1965 Immigration And Nationality Act

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More than five decades after the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, many immigrants in the United States still follow the foundations of this immigration law. Also known as the Hart-Cellar Act, it has introduced a new age of mass immigration and impacted the lives of millions of new Americans. The fundamentals of this act are family reunification and employment preferences, which are still maintained in any efforts to reform the 1965 legislation. This new law replaced the National Origins system that was implemented in 1924 as the first United States comprehensive set of immigration regulations. http://www.asian-nation.org/1965-immigration-act.shtml http://cis.org/1965ImmigrationAct-MassImmigration
Calls to reconsider United States immigration …show more content…

Arguing that the 1952 legislation did not include liberal enough provisions, President Harry S. Truman vetoed the McCarran-Walter Act and called for more effective means of ending the restrictive quota system in the current National Origins framework. However, because of the United States’ constitutional checks and balances, the President’s veto was overridden by Congress and the 1952 Act was implemented. President Dwight D. Eisenhower embraced the preceding President’s policies and likewise attempted to liberalize the nation’s immigration laws. This push ended in 1961 when the United States’ thirty-fifth president, John F. Kennedy, took over the White …show more content…

The country was in the depths of the Cold War during his time in office and he identified this as an opportunity to use immigration policy as a “psychological tool” against communism. Kennedy aimed to expose to the world that American principles of freedom, democracy, and capitalism were dominant to those offered by communist states. He concluded that if the United States opened its borders to endow immigration, people would “vote with their feet” and abundantly choose to make the US their home. However, Kennedy was not in office long enough to carry out this policy after being assassinated, so his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson carried the momentum. With Johnson’s time in office came the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act.
The Act abolished the restrictive national origins system originally passed in 1924 in favor of a quota and preference system. Priority was now given to "family reunification" so that U.S. citizens and permanent residents could sponsor the following types of immigrants in this order of preference: o Unmarried adult sons and daughters of U.S.

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