Effects Of The Immigration Act Of 1965 And Annotated Bibliography

Effects Of The Immigration Act Of 1965 And Annotated Bibliography

INTRODUCTION

The history of America and its people can not be separated from that of its immigrants. Immediately after independence, George Washington welcomed immigrants to come and take advantage of the new found independence and to help build the new nation. However, the development of America as a nation had to confront various controversial legislative acts which in turn shaped the history of the country and its position in the world. There was need for legislation to be formulated to help deal with this important issue. Legislation was developed over a period of time and this was subsequently amended to suit the changing circumstances of this dynamic issue. One of the significantly controversial legislation associated with immigrants was the Hart and Cellar Act, later to be known as the Immigration Act of 1965, which was signed by President Lyndon Johnson. It was a legislation that was widely disputed in decades that followed. This paper analyzes different interpretations of this act and how it affected the nation and its citizens in the years that followed.

The Immigration Act of 1965 was primarily designed to abolish the quotas system that had originally been in use. It was meant to be concomitant with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In this paper, the controversial issues that arose from the enactment of this legislation and the changes and developments it brought about will be discussed in details. It will also aim to focus on how these legislative developments affected the enactment of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

THESIS STATEMENT

The Immigration Act of 1965 was solely responsible for socio-political and legal developments and changes that culminated in the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

BACKGROUND TO THE IMMIGRATION ACT OF 1965

The Immigration Act of 1965 was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson. The signing of this law was a major shift from previous legislations dealing with the issue of immigration. One of the first policies was conceived in the period immediately after independence of the United States of America. This was mainly based on restrictionism .When America became independent George Washington opened the nation to not only the wealthy but also the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions. With this declaration America became the first immigration country in the world. The policy was mainly hinged on the American Revolution concept that was adopted. This revolution alluded to the maxim that there was unity in the many diverse nationalities that came together to form the American nation. This was in a concerted effort to rid the country of the tag of it being a British enclave and in the creation and adoption of a new identity that was to be uniquely American.

It was this that encouraged the immigration call by George Washington; the pioneers had envisaged that this call would be embraced by persons of European ancestry. What they had not anticipated was that first these settlers would want to come and create their own enclaves in this the new frontier and secondly persons who are not of European descent would want to take up the call to come to the land of the free.

In 1818 Congress refused a petition by the Irish Emigrant Society of New York, to reserve public land in Illinois for the exclusive use of the anticipated Irish arrivals from Europe. The Chinese were the first known non-European group to want to immigrate in their thousands to the America when they arrived on the Pacific Coast immediately after the Civil War in the 1850’s. They were sadly resented due to their hard work, cheap labor and success in business. Thus these provided the impetus that brought about in the late 1800’s the successive Chinese exclusion laws.

In the early 20th Century a number of efforts were made to resist the mass immigration taking place in most parts of the country. In 1917 Congress passed a law that propagated the Omnibus policy of discriminatory restriction. This was the Immigration Act of 1917. This law did not stem the tide but it reduced the mass immigration. It introduced an expandable principle of exclusion based on origin and a mandatory literacy test in the native language that sought to bar illiterates from entering the country.

Later the Immigration Act of 1924 became the basic immigration law of the land until the Immigration act of 1965. This law was unique because it created an entirely new class of immigrants who were the non quota class of immigrants. This system expressed the value of selecting immigrants by the type of occupational skills they possessed It also encouraged the principle of family re-union. It also included immigrants from other countries in the western hemisphere. This in itself is a loophole that they utilized since countries with small quotas would migrate to other western hemisphere countries and would then migrate to America as non quota immigrants. It was also in this time that a special preference for skilled agriculturalists and their families was introduced.

After the World War II, the problem of immigrants brought about a new dimension in that now there was a new class of immigrants called refugees. America redefined its immigration and naturalization system from that which was hinged on selection based ethnic lines to that of family and skill screening. This brought about a policy shift also America’s new status as a world power necessitated a shift in foreign policy. And also pressure from groups which advocated for more tolerance in the global set up. Security also became an issue with the rise of the Soviet Union there fore legislation was prepared by Congress culminating in the amalgamation of all elements of the previous laws into the Walter and McCarran Act of 1952.

This Act’s major controversy was that it retained the restrictionist policy that was discarded by the previous act. It also outlawed denial of admission based on race .It ended the exclusion policies that had been put in place for the Asian countries .The act also re-affirmed and revised the preference visa assignment system. While this law was restrictive it diverged from the past system but still retained the restriction that for the first time race was not a criterion in denying entry to an immigrant. Despite this the law still had it’s shortfalls and the main one was the quota system that was targeted that had caused even the then President Truman to veto the law though he was overridden. The law also undermined the foreign policy that now played a major part in the country’s international agenda due to the discrimination based on nation of origin.

