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Hart-Cellar Act/1965 Immigration and Nationality Act

12/9/2022 8:20 PM UTC by Jack
The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, also known as the Hart-Cellar Act, was signed into office by President Lyndon B. Johnson on October 3rd, 1965 and took effect on June 30th, 1968.1 The law abolished the National Origins Formula, which had been the basis of United States immigration law since the 1920s. This National Origins Formula had set quotas on what percentage of immigrants could immigrate every year from which country and it heavily favored Western Europeans.2 3 4 Though the American people were promised that this Act would not change the ethnic makeup of their country, the direct result of this act was for America to go from people of European descent comprising 88.6% of the population in the 1960 census5 to those identifying as "white alone" (meaning that they did not also claim any other ethnicities to 61.6% of the population in the 2020 census.6

References

1 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act (Full Text)
2 Major U.S. Immigration Laws, 1790 - Present
3 Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965
4 How the Immigration Act of 1965 Changed the Face of America
5 1960 Census of the Population: Supplementary Reports: Race of the Population of the United States, by States: 1960
6 Improved Race and Ethnicity Measures Reveal U.S. Population Is Much More Multiracial

Keywords

Immigration Laws , Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ)