred and transnational dimensions of Hispaniolan historical experience as worked out between devotees and the agentive personalities of their misterios.

The International Consequences of American National Origins Quotas: The Australian Case

This article examines Australian responses to the imposition of stringent national origins quotas in the United States during the 1920s. Following the introduction of the American quota system, many Australians worried that large numbers of undesirable southern and eastern European migrants would make their way toward Australian ports. Widespread calls for preemptive restrictions forced the Australian government to finally implement a range of measures designed to limit immigration from Italy, Greece, Albania, Yugoslavia, and Malta. More broadly, this article argues that American quotas often inadvertently engendered a wide range of indirect and unintentional consequences around the world that scholars of migration and American foreign relations might explore in greater depth. It concludes by suggesting some opportunities for individual and collaborative research into the international effects of the United States’ notorious national origins quota system.

Family Reunification and the Limits of Immigration Reform: Impact and Legacy of the 1965 Immigration Act

Immigration scholars and politicians recognize the importance of family reunification, lauding its role in diversifying the United States’ racial and ethnic makeup, modernizing the American immigration system, and uniting families. As the centerpiece of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, family reunification replaced the racially discriminatory national origins quota system. Commentators typically view family reunification policy as a uniquely modern political achievement connected to 1960s civil rights–era laws and emblematic of democratic liberalism. I challenge this characterization by examining immigration policy during the exclusion era and show that family reunification has been a crucial element of American immigration policy since the United States began regulating immigration. In addition, support for family unity sometimes results from exclusionary efforts. I illustrate this further by tracing the legislative history of passage of the 1965 Immigration Act. I conclude that a reassessment of the liberal valuation of family reunification policy is warranted and suggest that there may be limits to immigration reform that targets family.

Intimacies, Relationships and Socialities: South Asians and Racialist America in the Early Twentieth Century

Intimacies, Relationships and Socialities:South Asians and Racialist America in the Early Twentieth Century Ahmed Afzal (bio) STRANGER INTIMACY: Contesting Race, Sexuality, and the Law in the North American West. By Nayan Shah. Berkeley: University of California Press. 2011. BENGALI HARLEM AND THE LOST HISTORIES OF SOUTH ASIAN AMERICA. By Vivek Bald. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2013. COOLIE WOMAN: The Odyssey of Indenture. By Gaiutra Bahadur. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 2014. Much of the scholarly research on South Asian Americans has focused on the post-1965 period. The landmark U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Act of [End Page 59] 1965 abandoned prior legislation that had used race as the basis of immigration to the United States. The 1965 legislation also discarded the national origins quota system that had favored European immigration and severely restricted Asian immigration to the United States until the end of World War II. Following the passage of the 1965 Act, Asia became a major source of immigration to the United States.1 Interdisciplinary studies about the South Asian experience have documented diasporic and transnational community formations and illuminated issues such as racism, class, gender roles, sexuality, and religious and national belonging. Pre-1965 South Asian immigration to North America has received comparatively little attention. Anthropologist and historian Karen Leonard’s Making Ethnic Choices: California’s Punjabi Mexican Americans (Temple University Press, 1992), historian Joan M. Jensen’s Passage from India: Asian Indian Immigrants in North America (Harvard University Press, 1988) and anthropologists Norman Buchignani and Doreen M. Indra’s Continuous Journey: A Social History of South Asians in Canada (McClelland and Stewart, 1985) are among the few book-length studies that have documented the South Asian immigrant experience in North America in the early twentieth century. This scholarship has focused on the mostly Punjabi agricultural workers in rural California, the U.S. Southwest, and Canada. The three books reviewed in this essay build on the above pioneering scholarship and also greatly expand our understanding of the diversity and breadth of pre-1965 South Asian immigrant experiences. Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America (2013) by comparative media studies scholar Vivek Bald elaborates the experiences of the mostly Bengali Muslim men who were peddlers and merchants in New Orleans and ex-seamen in New York during the early decades of the twentieth century. In Stranger Intimacy: Contesting Race, Sexuality, and the Law in the North American West (2011), historian Nayan Shah explores the everyday life of South Asian farm workers in Canada, California, and the American Southwest. Journalist Gaiutra Bahadur’s Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture (2014) documents the experiences of male and female indentured laborers who traveled to the Caribbean and South America for work on sugar and rubber plantations. These three exemplary and eminently readable books are essential contributions to the literature on South Asians in the Americas, critical race and gender theory, and early twentieth century American history. The meticulous research yields a multitude of surprises and rewards for the reader. These books provide important insights into the political economy of international population movements in the shadow of severely restrictive, if not prohibitive, racialized immigration policies.2 Indeed, the two empires—Great Britain and the United States—provide a critical historical backdrop for understanding the economic circuits that structured South Asian migration. This scholarship shows how race, gender, sexuality, and the law were complexly intertwined in shaping pre-1965 South Asian immigrant experiences. [End Page 60] In spite of such important interventions, it is the exploration of intimacies, relationships, and socialities that makes these books deeply compelling, thoroughly engaging, and richly textured. In this review, I focus on this troika found in the three books as a lens for illuminating South Asian immigrant experiences in the late nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth century. In so doing, the discussion here focuses on the production, transgression, and contestations of attachments, engagements, and community interactions that developed among mobile populations, and were shaped by a range of “verbal and gestural cues, ethnical codes, and cultural frames” (Shah 55). As Nayan Shah notes in Stranger Intimacy, “migratory work and transportation crossroads produced environments of compulsory sociality, but...

