The 1965 Immigration Reform Act

AM E R I CA N I CO N S A N D A RT I FAC TS A FTE R TH E T RA N S N AT I O N A L TU R N

EDITED BY BROOKE l. BLOWER AND MARK PHILIP BRADLEY

CORELL ERSITY PESS Ithaca and London

124 NICK CULLATHER revised trade rules, the New International Economic Order (NIEO), which

would ban tariff protecions and subsidies and allow naional regulation of

C H A PTE R 10

multinational corporations. The NIEO would allow the planned industri­ alization of the Third Wold, but the United States and Europe responded .

with a strategy to shrink the state and deregulate Third Wold markets. .S.

The Imigration Reform Act of 1965

government spending fueled high-tech industries and modern agricultue,

}ESSE HOFFVNG-GRSKOF

but any attempt by Kenya or Bolivia to follow the same policy was, accord­ ing to Pesident Ronald Reagan, ''cheating."34 The Wold Bank enforced the new development orthodoxy, known as neoliberalism.

The lamour of the jet-seting economist faded too. In 1966, Rampars magazine eposed Michigan State's economic mission to Saigon as a front for the CIA. 35 The quest for ited growth came under attack by environ­ mentaliss, and by the 1970s, economists erected ther ambiions toward the

moe modest goals of sustainable development. Today international aid focuses on emergency elief, rather than on building industries in poor nations. In the 1980s, a new type of international development celebrity emerged, personiied irst by concert promoter Bob Geldof, and later by U2's lead singer, entepre­

neur, and acivist, Bono. In making mself the face of humanitarian elief to Mrica,Bono culivated an image of his working-class Dublin roots while at the same ime pushing a pro-business neoliberal agenda for the poorest naions. 36

On October 3, 1965, Pesident Lyndon Johnson The modernization schemes that appear in recent Hollywood movies also

gaheed eporters and photogaphers to he foot of the Statue of Libert. Thee come with a neoliberl moral. Salmon Fishing in the emen (2011) is a buddy

he sined a ecenly passed law "to Amend the Immigaion and Naionality movie pairing a siff British isheries expert with an eccenric sheikh. Their

Act," moe commonly known as he Immigraion Reform Act of 1965. Johnson impractical project, to build a ish hatchery in the midle of the desert, is

told the cowd that he counted the eforms among the most important policies propelled by oil money and W hitehall's need for a feel-good story, "some­

enacted by his asraion. The act inally emoved, he said, the shadow of thing about the Middle East that doesn't involve eplosions." The loss of

discriminaion that had long haunted "America's ates." Historians have tended 1960s optimism is cleaest, however, in he Girl in the Cqfe (2005), a remake

to agee. The document Johnson sined almost immediately became an iconic of hat Touch of Mink without the mink. Bill Nighy in the Cary Grant role

text. It coninues, moe than ifty es later, to occupy a cenal place in nearly is a sallow civil servant in a top ministerial position earned by a lifetime of

eery account of late twenieth-century United States histor. 1 cringing. He meets a barista, Kelly MacDonald, who seems equally timid at

What did the Immigration Reform Act actually do? It changed only irst, but when he rashly invites her to the G-8 summit in Reykjavik she inds

slightly the equirement that potential immigra�ts first demonsrate that they her inner spunk. Disgusted by the penny-pinching maneuvers of the wealthy

were "admissible." Applicants sill had to show that they wee not illiterate, nations, she shames them into adopting the Millennium Development Goals.

sick, disabled, homosexual, Communist, involved in sex work, nor "likely to On the surface, MacDonald esembles Doris Day, the working-class con­

become a public charge" in order to receive an immigrant visa. But for those science of the afluent North. In her neoliberal vision, she sees development

who could clear this hurdle, the reform act eliminated the national origins as a handout the affluent wold can, out of a sense of charity, choose to give.

quota system. Originally instituted in 1924, the quota system imposed ed Day had a far moe ambitious vision, for a world whee all peoples had the

limits on the number of visas available for applicants born in each country esources to raise their own standards of living. They were already there,

in Europe and Africa and on people of Asian and Paciic islands ancestry waiting to be tapped.

reless of birth. Through these limits, Congress disributed mmigant visas at drasically unequal levels according to the pevalent view that some

126 JESSE HOFFNUNG·GARSKOF THE IMMIGRATION REFORM ACT OF 1965 127 quota system signiicantly changed the source of immigration to the United