The shortcoming made the need for a new law even more urgent and after successful lobbying the new law was passed in 1965. The Hart and Cellar Act was a revolutionary law because it abolished the entire national origins quota and the last fronts of Asian exclusion. It was also part of the federal policy that outlawed discrimination based on ethnic background and race. It was part of the cluster of legislation that was designed together with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voter Rights Act of 1965 to liberalize the immigration policy. The law opened immigration to America to the world. It expanded non quota admissions and tightened provisions for family re-unifications. It limited the power of the President to provide special refugee admissions and created for the first time stricter labor controls it also put western hemisphere admissions under numerical control. A selective admission through the visa system was maintained but preference was given to immediate family members over the special skills in jobs. The law while revolutionary brought an unprecedented drawback that had not been anticipated by the drafters of the new legislation. The imposition of numerical controls on western hemisphere provided an enabling environment for illegal immigration to the United States especially in Mexico. The number of immigrants who had previously entered America as guest workers became illegal immigrants. The long stringent procedures for applying for entry in to the United States through the system proved to be too testing to the Mexicans. Since the bracero program had a well defined infrastructure that was abandoned after the law came into effect, they opted to use the old channels to gain entry into America.

This rise in influx of refugees into America caused a major shift in policy in the way the American government handled the immigration issue. It was a bitter sweet pill supported by the citizenry hence the push to have an amnesty program for the huge influx of illegal immigrants. Successive committees were formed by Congress to look at these issues in the 1970’s and 1980’s the recommendations of which culminated in the amendment of the bill thus there being the new bill in 1986.

CHANGES THAT LED TO THE 1986 IMMIGRATION REFORM AND CONTROL ACT (IRCA)

As mentioned earlier in this paper several occurrences precipitated the subsequent mutation of the Immigration Act of 1965 to the law that became the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

A Select Commission of Immigration and Refugee Policy was formed by the Congress in 1978 to look into the issue of illegal immigrants. In 1981 the findings of this commission were made public and some the recommendations were; the United States should consider opening the doors to immigrants because of positive impact they had to the economy. They also recommended that amnesty should be considered to stem the tide of waves of illegal immigrants. It also wanted to outlaw the employment of non documented aliens. It was these recommendations that formed the basis of the Simpson and Mazolli bill which in the early 1980’s went through all the houses in various forms but never became law. However it differed with the commission’s recommendations in some areas it proposed a raise in numbers allowed in the country but to place the relatives of the aliens in quotas. This they had hoped would decrease the influx that was then getting to alarming proportions. It also outlawed the preference given to brothers and sisters in the recommendations. The debate on this was long and protracted but in 1986 a compromise was reached and with the signing of the Simpson and Rodino Act into law. This was what was formally known as the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

The Immigration Reform and Control Act (ICRA) 1986.

This law was a compromise of the earlier stated Simpson and Mazolli bill that never became law it was basically was made to deal with the issue of undocumented immigration. The basic structure of the American immigration and legal immigration was not touched by the law. It had four main provisions which were basically the recommendations of the Select commission findings. Amnesty for illegal immigrants who had been in the country since December 1981, employees were to verify the eligibility of newly hired employees, jail terms for employers who hired illegal aliens and special provisions for farmers to bring in foreign agricultural workers this was mainly in Texas and California. This was touted as the most friendly immigration law in the history of the United States. It was to address the issue of illegal immigrants once and for all. It provided generous provisions of formalizing their status, it enlarged a host of quota allotments based on status and special needs, ended exploitation of the illegal workers by unscrupulous employers by ensuring only legal aliens were employed. It also ensured that the civil rights protection for the Hispanics who formed majority of the illegal employees. Despite this the law never broke new ground in stemming the tide of illegal immigrants in fact it exacerbated the problem even further.

The law’s implementation has proved a huge challenge to the law enforcers. Some of the documents that the employers got to authenticate the status of the employees they employed were long, complicated and time consuming. Inspection by Immigration officials was also never done. There was also ambiguity regard to the law on allowing agricultural workers but the law did not allow Immigration officials from going to farms during harvest to make arrests. This is on illegal immigrants who cross the border during the annual harvest seasons. It also provided another loophole in this area when it allowed these temporary workers who had worked for more than three years in the farms to become permanent residents. So legal they had just made it easier for more immigrants to come into the country.

For the law to properly deal with this very thorny issue of immigrants then a couple of things need to be repaired in this law. This provision of 250,000 temporary green cards that are provided for the agricultural workers needs to be tightened and the permanent residency issue clarified properly. Also the process of amnesty while laudable in it’s sincerity did not encompass a number of things which came up during the working of this law. Most of the people who were granted amnesty were men and when they became citizens they brought there families who by law were given preference since a ceiling had not been put on the quotas.

The Act on Economy and Employment

It has been noted that the immigrants played a very important role to the economy and labor market. The reason this immigrants chose to come to America in the first place was because it was due to the policy by the founding fathers as the plan for developing the nation. America was a vast and had a lot of untapped potential. They knew that for them to be able to tap into this resource they needed people. Also as stated earlier their intention was for immigrants of European descent to come to the country. At this time the American economy was still in it’s very nascent stage and thus they needed resource from any where for them to develop the nation. The economic upheaval that occurred in Europe in the early 19th century played a big role crafting the legislation of the time. As noted earlier there was legislation to exclude the Chinese were had come form the Far East and already were flexing their economic muscle and had started doing many of the menial jobs in the transportation of goods, building construction, mining and agriculture. They also had within the short time they were in the scene become a force in business. Thus the Congress at the time passed the law on their exclusion and later restriction on our shores this went together with the subsequent laws that were enacted from the Exclusion laws to the 1965 law.