TRACING TRANS-PACIFIC CONTINUITY IN THE FAITH OF SECOND-GENERATION KOREAN CHRISTIANS IN THE U.S.A.

This paper aims at tracing trans-pacific historical continuity, as it is demonstrated in the faith of second-generation Korean Christians. Second-generation Korean Christians are the children of Korean immigrants who went to the U.S.A., following the liberalization of the immigration laws in 1965 that removed the national origins quota system and ended the exclusion of Asians from immigration. About eighty percent of them are Protestants or Catholics, which corresponds with the Protestant or Catholic percentage of first generation Koreans. Spending their childhood and adolescence in Korean ethnic churches, second-generation Koreans acquire the evangelical religiosity of their parents which originated from Korea. Furthermore, being born or raised in the U.S.A., they also obtain American evangelical religiosity. Exploring the aforementioned socio-religious reality, this article claims that Korean Christianity, Korean ethnic churches and American evangelical Christianity are not very different from one another, and that, in fact, they are almost identical. While second-generation Korean Christians are socialized into the conservative Christianity of Korean ethnic churches brought from Korea, they identify with and are influenced by American evangelical Christianity. Thus, the faith of second-generation Koreans shows the trans-pacific continuity between Korea and America.

Detroit and Windsor as Transnational Spaces: A Case Study of Asian Indian Migrants

