Several laws have since focused on refugees, paving the way for the entry of Indochinese refugees fleeing war violence in the 1970s, and later for facilities for other nationalities, including Chinese, Nicaraguans and Haitians. A 1990 law created a «Temporary Protected Status,» which protects immigrants, mostly Central Americans, from deportation to countries facing natural disasters, armed conflict, or other exceptional conditions. What is the connection between what was adopted in 1965 and the current immigration crisis? Whereas in the 20s, the argument was: «Keep America `American` by keeping immigrants out.» Now he said, «If you don`t welcome immigrants, you`re not going to celebrate all these different waves of immigration, Jews, Italians, Germans, you`re just anti-American. You don`t like that part of American history. Longstanding immigration restrictions began to collapse in 1943 when a law allowed a limited number of Chinese to immigrate. In 1952, legislation allowed a limited number of visas for other Asians, and the race was officially withdrawn as a ground for exclusion. Although a presidential commission recommended the abolition of the national quota system, Congress did not accept it. Knowing that history, knowing how new [Asian Americans] came to this country as a major racial group, helps me digest what`s happening now. Because I think part of what xenophobia reveals is how weak the Asian-American political category can be in some ways.
It is a group that often lacks political power and political voice. I am thinking of Herbert Lehman. It comes from the famous Lehman Brothers family and comes from a huge amount of money from New York. He was the first Jewish governor of New York, and he was something of FDR`s right-hand man. He spent much of his Senate career in the `50s fighting [for immigration reform] and continued to lose, along with Celler and others, because of the Red Scare and a lot of anti-communist sentiment that translated into anti-immigrant sentiment on the Hill. The Secure Fence Act of 2006 authorized the construction of hundreds of miles of fences, lighting, and surveillance technology along the U.S.-Mexico border to curb illegal immigration. The restrictive principles of law could also have led to tense relations with some European countries, but these potential problems did not arise for several reasons. The global depression of the 1930s, World War II, and stricter enforcement of U.S. immigration policies served to curb European emigration. When these crises ended, emergency regulations for the resettlement of displaced persons in 1948 and 1950 helped the United States avoid conflicts over its new immigration laws. At the end of this whole trip in 1965, [the promoters] had to make a number of compromises, and they added a numerical cap on Western Hemisphere immigration for the first time.
Until now – incredible because we`re so obsessed with securing the border – there was no numerical limit on how many people could come from Latin America and Canada. It was just totally open. This was again a foreign policy decision. It was an idea that you had to be nice to your neighbors. 1924 was truly a turning point. Once you add a whole visa process, once you add these strict quotas, you`re just in a very different immigration regime. The system really changes forever, and that`s a moment when the country, I think, symbolically says, «We`re not going to do things like this again. You can`t just introduce yourself.
The law is hailed by some as a realization of civil rights, as it fundamentally prohibits racial discrimination in immigration laws and abolishes these old ethnic quotas. But it really changes our whole idea of our neighbours and our relationship with them as sources of immigration. Recent changes in immigration policy have been an exception to this trend. In 2012, President Obama took executive action to allow young adults who had been illegally brought into the country to apply for deportation facilities and work permits. In 2014, he expanded this program (known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA) and established a new program to provide similar benefits to certain unauthorized immigrant parents of U.S.-born children. The expansion of DACA and the new program (Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents or DAPA) are suspended due to a legal challenge by 26 states. Americans encouraged relatively free and open immigration in the 18th and early 19th centuries and rarely challenged this policy until the late 1800s. After some states passed immigration laws after the Civil War, the Supreme Court declared immigration regulation a federal task in 1875. As the number of immigrants increased in the 1880s and economic conditions deteriorated in some areas, Congress began passing immigration laws. We often think of nationalism and immigration as opposing ideas and forces. The really interesting political twist in the `50s is to include immigrants in this idea of American nationalism. It`s not that immigrants make America any less special.
It`s that immigrants are what makes America special. The National Origins (First Quota) Act of 1921 limited the number of immigrants from each country to 3% of foreign-born people of that nationality living in the United States in 1910. This formula provided for relatively high immigration rates for northern Europe and low rates for southern and eastern Europe. What surprised me was how easily this could have happened – and not just for me and my family, but for all the families I know in America who are fundamentally not from Europe. I wonder now which of us would not be here if it had not been for the Immigration Act of 1965. And I think [it was surprising] to understand how hard this struggle was to get it, how many times it didn`t work, how many times it failed, how it ended up being right because of this perfect convergence of all these different circumstances, literally from the assassination of a president to someone who ended up negotiating: «We will bring families together. because it will keep America whiter, and then it will be wrong. In 1965, however, a combination of political, social and geopolitical factors led to the passage of the Immigration and Citizenship Act, which created a new system favoring family reunification and skilled immigrants over national quotas. The law also established the first restrictions on immigration from the Western Hemisphere.
Previously, Latin Americans were allowed to enter the United States without many restrictions. Since the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, immigration has been dominated by people born in Asia and Latin America, rather than in Europe. Kennedy supported immigration reform and Johnson signed the 1965 bill, but it was not an all-consuming passion for either president. Who fought against the bill? LBJ is leading the country to mourning, yes, but he also sees an extraordinary political opportunity to pass legislation that otherwise would never have happened. The Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, all of that is a bit right now. But immigration law also has this kind of moral dynamic of Kennedy`s death. There are people who talk about racial equality. We are going to get rid of Jim Crow laws, so we should look at our immigration laws in the same way. They have a racial and discriminatory problem similar to yours. The USA Patriot Act of 2001 brought immigration under the control of the new Department of Homeland Security and tripled the budget for border patrol agents along the Canadian border. Learn more about U.S. immigration through five short lessons delivered to your inbox every other day.
Register now! Before the law, there were these little attempts to restrict immigration. The most important was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, a rather bold law that, for the first time, selected an ethnic group to be restricted. It`s kind of an incredible confluence of events. Shortly before President Kennedy`s death, he introduced a bill to abolish these ethnic quotas. This bill is going nowhere, just as any other effort has gone nowhere in 40 years.