The 1965 Immigration Act That Became a Law of Unintended Consequences
When President Johnson Signed the Hart-Celler Bill, He Said It Wouldn’t Reshape the Lives of Millions of Americans. He Was Wrong
“It’s complicated.”
This might be an appropriate way to characterize via Facebook the legacy of the 1965 Immigration Act, one of the biggest changes to the flow of people into America. At a Smithsonian/Zócalo “What It Means to Be American” event on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the the Hart-Celler Act of 1965, a panel of scholars tried to explain how a piece of legislation could create so many contradictory and unexpected after-effects, and what kind of world created the policy. The contradictions, in fact, start at …
