United States Immigration Policy: The 1965 Act and its Consequences

• Author: Timothy J. Hatton
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/sjoe.12094
• Date: 01 April 2015
• Published date: 01 April 2015

Scand. J. of Economics 117(2), 347–368, 2015

DOI: 10.1111/sjoe.12094

United States Immigration Policy:

The 1965 Act and its Consequences

Timothy J. Hatton∗

University of Essex, Colchester CO4 3SQ, UK

hatton@essex.ac.uk

Abstract

The United States Immigration Act of 1965 was followed by a steep upward trend in total

immigration, and by a dramatic shift in the source-country composition away from Europe

and towards Asia and Latin America. In this paper I ask if and how the 1965 Act generated

these unanticipated consequences. The result was partly because of the pre-existing legislation

and partly because of the admission of immigrants outside the terms of the Act. However,

much of it was a result of the Act itself, and specifically because of family reunification

effects that were larger, the poorer the source country.

Keywords: Immigration multiplier; policy reform; United States immigration

JEL classification:F22; J15; J61; N32

I. Introduction

The 1965 Amendments to the Immigration Act is often seen as a deci-

sive break in US immigration policy, and one with far-reaching conse-

quences. The most important change was to replace the national origins

quotas, which heavily favored British, German, and Irish immigrants, with

a less discriminatory system. Named after its sponsors, the Hart–Celler Act

amended the Immigration and Nationality (McCarran–Walter) Act, which

in 1952 had largely reaffirmed the national origins system. The decades

following its enactment saw a dramatic rise in the total number of immi-

grants, and an equally dramatic switch in the source-country composition

away from Europe towards Asia and Latin America. To many observers,

the 1965 Act was a defining moment that radically transformed US immi-

gration and provided the foundation for all that followed.

Yet, in some respects, the 1965 Act was a modest reform – at least in

the minds of contemporary legislators. Thus, President Lyndon B. Johnson

signed it into law with the following remark: “This bill that we will sign

today is not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions. It

∗I am grateful for useful comments from John Tang, Jeff Williamson, and three anonymous

referees, as well as from participants at the Third TEMPO Conference on International

Migration at IAB Nuremberg and the World Cliometrics Congress at the University of

Hawaii.

CThe editors of The Scandinavian Journal of Economics 2014.

348 US immigration policy

will not reshape the structure of our daily lives, or really add importantly

to either our wealth or our power” (October 3, 1965). For him, the Act

was a symbolic rather than a substantive reform. Similarly, Senator Edward

Kennedy (D-MA), one of the Act’s main advocates commented in the early

stages of its progress through Congress that: “The bill will not flood our

cities with immigrants. It will not upset the ethnic mix of our society. It will

not relax the standards of admission. It will not cause American workers

to lose their jobs” (quoted in Center for Immigration Studies, 1995).

Although not all contemporaries were as sanguine as this, historians have

generally taken the view that the legislators in 1965 genuinely believed that

the increase in immigrant numbers would be moderate and that shifts in

the source-country composition would be gradual. According to Reimers

(1983, p. 10): “Congress did not intend to make radical changes in im-

migration patterns when it amended the McCarran–Walter Act, nor did

the lawmakers mean to increase immigration substantially.” Daniels (2004,

p. 139), remarks that: “Clearly the 1965 law has not worked in a way that

either its proponents or its opponents expected.” Similarly, Zolberg (2006,

p. 337–338) comments that “while the lawmakers did intend to eliminate

the immigration system’s discriminatory features, notably as they affected

Asians and West Indians, they did not anticipate that incoming flows would

expand as much as they did, nor that non-European sources would become

as dominant.”

The ensuing changes in the scale and structure of immigration have

provoked controversy. The impact of the 40-year surge in immigration on

the employment and earnings of low-skilled native-born workers has been

widely debated. Some economists have argued that the low relative earnings

of immigrants, their slow assimilation, and increasing welfare dependence

in the 1970s and 1980s was a direct consequence of the compositional

shifts set in train by the 1965 Act (Briggs, 1984; Borjas, 1999). Others have

pointed to the wider social and cultural effects, both positive and negative,

of increasing ethnic diversity (Alba and Nee, 2003; Huntington, 2004).

While much attention has been paid to the putative effects of the 1965

reforms, much less attention has been given to exactly how, and through

what mechanisms, the 1965 Act changed the face of US immigration.

II. The 1965 Amendments to the Immigration Act

The Acts of 1952 and 1965

In order to appreciate what the 1965 Act did, it is necessary first to compare

it with the pre-existing legislation – the McCarran–Walter Act (effective

December 24, 1952). The 1952 Act had reaffirmed the pre-existing national

origins quota system, in which country quotas were set, based on the

CThe editors of The Scandinavian Journal of Economics 2014.