The reason this immigrants came was due to the job opportunities this country had afforded them. Each of these legislations beginning with the very first ones that started the Chinese restrictionism to the 1965 Immigration Act has always had this employment and labor issues at the heart of the legislation. But as the population of this immigrants increased and as evidenced in the several economic depressions of the last two centuries the issue of economic impact of this two groups comes to the fore.

Based on the current population survey done in March 2000, foreign born population in the United States was estimated at 28.4 million which was equal to 10.4% of the country’s population. This was a significant increase from the 1990 census that had foreign born population at 7.9 percent of the total population. The increase has always been on an upward trend from the early 1970s. In 1970 there were only 9.6 million foreign born immigrants in the United which when compared with the March 2000 figure of 28.4 million, shows a significant growth in immigrant population. This means a high level of migration internationally into the United States must have occurred in the last century.

Two issues have always come into play whenever the immigration legislation was being formulated. The first was their value to the economy. Vernon Briggs an authority on the labor issues that the immigration had encapsulated. He has noted several times even in paper in papers he has presented to the Congress that the immigration evolution has been closely connected with the economic mood of the country’s economy. Prior to the 1920’s there was need according to the policy of the nation for large numbers of unskilled workers for the economy to be sustainable. After which legislation was crafted and this significantly reduced the number of immigrants who came in. This forced the largely ignored labor pools; the Native Americans and Blacks to enter the labor market. After the Second World War mass immigration was again triggered and this put a severe strain to now bloated labor market. Subsequent legislation and even the Immigration Act of 1965 had not envisaged this and it has resulted in a bloated labor pool that now cannot be sustained by the economy. Secondly the immigrants by virtue of them being now residents of the country are always the main beneficiaries of the Social Welfare system which most times are better than the average standard of living for them in their countries of origin. This has resulted in a very heavy burden for the tax payer and the government thereby challenging the logic that they are of value to the economy.

Initial legislation also had not adequately dealt with the issue of qualifications but subsequent legislation leading to passing of the landmark Immigration Act of 1965 put a lot of emphasis on the skill competence of immigrants seeking immigration into the United States. The immigrants also according to the population report of December 2001 were concentrated in a number of states California, Texas, Florida, New York and New Jersey and it was also in these particular areas that the pressure of jobs was acutely felt by the native populace. In other states the employment issue of immigrants was not really felt. It has also been noted that most of the immigrants were male and they mostly constituted the low skills job groups in the thus they had a huge chunk of the earnings in this segment. This was attributed to low skills and training they came with in comparison with the Native Americans in the same age group who had higher skills and better training.

Bibliography

Schmidley, A. Dianne. U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, Series P23-206. Profileof the Foreign-Born Population in the United States: 2000. Washington, DC: U.S.Government Printing Office, 2001

Daniels, Roger. Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life.New York, NY: Harper Perennial, 1990.

Reed, Deborah. Immigration and males’ earnings inequality in the regions of the United States.Demography, 38, no. 3 (2001): 363-373.

Reimers, David. Unwelcome strangers: American identity and the turn against immigration.New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1998.

Ueda, Reed. Postwar Immigrant America: A Social History. New York, NY: The Bedford Seriesin History and Culture, 1994.

Annotated Bibliography

Daniels, Roger. Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life.New York, NY: Harper Perennial, 1990.

With a focus on the experiences of immigrants in the United States from the early 1500s, Daniels shows how different ethnic and racial communities have contributed to the development of the American society despite having to live with racial conflicts and oppression. He describes how the influx of Hispanics as well as many other refugees during the cold war adapted to the American way of life. I found this source useful in the data it provided on immigrants from different ethnic cultures from all over the world.

Reed, Deborah. Immigration and males’ earnings inequality in the regions of the United States.Demography, 38, no. 3 (2001): 363-373.

The author of this article, Reed, investigates the how earnings from male immigrants impact on immigration patterns in several regions of the United States. She demonstrates how immigration in the last thirty years has contributed to inequalities across the nation. I used this article’s data in describing how recent immigration has contributed to male earnings inequality.

Reimers, David. Unwelcome strangers: American identity and the turn against immigration.New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1998.

Reimer’s book provides an informative survey of federal immigration laws and describes the xenophobic and racist nature in the last century. The author offers the perspective of both sides in the anti-immigration debate. I used this source to describe the United States immigration policy and public response to immigrants after the Second World W

Ueda, Reed. Postwar Immigrant America: A Social History. New York, NY: The Bedford Seriesin History and Culture, 1994.

As an associated professor in history Reed Ueda gives a historical narrative of the 20th Century immigration patterns in America. In his global analytic perspective, he describes the international forces that led to large scale migrations of people to the United States as guest laborers and illegal immigrants. I found this source quite informative in its description of migration patterns after the Second World War.