Detroit and Windsor as Transnational Spaces: A Case Study of Asian Indian Migrants by Vibha Bhalla A recent book, Permeable Border The Great hakes Basin as Transnational Region, 1650-1990, has drawn attention to the Great Lakes region as a transnational space. Emphasizing the economic and social linkages across this area, the authors examine the artificial nature of the border, stating: "The border also has been a principal mechanism for articulating and implementing immigration, economic development, and nation building policies while it has become, on a symbolic level, the embodiment of national sovereignty."1 Highlighting the regional economic linkages that have, since the seventeenth century, spanned what is now the Canadian and U.S. border, the authors also discuss the symbiotic relationship between nation building and capitalist interests. The nation state, they argue, played a central role in encouraging economic developments?it eliminated tariffs to promote economic development and it also created immigration policies to ease labor shortages in key industries by allowing selective migration. Finally, the authors demonstrate the ways inwhich people interacted with economic and political developments because of their individual or family needs. The book's authors call for future writers to look beyond the nation state narrative and focus on regions that transcend borders.2 This article follows the themes discussed in Permeable Border into recent decades. Using the migration of Asian Indians/East Indians3 within the Great Lakes region, especially between Detroit and Iwould like to thank Nora Fakes for her help in revising this article. Thanks also go to Christine Drennan. 1 John J. Bukowczyk et al., Permeable Border. The Great Lakes Basin as Transnational Region, 1650-1990 (Calgary and Pittsburgh: University of Calgary Press, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005), 3. 2 Ibid. 3 Canada and the United States categorize migrants from India differently. In Canada they are defined as East Indians, while the United States characterizes them as Asian Indians. For this article Iwill use the terms Asian Indians and Indian immigrants. Michigan Historical Review 34:2 (Fall 2008): 99-116 ?2008 by Central Michigan University. ISSN 0890-1686 All Rights Reserved. 100 Michigan Historical Review Windsor from 1960-2000, the article highlights the new regional economic relationships that have developed since the 1960s, and emphasizes the extensive economic integration of the regional economy during those years, especially in the auto industries. Furthermore, this article will demonstrate that national economic and immigration policies introduced after the 1960s continued to accommodate the dynamic transnational economic needs of the region centered on Windsor and Detroit. The economic opportunities offered by these centers, coupled with the fact that both permitted (if only temporarily) easy access for each others' residents fostered regional networks within the Indian diaspora. Information transmitted through these networks enabled individuals to understand the intricacies of immigration policies and acquire new skills to suit both regional labor needs and national immigration policies. To illustrate this process, the present article draws upon migration narratives of five Indian immigrants to Canada who became involved in these regional economies and subsequendy moved to the United States. As their stories illustrate, Asian Indians inDetroit andWindsor have continued to make the border a permeable space. Large-scale Asian Indian migrations from India to mainland North America began in the 1960s with the passage of new immigration legislation by both Canada and the United States that overturned their anti-Asian immigration policies.4 Canadian immigration laws passed in 1962 and 1967 established a point-based immigration system that allowed Indians once again to immigrate to Canada. Similarly, in 1965 passage of the Immigration and Naturalization Act in the United States overturned an immigration policy that had until then been based on the national origins quota system. The new policy established hemispheric quotas and emphasized the importance of reuniting families as well as economic development.5 The liberalization of Canadian and U.S. immigration policies coincided with Great Britain's decision to restrict immigration. 4Trinidad and Guyana already had large Indian diaspora populations. See Ninette Kelley and Michael J. Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic: A History of Canadian Immigration Policy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), for information on Canadian immigration policies. See David M. Reimers, Still the Golden Door...

"Without anyone noticing at all": The (Silent) Minority Rights Revolution

John D. Skrentny. The Minority Rights Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002. 496 pp. Notes and index. $35.00 (cloth); $18.95 (paper). For students and scholars accustomed to thinking of the years following the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act as a period of conservative reaction and white backlash, John David Skrentny's The Minority Rights Revolution offers an arresting counter-narrative. In Skrentny's account, the same decade (1965–1975) that witnessed the election and re-election of Ronald Reagan as governor of California and Richard Nixon as president; the urban violence of Watts, Detroit, and Newark; and the stiff resistance to school desegregation in New York, Boston, and Los Angeles also witnessed "a remarkable flowering of minority rights" (p. 133). Swiftly and without substantial lobbying or heated controversy, a bipartisan group of federal actors—members of Congress, presidential staffers, agency bureaucrats, and judges— passed laws, promulgated executive orders, issued bureaucratic rulings, and rendered court decisions that "established nondiscrimination rights" and the policies and programs to implement them for "groups of Americans understood as disadvantaged" (p. 4). Asian immigrants and their Asian American advocates won the elimination of the national origins quota system as a result of the 1965 Immigration Act. Latinos (and other English-language learners) secured the right to language accommodation in schools as a result of the 1968 Bilingual Education Act and Lau v. Nichols, the 1974 Supreme Court case best described as the Brown v. Board of Education for language minority students. Women received educational equality as a result of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. The disabled achieved equal access rights as a result of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Most significantly, Latinos, Asian Americans, women, and American Indians all benefited, in varying degrees, from "the most important policy in the minority rights revolution": affirmative action in federal employment, federally supported small business development, and higher education (p. 85). Collectively, these policies and programs, which emanated from deep inside the D.C. beltway and redounded to the favor of some 60 percent of the population, [End Page 278] formed the core of what Skrentny calls the "fantastic decade" that was the minority rights revolution (p. 328). How did it happen? Skrentny advances two basic arguments over the course of his two-part book on the "government's role in the recognition and protection of minorities" (p. 165). He emphasizes the first—the "perceived needs of national security"—in chapters two and three and the second—the "legacies of the black civil rights movement"—in chapters four through nine (p. 7). In the process, he discounts a third, and perhaps the most commonly held, explanation: that social movements originating beyond the nation's capital generated waves that crashed upon D.C.'s shores and forced a recalcitrant government to take action. The Minority Rights Revolution is not a book about the southern, African American civil rights movement—a revolution from the outside in—but rather a book about what that movement wrought for groups of Americans perceived by policy makers to be "analogous to blacks"—a revolution from the inside out (p. 328). With respect to the book's first part and first argument, Skrentny presents the years 1941 to 1965 as "the prehistory of the minority rights revolution" (p. 16). World War II and the Cold War, he contends, served to catalyze (and, in some respects, constrain) the pursuit of "nondiscrimination rights" (p. 21). Beginning with President Roosevelt's 1941 creation of the federal Committee on Fair Employment Practices, and continuing with, among other things, President Truman's Committee on Civil Rights and its To Secure These Rights report in 1947, and the Department of Justice's contributions to Supreme Court cases that successfully challenged racially restrictive housing covenants (Shelley v. Kraemer [1948]), segregation in interstate train dining cars (Henderson v. United States [1950]), and segregation in public K...