States. As one high school textbook puts it, "The act triggered a new wave of inunigration to the United States from Asian and Latin American naions

which has alteed the cultural x in the United States."4 Again, the igures are dramaic. In 1960, thee-fourths of the foeign-born populaion in the United States had been born in Europe. By 1990, 62 percent of the foreign­

born population had been born in Asia or Latin America, and in 2010 this igue had risen to 81 percent.5

Unfortunately, none of the elements of the classic account of the act holds up particularly well to scrutin. Specialists in the legal history of immigra­ tion and race in the United States have systematically and convincinly dis­ mantled the idea of the reforms as a triumph of pluralism. To the contrary, while it eliminated the quota system, the act left in place a rather signii­ cant shadow of discrimination on the grounds of gender, sexuality, politics, class, and disability (through admissibility requirements), and it expanded the intrusive and increasinly militarized practices of the "gatekeeper state." It

FIGURE 19. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Immigration Reform Act, October 3, 1965. LBJ also put in place measures intended to restrict the growth of immigration Ubrary photo by Yoichi Okamoto.

from Latin America, Asia, and Africa. 6 Most notable was the imposition of

a numerical cap and Labor Department certiication equiements on West­ inunigrants were racially and culturally preferable to others. The 1965 act

ern Hemisphee inunigration, aleady mentioned. But the act's sponsors also ended the quota system, putting in its place a cap of 170,000 inunigrant visas

believed (incorrectly) that family preferences for the Eastern Hemisphere for the Eastern Hemisphee and establishing peferences for appicants with

would prevent any rapid increase in Asian inunigration, since so few Asian family already living in the United States and for those with special training

people had close relatives inside the United States.7 The idea that the act or skills. Presuming that they were admissible and satisied the established

was a crucial watershed in the growth of inunigration in the late twentieth preferences, inuigrants from all countries in the hemisphee were teated

century is also dificult to sustain. In fact, the total number of immigrants equally, on a irst-come, irst-served basis, up to a maimum of 20,000 for

to the United States gew s�eadily from the late' 1940s for ward and began each countr. The act also newly imposed a limit of 120,000, and new Labor

to climb much more explosively only after the 1986 and 1990 immigration Department certiication equirements, on Western Hemisphere immigra­

reforms (see igue 20).8 And since the act imposed new numerical caps on tion, which had never been subject to limits under the old quota system. 2

peviously unestricted inunigration from Lain America and the Carib­ The classic account of these reforms has three key elements. First, it por­

bean, it cannot be cedited with helping to incease immigration from those trays the act, as Johnson himself described it, as the end of the era of ii­

egions, the source of moe than 50 percent of iigrants in the period. graion restriction and a victory for liberal attitUdes toward immigration and

Many textbooks, especially at the college level, incorporate some subset of race. As one college textbook puts it, "Taken together, the civil rights revolu­

these caveats into their accounts of late-century iigraion. They are care­ tion and inunigration reform marked the triumph of a pluralist conception of

ful to pesent the act as an unintentional opening for new Asian inunigration, Americanism."3 Second, the classic account presents the act as the beginning

rather than a triumph of pluralism. They note that the act imposed a new set point, spark, or trigger of a new era of mass immigration to the United States.

of restrictions on Lain Americans, contributing to the rise in undocumented In 1970 (two years after the act was fully implemented), persons born abroad

immigration. Yet almost all continue to use the 1965 act to frame the period constituted only 4.6 percent of the U.S. populaion (9.6 mllion people). By

of rtlass inunigration, the shift in the source of inunigration from Europe 2010 the foeign-born population had risen to 12.9 percent (about 40 mil­

to the Third Wold, and growing Asian American and Latino populations lion people). Third, the classic view of the act suggests that the end of the

inside the United States. High school texts, broader academic conversation,

128 JESSE HOFF N U N G·GARSKOF THE IMMIGRATION R EFORM ACT OF 1965 129 2,000

of relationships between the United States and particular other parts of the world, and as a constituent part of some of those relaionships. This trans­

1,800 national model ovelaps signiicandy with the idea, eloquendy proposed

by scholars including George Sanchez and Nina Glick Schiller since the 1990s, that imperialism is the crucial missing piece in most accounts of .S.

