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Summary: The 1965 Immigration Act

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The 1965 Immigration Act, which resulted largely from the civil rights movement and Democratic Congress of the 1960s, played a vital role in the change in demographics of the United States (“History of U.S. Immigration Laws,” 2008). Replacing the existing system of assigning specific countries a limit on the number of people that could immigrate to the United States each year, the 1965 Immigration Act established quotas for each hemisphere: 170,000 immigrants a year for the Eastern Hemisphere and 120,000 a year for the Western Hemisphere (Hatton, 2015). Although the limit was expanded to 700,000 immigrants a year in 1990 and has been adjusted many times in the years since (“History of U.S. Immigration Laws,” 2008), the 1965 Immigration Act has been the most significant of all of the immigration reform legislation because it allowed more immigrants from individual countries to come to the U.S., a …show more content…

(2015). United States immigration policy: The 1965 act and its consequences. The Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 117(2), 347-368. doi: 10.1111/sjoe.12094
History of U.S. immigration laws (2008, January). Retrieved from http://www.fairus.org/facts/us_laws
Justwan, F. (2015). Disenfranchised minorities: Trust, definitions of citizenship, and noncitizen voting rights in developed democracies. International Political Science Review, 36(4), 373-392. doi:10.1177/0192512113513200
Logan, J.R., Darrah, J., & Oh, S. (2012). The impact of race and ethnicity, immigration and political context on participation in American electoral politics. Social Forces, 90(3), 993-1022. doi:10.1093/sf/sor024
McConnell, S. (2009). Not so huddled masses: Multiculturalism and foreign policy. World Affairs, 171(4), 39-50. doi:10.3200/wafs.171.4.39-50
Reimers, D.M. (1983). An unintended reform: The 1965 Immigration Act and third world immigration to the United States. Journal of American Ethnic History, 3(1), 9-28. Retrieved from

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