American Immigration Policy: How Strait the Gate?

The history behind the existing immigration law in the US is reviewed followed by an analysis of the current immigration situation and its causes; examination of the effects of immigration on labor markets population foreign policy and refugee problems; and consideration of the desirability of change in the present immigration policy and law. Until the late 19th century immigration to the US was unrestricted. The 1st major postwar immigration legislation was the McCarran Walter Act of 1952 which retained the national origins quota system for immigrants from the Eastern Hemisphere and unrestricted immigration for the Western Hemisphere. By 1965 it became clear that the national origins system had to be changed. Under the 1965 Act each country in the Eastern Hemisphere was provided with a maximum annual quota of 20000. Overall the bill greatly favored family reunification with 74% of the visas allocated to family members 20% to workers and 6% to refugees from communism or from the Middle East. In addition spouses and minor unmarried children of US citizens and parents of adult US citizens were admitted entirely outside of the quota restrictions and amounted to an additional 100000 immigrants per year. The total annual worldwide quota was set in 1965 at 290000. The 1965 Act remains the basis of the system today. Major changes occurred in 1976 when the preference system was extended to the Western Hemisphere; in 1978 when the hemispheric quotas were combined into 1 worldwide quota; and in 1980 with the passage of the Refugee Act. This latter Act allowed entry of refugees as defined by the UN. Of all the 1st World countries the US currently receives twice as many refugees and immigrants as the rest of the world combined. If the population effects of immigration are in dispute the labor market effects are even more hotly contested. Fierce debate exists over the allegation that aliens take jobs from US citizens and depress wages and working conditions. The present administration needs to realize that there are advantages to retaining a system that is familiar and works and that replacing it with untried solutions may actually create more problems than it solves. No changes can eliminate the irreconcilable conflicts of immigration policy. The goals acknowledged--primarily reuniting families and secondarily admitting needed workers and refugees--are themselves in conflict because immigrants in all categories must share a limited number of visas. Other goals such as encouraging investment or retirement or limiting population growth make the choices more difficult. The difficulties the US faces in establishing and implementing an immigration policy are not the result of incompetence or intolerance. The problems exist because the US continues to be attr active to enormous numbers of aliens and because the country is willing to admit a substantial number of them.

Structured Adaptation of Black Migrants from the Caribbean: An Examination of an Indigenous Banking System in Brooklyn

HE ISLANDS IN THE WEST INDIES can be considered as migrationoriented societies since migration always has been an important feature of the economic, social and political history of these countries. In the early part of this century, West Indians migrated in large numbers to Panama to help build the Panama Canal as well as to other parts of Latin America, especially Cuba. Then, after the Second World War, another wave of migration began with the migrants going mainly to the United Kingdom. This reached its peak in the 1950s. Most of these migrants, who were mainly Jamaicans, freely migrated to Britain, regardless of their skills, because they were British citizens. Although in 1962 Britain enacted an immigration law which virtually choked off the flow of West Indians to that country, another escape valve opened for them in 1965 when amendments to the United States Immigration and Nationality Act eliminated the national origins quota system and granted Western Hemisphere countries, including the West Indies, non quota status. Thus, West Indian migration to the United States increased from 4,000 in 1962 to over 20,000 in 1971.1 Most of these immigrants chose to settle in New York City and it is in the borough of Brooklyn that they established their ethnic villages.2 This paper focuses on a specific institution, rotating credit associations, found in the countries of origin and transplanted to Brooklyn. It also attempts to answer the following question: What are the relations of these associations to the larger credit and banking system in Brooklyn? Are they used independently or in conjunction with credit institutions of a similar nature? Rotating credit associations are here defined as Associations formed by a core of participants who agree to make regular contributions to a fund which is given in whole, or in part, to each contributor in rotation.3 Rotation and regularity are therefore the two essential criteria used to differentiate these associations from similar ones like lodges, mutual benefit clubs, etc.