immigration. Put succincdy, most of the societies that most proliically sent 1,200

immigrants to the United States after mid-century not only had deep and intimate ties with the United States; they wee primary targets or principal adversaries of .S. imperial power as it was efashioned during the lobal

conflict with the Soviet Union and China that lasted roughly from 1945 to 1991 (the Cold War). 9

To see how this approach can evise our thinking about the 1965 act,

Etc:t ot 1 iJ

let us start with the Philippines. The Philippines sent 3,100 immigrants to

the United States in the last year before the passage of the 1965 act. W ithin 200

Itn m i;rat[ t m Act

two ears of the act's full implementation, that number rose to 31,000. This would seem to make the Philippines a fairly convincing case of "post-1965" immigraion. But specialists in this aea have long argued that it is actually

better seen as a case of "post-1898" immigraion, highlihting the long-term FIGURE 20. U.S. immigrant admissions and adjustments On thousands), 1955-2000. These fig­

consequences of .S. power in the Philippines for understanding immigra­ ures show that immigration grew fairly consistently from the 1950s through 1990, with only a few

tion seams. There is something to this, and not just for the case of the minor spikes produced by refugee crises. The most significant legislative act driving the late-century

migrant boom was the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), which adjusted millions of Philippines. Beginning in 1898, the United States occupied and governed, undocumented residents to the status of lawful permanent residents. Reforms passed in 1990 sig­

for varying lengths of time, the Philippines, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, nificantly raised worldwide limits on immigrant visas. Source: Yearbooks of Immigration Statistics

Haiti, and Nicaragua, while making several military interventions in Meico (INS, UCIS) 1955-2000. and Honduras and brokering the independence of Panama from Colombia.

and popular media eproduce this framing (without the caveats) through the

able 1

Top ten sending counries n 2010.

ubiquitous phrase "post-1965 immigration." Beyond these historical inaccuracies, the idea that 1965 is the most impor­

OTY OF

PERCET OF

PERCET OF "POST-

tant signpost for understanding late-century immigration places a very nar­

29.4 36.0 row, and largely misleading, naionlist frame around a set of processes that

Meico

4.5 5.5 were inheendy transnational. This essay pesents an alternative, transnational

India

4.4 5.4 framing of late-century immigration based on a brief analysis of each of the

Philippines

4.0 4.9 ten largest immigraion lows into the United States in the period. Together

China

3.1 3.8 these ten cases account for about 58.1 percent of all immigrants and about

Viem

l Salvador

71 percent of Latin American, Caribbean, and Asian immigrants (that is, a 1,112,064 2.8 3.4

Cuba

2.7 3.3 large majority of those newcomers most fequendy referred to as post-1965

Korea

2.2 2.7 immigrants) in the period (see table 1). I use the word "transnaional" not to

Dominican Republic

2.0 2.4 emphasize the cultural, poliical, kinship, and economic ies that many immi­

Guatemala

58.1 71.1 grants build across naional boundaries. I mean rather to suggest that histo­

Totls

rians should seek to understand and epesent immigraion as a consequence Source: "Statistical ortrait of the Foeign-Born Populaion o e Unied Sates, 2010:· w Hispanic Center, htp://

w.pewhispanic.org/2012/02/21/saisical-portrait-of-the-forein-born-populaion-in-the-united - states-2010/ .

130 JESSE HOFFNUNG·GARSKOF THE IMMIGRATIO N REFORM ACT OF 1965 131 In the same period, the United States took permanent possession of Puerto

families to the United States. U.S. servicemen and civilians of non-Filipino Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Hawaii, American Samoa, and other

ancestry who married Filipinos while staioned in the Philippines did the outlying island territories. Like their British and Fench counterparts in Asia

same. Between 1955 and 1965, more than 24,000 Filipino immigrants enteed and Africa, U.S. companies and colonial oficials organized large-scale migra- .

the United States as imediate family members of .S. citizens. Over this tion from place to place within this growing empire (Filipinos to Hawaii,

decade, the United States also brought 11,000 Filipino nurses to U.S. hospitals Puerto Ricans to the Canal Zone, Haitians to Cuba). By the 1920s, patterns

s exchange workers and trainees.U

of colonial recruitment also brought colon.fsubjects to the mainland, espe- Through military recruitment, development aid, and exchange programs . cially Puerto Ricans and Filipinos. Mexican workers, though not formally

the U.S. government hoped to expand the class of Enlish-speaking, U.S. ­ colonized, moved from areas of expaning U.S. influence in Meico to agri­

oriented Filipino elites that had first emerged under U.S. administration. cultural and mining enclaves in the U.S. Southwest that closely resembled

