1965 Immigration Act
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| Long title | An Act to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act |
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| Acronyms (colloquial) | INA of 1965 |
| Nicknames | Hart–Celler |
| Enacted by | the 89th United States Congress |
| Effective | June 30, 1968 |
| Citations | |
| Public law | Pub.L. 89–236 |
| Statutes at Large | 79 Stat. 911 |
| Codification | |
| Acts amended | Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 |
| Titles amended | 8 U.S.C.: Aliens and Nationality |
| U.S.C. sections amended | 8 U.S.C. ch. 12 (§§ 1101, 1151–1157, 1181–1182, 1201, 1254–1255, 1259, 1322, 1351) |
| Legislative history | |
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The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (H.R. 2580; Pub.L. 89–236, 79 Stat. 911, enacted June 30, 1968), also known as the Hart–Celler Act, changed the way quotas were allocated by ending the National Origins Formula that had been in place in the United States since the Emergency Quota Act of 1921. Representative Emanuel Celler of New York proposed the bill, Senator Philip Hart of Michigan co-sponsored it, and Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts helped to promote it.
The Hart–Celler Act abolished the quota system based on national origins that had been American immigration policy since the 1920s. The 1965 Act marked a change from past U.S. policy which had discriminated against non-northern Europeans. In removing racial and national barriers the Act would significantly, and unintentionally, alter the demographic mix in the U.S.
The new law maintained the per-country limits, but also created preference visa categories that focused on immigrants' skills and family relationships with citizens or U.S. residents. The bill set numerical restrictions on visas at 170,000 per year, with a per-country-of-origin quota. However, immediate relatives of U.S. citizens and "special immigrants" had no restrictions.
The Hart–Celler Act of 1965 marked a radical break from the immigration policies of the past. Previous laws restricted immigration from Asia and Africa, and gave preference to northern and western Europeans over southern and eastern Europeans. In the 1960s, the United States faced both foreign and domestic pressures to change its nation-based formula, which was regarded as a system that discriminated based on an individual's place of birth. Abroad, former military allies and new independent nations aimed to delegitimize discriminatory immigration, naturalization and regulations through international organizations like the United Nations. In the United States, the national-based formula had been under scrutiny for a number of years. In 1952, President Truman had directed the Commission on Immigration and Naturalization to conduct an investigation and produce a report on the current immigration regulations. The report, Whom We Shall Welcome, served as the blueprint for the Hart–Celler Act. At the height of the Civil Rights Movement the restrictive immigration laws were seen as an embarrassment by, among others, President John F. Kennedy, who called the then-quota-system "nearly intolerable". President Lyndon Johnson signed the 1965 act into law at the foot of the Statue of Liberty.
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