Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965

Also called the Hart-Celler Act, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 abolished the national-origin quota system that had governed American immigration since 1924. It reoriented immigration policy around family reunification and skilled labor.

For four decades after the Immigration Act of 1924, federal law set strict quotas that favored immigrants from northern and western Europe and sharply restricted those from elsewhere. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, signed by President Johnson at the foot of the Statue of Liberty, ended that system. The new law allocated visas based on family ties to American citizens or permanent residents, occupational skills needed in the American economy, and refugee status, with per-country caps to prevent any single nation from dominating the system. Its supporters argued at the time that the change would be modest. They were wrong. The bill transformed the demographic profile of American immigration over the following half-century. In 1960, roughly 84 percent of immigrants came from Europe or Canada. By 2010, more than 80 percent came from Latin America and Asia. Family reunification, the dominant pathway, allowed naturalized citizens to sponsor relatives, who in turn sponsored more relatives, a chain effect critics call chain migration and supporters call the natural growth of immigrant communities. The 1965 act remains the basic framework of American legal immigration. Reform proposals over the decades have generally tried to shift the balance away from family ties and toward skills-based admissions, or to expand humanitarian categories, but the underlying structure has proven durable. Most subsequent legislation, including the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 and DACA, has operated within it.