U.S. immigration policy from 1965 to the present

Abstrakti

The current wave of immigration to the United States – the third major wave in the nation’s history – commenced shortly after the passage of the landmark Immigration Reform Act of 1965 (referring to its Congressional sponsors, it is also known as the Hart-Celler Act). The legislation was passed during the heady days of the Great Society, at a time of considerable social upheaval in the United States, chiefly due to the combined impact of the Viet Nam War and the civil rights movement. As a consequence, relatively little attention was paid to this piece of legislation at the time by the public at large or by policy makers. It would appear that the sponsors and supporters of the legislation did not envision the Act as a stimulus for a major migratory wave. Nor did they think that the major source of immigration would shift from Europe to the developing nations of the Third World. As Daniel Tichenor (2002: 18) notes, ”Senator Edward Kennedy, one of the bill’s principal stewards, assured skeptics that the reform ’would not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area or the most populated and deprived nations of Africa and Asia’.”