Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965

Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (enacted June 30, 1968), also known as the Hart–Celler Act, changed the way quotas were allocated by ending the National Origins Formula that had been in place in the United States since the Emergency Quota Act of 1921. Representative Emanuel Celler of New York proposed the bill, Senator Philip Hart of Michigan co-sponsored it, and Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts helped to promote it.

The Hart–Celler Act abolished the quota system based on national origins that had been American immigration policy since the 1920s. The 1965 Act marked a change from past U.S. policy which had discriminated against non-northern Europeans.In removing racial and national barriers the Act would significantly alter the demographic mix in the U.S.

The new law maintained the per-country limits, but also created preference visa categories that focused on immigrants' skills and family relationships with citizens or U.S. residents. The bill set numerical restrictions on visas at 170,000 per year, with a per-country-of-origin quota. However, immediate relatives of U.S. citizens and "special immigrants" had no restrictions.

The immigration into the country, of "sexual deviants", including homosexuals, was still prohibited under the legislation. The INS continued to deny entry to homosexual prospective immigrants on the grounds that they were "mentally defective", or had a "constitutional psychopathic inferiority" until the Immigration Act of 1990 rescinded the provision discriminating against gay people.

As per the rules under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), U.S. organizations are permitted to employ foreign workers either temporarily or permanently to fulfill certain types of job requirement. The Employment and Training Administration (ETA) under the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) is the body that usually provides certification to employers allowing them to hire foreign workers in order to bridge qualified and skilled labor gaps in certain business areas. Employers must confirm that they are unable to hire American workers willing to perform the job for wages paid by employers for the same occupation in the intended area of employment. However, some unique rules are applied to each category of visas. They are as follows:

• H-1B and H-1B1 Specialty (Professional) Workers should have a pay, as per the prevailing wage – an average wage that is paid to a person employed in the same occupation in the area of employment; or that the employer pays its workers the actual wage paid to people having similar skills and qualifications.



• H-2A Agricultural Workers should have the highest pay in accordance to the (a) Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR), (b) the present rate for a particular crop or area, or (c) the state or federal minimum wage. The law also stipulates requirements like employer-sponsored meals and transportation of the employees as well as restrictions on deducting from the workers' wages.



• H-2B Non-agricultural Workers should receive a pay that is in accordance with the prevailing wage (mean wage paid to a worker employed in a similar occupation in the concerned area of employment).



• D-1 Crewmembers (longshore work) should be paid the current wage (mean wage paid to a person employed in a similar occupation in the respective area of employment).



• Permanent Employment of Aliens should be employed after the employer has agreed to provide and pay as per the prevailing wage trends and that it should be decided on the basis of one of the many alternatives provisioned under the said Act. This rule has to be followed the moment the Alien has been granted with permanent residency or the Alien has been admitted in the United States so as to take the required position.

Senator Hiram Fong answered questions concerning the possible change in our cultural pattern by an influx of Asians:

Asians represent six-tenths of 1 percent of the population of the United States ... with respect to Japan, we estimate that there will be a total for the first 5 years of some 5,391 ... the people from that part of the world will never reach 1 percent of the population ... Our cultural pattern will never be changed as far as America is concerned.

— U.S. Senate, Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, Washington, D.C., Feb. 10, 1965

The proponents of the Hart–Celler Act argued that it would not significantly influence United States culture. President Johnson called the bill "not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions."Secretary of State Dean Rusk and other politicians, including Senator Ted Kennedy, asserted that the bill would not affect US demographic mix.However, the ethnic composition of immigrants changed following the passage of the law. Specifically, the Hart–Celler Act allowed increased numbers of people to migrate to the United States from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The 1965 act, however, imposed the first cap on immigration from the Americas. This marks the first time numerical limitations were placed on legal immigration from Latin American countries including Mexico.

Prior to 1965, the demographics of immigration stood as mostly Europeans; 68 percent of legal immigrants in the 1950s came from Europe and Canada. 

However, in the years 1971–1991, immigrants from Hispanic and Latin American countries made 47.9 percent of immigrants (with Mexico accounting for 23.7 percent) and immigrants from Asia 35.2 percent. Not only did it change the ethnic makeup of immigration, but it also greatly increased the number of immigrants—immigration constituted 11 percent of the total U.S. population growth between 1960 and 1970, growing to 33 percent from 1970–80, and to 39 percent from 1980–90.

The elimination of the National Origins Formula and the introduction of numeric limits on immigration from the Western Hemisphere, along with the strong demand for immigrant workers by U.S. employers, led to rising numbers of illegal immigrants in the U.S. in the decades after 1965, especially in the Southwest.Policies in the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 that were designed to curtail migration across the Mexican-U.S. border led many unauthorized workers to settle permanently in the U.S.

These demographic trends became a central part of anti-immigrant activism from the 1980s leading to greater border militarization, rising apprehension of migrants by the Border Patrol, and a focus in the media on the criminality of immigrants.