The 1965 Act at 50Posted in Articles, History, Law, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, United States on 2015-09-27 17:01Z by Steven |
Adam S.I. Goodman
2015-09-24
 President Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Hart-Celler Act, 3 October 1965, Liberty Island, NY, NY. (Photo credit: LBJ Presidential Library/Yoichi Okamoto) |
Next week marks the 50th anniversary of the signing of the 1965 Immigration Act. By eliminating the discriminatory national-origins quota system, the Act created new opportunities for people from across the world to migrate to the United States. But it also restricted immigration from the Western Hemisphere for the first time, contributing to the subsequent growth of undocumented migration in the decades to come.
Understanding the 1965 Act and its consequences is essential to understanding the history of the United States during the last half century…
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