Recent Amendments in Immigration Legislation

Public Law 95-412 combined the numerical ceilings for the Eastern and Western Hemispheres into one, unified worldwide system. The number of persons who can immigrate to the United States, subject to numerical limitations, will now remain constant at 290,000 (of course, approxi* mately 100,000 additional persons immigrate each year who are exempted from numerical constraints). The expressed purpose of this amendment was to abolish the final vestiges of unequal treatment of immigrants based on place of birth. The amendment was viewed as the final step in a lengthy process to make U.S. law equitable toward all peoples, a process which began in 1965 with the abolition of the national origins quota system. To state that discrimination or unequal treatment has ended is more controversial than it may appear. Severe colonial limitations restrict subquota areas to 600 persons per year subject to numerical population. Thus, natives of Hong Kong experience inconsiderable delays in their efforts to immigrate to the United States while numbers remain readily available for natives of independent countries which may have less population but far greater numerical ceilings. Moreover, one could argue that the entire immigration system has certain inherent biases favoring natives of certain countries which manifest patterns of migration re? warded under the system. For instance, the fifth preference, which allocates 24 percent of the numbers to brothers and sisters of United States

Effects of U. S. immigration law on manpower characteristics of immigrants

Changes in the national-origins quota system, the preference system, labor certification and adjustment-of-status provisions led to changes in the size and composition of immigration. Within a context of increasing size and changing area of origin, the proportion of immigrants with a stated occupation increased, and the occupational composition of total immigration and of immigration by continent of origin changed. Europe and the Americas generally switched to lower-skilled levels, and Asia, Africa and Oceania, to white-collar, especially professional, levels. The composition of occupational groups also changed, with Asia generally increasing its contribution and most noticeably so in the professional group. Adjustment of status has generally increased, but it has not become mainly a subterfuge for foreign students and exchange visitors to remain in the country. Relatives and refugees dominate the adjustee group.

Current Concerns of the Private Sector

In a nation of immigrants, it is inevitable that there should be a national interest on the part of the private sectors in immigration. There are in fact many voluntary agencies that have concern with immi? grants and our national policy in relation to them, including not only the agencies giving technical assistance in immigration and nationality matters and in problems of adjustment, but others that basically only have a vital interest in our national policy. Among those active in this field are religious organizations, social welfare agencies, nationality group organizations, labor unions, civil rights organizations, patriotic organizations, refugee organizations, etc. The vast number of organizations interested in immigration have a fundamental credo?a nondiscriminatory American immigration policy. Generally there is no tendency to urge any great increase in the num? ber of immigrants?instead they emphasize that laws should provide for equitable procedures affecting the immigrant and his family, while protecting any legitimate interests of the United States. They also believe in speciaf efforts in behalf of refugees. Up until the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, the major debate centered around the question of the abolition of the national origins quota system and the discriminatory Asia-Pacific Triangle. It is true that many of the organizations were also seeking change in other sections of the law and its administration particularly those which had serious implications in relation to immigrants and their assimilation into our country. But the main stimulus that brought them together was the discriminatory aspects of the law. After the passage of the Immigration Act of 1952 (the McCarran-Walter Act), sentiment became stronger than ever for abolishing the national origins quota system. In 1954, a group of organizations started working together, organizing the American Immigration Conference which subsequently became in 1960 the American Immigration and Citizenship Conference. Prior to this time,

