The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965

For four decades, American immigration ran on a system designed to keep the country looking the way it had in the 19th century. The national-origins quotas set in the 1920s heavily favored northern and western Europe and all but shut out Asia, Africa, and southern and eastern Europe. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 — the Hart-Celler Act — swept that system away.

Signed by President Lyndon Johnson at the foot of the Statue of Liberty in October 1965, the law replaced national-origins quotas with a system based on family ties and skills, with per-country caps applied more evenly. It was a product of the civil rights era, and its sponsors framed ending immigration discrimination as part of the same moral project as ending segregation.

Its backers predicted it would change little about who came to America. They were spectacularly wrong. Over the following decades immigration shifted decisively toward Asia and Latin America, and the foreign-born share of the population climbed from historic lows toward levels not seen since the Great Wave. The law reshaped the demographic future of the country.

More than almost any other postwar law, Hart-Celler made modern America — its diversity, its debates over immigration, and the very composition of its population trace directly to 1965. It stands as the hinge between the closed-door era of the quotas and the immigration politics of the present day.