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Sarah Singh

Professor Carr

English 110

28 October 2020

Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965

Just over fifty years ago, immigrants were welcomed into this country, and now they are

being turned away or pushed out. This undid the work of the Immigration and Nationality Act,

closing the doors to thousands of immigrants. Although the Immigration and Nationality Act of

1965 increased large-scale immigration, the apprehension of immigrants, both legal and illegal,

has reversed the effects of the act, tearing apart families and undoing the Act to begin with.

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 opened the doors for a large number of

immigrants from all over the world. Before 1965, the quota system of the United States of

America severely restricted the number of immigrants allowed in this country each year , and the

majority of the visas were accepted from just three countries: the United Kingdom, Germany,

and Ireland (Wolgin). President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law one of the most important

U.S. immigration reforms to date, The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. It changed the

conditions for letting immigrants into the country. President Johnson wanted to alter the

demographic of immigrants and to create an immigration system that focuses on “family

reunification and employment-based migration” (Wolgin). Some believe that the action of this

law took job opportunities away from American citizens because there was an abundance of
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skilled migrant workers that would work for much less. However, President Johnson stated that

the act “will not reshape the structure of our daily lives” (History.com). He simply wanted to

give immigrants better opportunities without affecting the lives of American-born citizens .

The Act is also called the Hart-Celler Act because of Senator Philip Hart of Michigan

and Representative Emanuel Celler of New York, who co-sponsored the Act. The Act was

heavily debated by Congress because of the recent assassination of former President Kennedy.

Experts testified that little would effectively change under a reformed legislation (History.com) ,

but this was not the case at all. Instead, the bill signed in 1965 marked a dramatic break with

previous immigration policy. “In place of the national-origins quota system, the act provided for

preferences to be made according to categories, such as relatives of U.S. citizens or permanent

residents, those with skills deemed useful to the United States or refugees of violence or unrest”

(History.com). Immigrants did not have unlimited access though, because the influx would have

created economic stress for the United States. “Family-based immigrants are admitted either as

immediate relatives of U.S. citizens or through the family preference system ” (American

Immigration Council). Since family reunification was the main goal, the new immigration policy

allowed entire families to gather from other countries and reestablish their lives here in the U .S.

The success of the bill was seen immediately after the implementation of it . Just five

years after the passage of the Act, Asian immigrants increased by more than four times, due to

war in Eastern Asia, and they were not allowed into the U.S. before this bill. Also, millions of

immigrants from Cuba, Eastern Europe, and other countries landed on American shores from
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Cold War conflicts. In just three decades after the Immigration and Nationality Act was passed,

more than 18 million legal immigrants entered the United States, more than three times the

number admitted over the preceding 30 years. Not only was there a huge increase in immigrants

entering, but the Act changed the face of America. The economic recession that hit the country

in the early 1990s was accompanied by a comeback of anti-immigrant feeling, including among

lower-income Americans competing for jobs with immigrants willing to work for lower wages.

In 1996, Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act,

which addressed border enforcement and the use of social programs by immigrants.

The legal immigration policy that is in place today was influenced by the Immigration

and Nationality Act of 1965. “Under current policy, there are five family-based admissions

categories, ranked in preference based on the family relationship, and capped at 480,000 visas …

and five employment-based categories capped at 140,000 visas” (Chishti et al). These categories

were first implemented into the immigration system after the passage of the Act . The

immigration system today has completely changed. When reviewing Trump’s Immigration

policy, Anderson states that, “By 2021, Donald Trump will have reduced legal immigration by

49% since becoming president – without any change in U.S. immigration law”. Reducing legal

immigration mostly harms refugees, employers, and Americans who want to live with their

spouses, parents, or children, but it also affects the country’s future labor force and economic

growth.
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America was labeled the melting pot of the world, but it is slowly regressing into a salad

bowl. The lawmakers of America have become picky eaters that they once were before the

Immigration and Nationality Act, removing people they do not want here, which goes against

everything America stands for.

Reflection

When I was reading through the assignment, I didn’t know what to write about because

I’m not really interested in politics and social protest. But as I thought more deeply about it, I

knew that immigration has affected my family in many ways, good and bad, and I wanted to be

more educated about it. The genre of this assignment is an expository essay. An expository essay

is a genre of essay that requires the student to investigate an idea, evaluate evidence, expound on

the idea, and set forth an argument concerning that idea in a clear and concise manner. This

assignment prompted us to think of a social protest that occurred in the last century, and I believe

that the topic of immigration is very important and that people, including myself, should be more

informed about it. My paper follows the conventions of an expository essay because it expands

on a specific moment in the history of immigration and shows how that moment has impacted

out immigration system today. The media of this assignment is digital. All parts of the essay

were submitted through Blackboard. My stance on this paper is that we need to be more educated

on the history of immigration and see that we might be going back in time instead of progressing

towards the future. My initial audience are a few of my classmates in a peer review session, then

my professor. My bigger audience includes American citizens, people that might want to migrate

to America, and politicians that deal with the immigration policy. My purpose is to inform

people about how the immigration policy has changed due to the passage of this Act. The
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exigence of this paper is that I have been seeing in the news for the past few years that the

immigration system has been getting worse, and this personally affects my family. I hope to

inform people that we were once an accepting country, and that we are going back in time by

restricting access. This assignment meets course learning outcomes one, two, four, six, seven,

and eight. CLO 1 is “Explore and analyze, in writing and reading, a variety of genres and

rhetorical”, and it meets it because I explored the genre of expository essay by reading a few

samples and then creating my own. CLO 2 is “Develop strategies for reading, drafting,

collaborating, revising, and editing”, and it meets it because I read through all different types of

websites to find the information I need, I created a draft of my story and revised it to create a

final piece, and collaborated with my peers to review each other’s work to provide comments.

CLO 4 is “Engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes”, and it meets it

because again, my peers and I worked together to improve each other’s work. CLO 6 is “Locate

research sources (including academic journal articles, magazine and newspaper articles) in the

library’s databases or archives and on the Internet and evaluate them for credibility, accuracy,

timeliness, and bias”, and it meets it because I research for articles in the school’s library and on

the Internet to support my ideas, and I evaluated them to make sure they were all good to use.

CLO 7 is “compose texts that integrate your stance with appropriate sources using strategies such

as summary, critical analysis, interpretation, synthesis, and argumentation”, and it meets it

because I created a paper that has a thesis statement, and body paragraphs full of information

from online sources as evidence to my thesis. CLO 8 is “Practice systematic application of

citation conventions”, and it meets it because I correctly cited all sources that I used in my paper.
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Works Cited Page

American Immigration Council. “How the United States Immigration System Works.” American
Immigration Council, 5 Mar. 2020, www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/how-
united-states-immigration-system-works.

Anderson, Stuart. “A Review Of Trump Immigration Policy.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 26 Aug.
2020, www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2020/08/26/fact-check-and-review-of-trump-
immigration-policy/?sh=1c89125856c0.

Chishti, Muzaffar, et al. “Fifty Years On, the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act Continues to
Reshape the United States.” Migrationpolicy.org, 2 Mar. 2017,
www.migrationpolicy.org/article/fifty-years-1965-immigration-and-nationality-act-
continues-reshape-united-states.

History.com Editors. “U.S. Immigration Since 1965.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 5
Mar. 2010, www.history.com/topics/immigration/us-immigration-since-1965.

Wolgin, Philip E. “The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 Turns 50.” Center for
American Progress, 16 Oct. 2015,
www.americanprogress.org/issues/immigration/news/2015/10/16/123477/the-immigration-
and-nationality-act-of-1965-turns-50/.