Immigration Law: Some Refinements and New Reforms

When John F. Kennedy became President in January, 1961, he carried with him a pledge to the American people that he would earnestly work for immigration reform and his leadership in this area was a significant contribution to the Immigration Act of 1965. His personal sympathies on this issue?stated so well in his essay, A Nation of Immigrants?were strong and clear. They reflected a deep personal conviction of the President, formed in part through the counsel given him by his grandfather, the late Representative John Francis Fitzgerald of Massachusetts. Grandfather believed that fair and just immigration policies, for the people of all nations, were very important to our country, and often expressed this to his grandchildren. During his tenure in Congress he vigorously opposed legislation intended to discriminate against Jews, Italians, and other nationals, and, as evidenced by his bill for the relief of refugees from the Boer War in South Africa, was deeply concerned with the plight of the homeless throughout the world. Because of this family association, and my own personal interest in immigration policy, I was extremely grateful for the opportunity to carry out my maiden effort in the Senate, on behalf of legislation to eliminate the national-origins quota system. On October 3, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Immigration Act of 1965. This event marked a victory for the forces of common sense and decency, and for the cumulative efforts over many years of dedicated individuals in government and throughout America's citizenry. The reform accomplished in Public Law 89-236

The Immigration and Nationality (McCarran-Walter) Act of 1952, as Amended to 1965

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 was the product of the most extensive Congressional study of the subject in the nation's history. The Act codified and brought together for the first time all the nation's laws on immigration and naturalization. It continued and enlarged upon qualitative restrictions; revised but continued the national-origins quota system of immigrant selection in effect since 1929; eliminated race and sex as a bar to immigration; Western Hemisphere immigration was continued quota-free; quota preferences were established for relatives and skilled aliens; security provisions against criminals and subversives were strengthened; and due process was safeguarded. The measure was passed over President Truman's veto. The Act was continuously amended in successive years to increase immigration and to accommodate refugees and excluded or restricted classes. The amendments, together with the Act's nonquota loopholes and permissive administrative exceptions, effectively nullified the national-origins quota system, so that two out of every three immigrants became nonquota entrants. The bulk of immigration under the Act was not from the northern and western European areas favored by the national-origins formula. This circumstance accelerated demands for its abolition.

The Role of the State Department in the Administration and Enforcement of the New Immigration Law

The Secretary of State and, by delegated authority, the Administrator of the Bureau of Security and Consular Affairs in the Department of State are responsible for the administration and enforcement of the immigration laws as they relate to the issuance or denial of visas to applicants overseas. That responsibility is established in the 1952 Immigration Law (McCarran-Walter Act) and remains unchanged in the 1965 Immigration Law. The major changes in the 1965 Law require the issuance of visas to persons in newly defined preference categories, each within specified ceilings applied on a hemispheric basis, and within a limitation of 20,000 to all applicants, preference and nonpreference, from any one foreign state. These and other changes required the State Department to establish new controls to comply with the new law. The controls are enforced through the State Department's Visa Office in Washington which is the backstop and link with the consuls abroad who actually issue the visas. While the major accomplishment of the new law is the removal of the discriminatory national-origins quota system, unrelated provisions have caused unanticipated difficulties which the Congress will be required to examine if injustices are to be avoided, particularly to applicants in the nonpreference category.

The Immigration Act of 1965

For more than forty years, the national-origins quota system dominated·United States immigration policy. It was not until Congress overrode President Truman's veto of the Immigration Act of 1952 that concerted effort to eliminate the quota system began, with the work of President Truman's Commission on Immigration and Naturalization. President Kennedy, long an active supporter of this effort, forwarded his legislative recommendations for immigration reform to Congress on July 23, 1963. The heart of President Kennedy's bill lay in its provisions to eliminate the national-quota system. Committee hearings on the bill were delayed until January 13, 1964, and, as no further action was taken, the bill expired with the adjournment of the Eighty-eighth Congress. On January 13, 1965, President Johnson sent his Message to Congress reiterating the recommendations of the Kennedy bill. Hearings began on February 10, 1965. A substantial part of the ensuing Congressional debate centered on a proposed numerical limitation of Western Hemisphere immigration, which was opposed by the Administration and its supporters. The Immigration Law of 1965, as finally passed, provides for a Select Commission on Western Hemisphere Immigration to look into the matter and report to Congress no later than January 15, 1968. If not provided otherwise by Congress by July 1, 1968, a numerical limitation of 120,000 annually will go into effect on Western Hemisphere immigration. The Law, however, does eliminate the national-origins system, which was conceived in a period of bigotry and reaffirmed in the McCarthy era. A nation's willingness to reform past errors of judgment by reforming public policy is a measure of its greatness.—Ed.