The Unintended Consequences of the 1965 Law

When the present immigration system was created by the 1965 Immigration Act, Congress said that the immigrant flow would not change very much; Congress was wrong. Congress should admit its mistake and undo the provisions of the 1965 Act that favored the admission of relatives of recent immigrants and that have led to such drastic changes in the immigration flow.

• “It would not substantially increase the total number of immigrants to be admitted to the United States.”
  - Senator William Proxmire (D-WI)
  
• “[T]his does not mean that the bill would permit a flood tide of new immigrants into this country. As a matter of fact, the total number of potential immigrants would not be changed very much.”
  - Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI)
  
• “Under the proposed bill, the total number of immigrants remains approximately the same.”
  - Senator Thomas Kuchel (D-CA).
  
• “The bill does not seek to increase to any great extent the annual number of new immigrants we admit.”
  - Senator Bob Bartlett (D-AK)
  
• “This bill would not attempt to make any drastic changes in our overall immigration numbers.”
  - Senator Frank Moss. (D-UT)
  
• “Total quota numbers [of immigrant visas] available will be only slightly increased.”
  - Senator Pat McNamara (D-MI)

The Mix of Immigrants Will Not Change.

• “[This bill] will not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area or the most populated and economically deprived nations of Africa and Asia.”
  - Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA)
• “Immigration from any single country would be limited to 10 percent of the total...with the possible exception of ... Great Britain and Germany.”
  - Senator Robert Kennedy (D-NY)
• “Maybe there will be a huge surge [in the number of immigrants] from India or a huge surge[in the number of immigrants] from Africa, but I would tend to doubt it.”
  - Senator Claiborne Pell (R-RI)
• “The people who have built up America, the Anglo-Saxons and the northern people of Europe, are not discriminated against in this bill ... the people from [the Asia-Pacific Triangle] probably will never reach 1 percent of the population. Our cultural pattern will never be changed as far as America is concerned. It will become more cosmopolitan but still there is that fundamental adherence to European culture.”
  - Senator Hiram Fong (D-HI)
• “No immigrant visa will be issued to a person who is likely to become a public charge.”
  - Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA)
• “The notion was created that somehow or another, 190 million [the population in 1965] is going to be swallowed up. None of us would want that, this bill does not seek to do it and the bill could not do it.”
  - Senator Philip Hart (D-MI)
• “I do not think it amounts to a serious increase in the number of persons admitted ... I doubt if this bill will really be the cause of crowding the present Americans out of the 50 states.”
  - Senator Hugh Scott (R-PA)
• “This bill is not designed to increase or accelerate the number of newcomers permitted to come to America. ...I would expect very little change ... in the immigration from the Western hemisphere.”
  - Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach

• The Number of Immigrants Skyrocketed.
  • There were 2.2 times as many immigrants admitted in 1998 as in 1965.

    Average Annual Level of Legal Immigration
    1960s: 330,000
    1970s: 450,000
    1980s: 600,000
    1990s: 1,000,000

    Immediate relatives admitted
    1965: 32,714
    1997: 322,440
    Admissions of immediate relatives were almost 10 times higher in 1997 as in 1965.

    Employment-based admissions
    1965: 4,986
    1997: 90,607

  • Admissions of refugees were 18 times higher in 1997 than in 1965.

    Refugees admitted
    1965: 4,392
    1997: 102,052
    Admissions of refugees were 23 times higher in 1997 than in 1965.

    Brothers and sisters admitted
    1965: 1,532
    1997: 55,171
    Admissions of brothers and sisters were 36 times higher in 1997 than in 1965.

• The Mix of Immigrants Changed Dramatically.
  • Top Five Source Countries for Immigrants
    1965: Mexico, Canada, Italy, United Kingdom, Germany
    1998: Mexico, China, India, Philippines, Dominican Rep.
    Mexico received 20 percent of the admissions in 1998. The United Kingdom received 1.4 percent, and Germany less than 1 percent.

                                 1966        1998 
    Indian  admissions:          2,458      36,482 
    African admissions:          3,137      40,660 

    In 1966, Indian and African admissions were 1.7 percent of the total immigrants admitted; by 1998, they had grown to 11.6 percent of the total.

  • In the 1960s, 49 percent of immigration was from Latin America and Asia; in the 1990s, 82 percent is. Meanwhile, the share of Europeans in the immigrant flow has dropped from 40 percent to 13 percent. Of the 1990 U.S. population, 4 percent was Asian/Pacific and 11 percent Hispanic; without a change in immigration, by 2050, it will be 8 percent Asian/Pacific and 24 percent Hispanic.

  • 20.9 percent of immigrants are on welfare, compared to 14 percent of natives.
    22.2 percent of immigrants live in poverty, compared to 12.9 percent of natives.

  • The Census Bureau projects that the U.S. population will reach 400 million by 2050. Most of the population increase is due to post-1970 immigration.
    Share of immigrants in U.S. Population
    1970: 4.7 percent
    2000: 10 percent
    2025: 14 percent

  • Western Western Hemisphere admissions, 1965: 139,284
    Western Western Hemisphere admissions, 1998: 298,390
    Western Hemisphere admissions were twice as high in 1998 as in 1965.

  Sources: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization, Committee of the Judiciary, U.S. Senate, 89th Congress, 1st Session, on S.500, “To Amend the Immigration and Naturalization Act”, Part 1 (February/March 1965) and Part 2 (June/July/August 1965); Immigration and Naturalization Service Statistics Division; U.S. Census Bureau.

  FAIR, 11/99.

  ---