These programs also created a "culture of migration," both a pioneer com­ colonial work camps. This tradition of labor recruitment from territories

munity of settlers in the United States and a set of "narratives about the that lay within the orbit of U.S. imperial power grew eponentially during

promise of immigration to the United States" circulated by media, recruiters, and immediately after World War II. The Bracero Program and other con­

and by the U.S. government, as well as by immigrants theselves.12 Thus tract labor schemes brought in more than 4 million workers from Meico,

when Congress eliminated the quota system, large numbers of Filipinos 420,000 from Puerto Rico, and 100,000 from the Briish-controlled Carib­

already wanted to come to the United States, and many thousands had the bean, helping to establish pioneer comunities, �ecruinent networks, and

means to make use of the two preference categories (despite the fact that economic and cultural systems based on the outmigration of family or com­

Congress hoped these peferences would limit new immigration from Asia): munity members in each of these areas. 10

professional and family ties to the United States. W hat is signiicant about the But it was during the Cold War that most of the countries and territories

1965 act is not that it sparked immigration from the Philippines, but rather that had experienced U.S. occupation after 1898 became large-scle immigrant

that it expanded the opportunities available to a network of migrants that sending societies. The Philippines is a cse in point. Filipinos, living under U.S.

had already begun to form as the Cold War reshaped the long colonial rela­ colonial goverment, had been ecruited as laboers and shipped to Hawaii and

tionship with the United States.13 Adding a caveat to the classic account, that California in the 1910s and 1920s. But the 1934 bill that promised eventual

the 1965 act unintentionally inceased immigration from Asia through family independence to the Phlippines eclassiied Filipinos as "inadmissible aliens;'

peferences, does not comunicate the transnational dynamic that made this

a status ready applied to other persons from Asia and the Pacific islands. The

unintended consequence possible.

1952 Immigration and Naturlizaion Act (passed at the height of the Korean Not all the societies that began to send large numbers of immigrants dur­ War) removed the clause making Asians inadmissible but estricted immigra­

ing the Cold War period had such an extensive history with U.S. colonial­ ion from the Philippines to a quota of 100 per year. However, as policy makers

ism. Indeed, instead of "post-1898" immigration, we might do much better in Washington souht to exert inceasing power in the Pacific under the new

to speak of "post-1949" immigration-that is, immigration that took place rubric of the Cold War, they maintained thee permanent mlitary bases and a

after the ceation of the People's Republic of China-Or simply "Cold War major civilian pesence in the Philippines. The United States also distributed

immigration." China itself is perhaps the most surprising case. Like Filipino military and development aid to the Philippine government in an effort to

immigration, Chinese immigration gew immediately and rapidly to unprec­ secue the alliance and preserve the privileged posiion enjoyed by U.S. business

edented heights after the 1965 act. Nevertheless, Chinese immigration pat­ inteess thee. This led to a significant migration stream from the Philippines

terns it awkwardly within the classic view of post-1965 immigration. For one outside of the quota system. For instance, the United States continued, after

thing, exclusion and discriminatory laws had never actually stopped Chinese independence, to ecruit Filipinos diecly from the former colony into the

immigration to the United States. W hat they did was shape the racial and U.S. Na. Moe than 27,000 Filipino naionals served in the navy between

social status of working-class immigrants living in segregated Chinatowns. the beginning of the Korean War and the end of the Vienam War. About

Restrictions forced many to enter the United States under the false claim that two-thirds wee ecruited befoe the end of the naional origins quota system.

they wee children of Chinese Americans who wee already U.S. citizens. These veterans eventually qualified for naturalizaion and began to bring their

They then lived under the shadow of these "paper" family relationships. The

132 J E S S E HOFFNUNG·GARSKOF THE IMMIGRATIO N R EFORM ACT OF 1965 133 end of this experience of "exclusion" in the late twentieth century was not

begin a new process of reuniicaion with their actual family members liv­ only a growing numbers of immigrants, but also a shift in racial ideology

ing overseas. W hen the 1965 act, conrary to epectation, did dramaically and racial practices. Chinese people, long sinled out as uniquely unsuited

incease Chinese immigration, there was litde public outcr. The Cold War for American ciizenship, came to be understood as uniquely assimilative

efugee program and sympathetic coverage of Chinese family reunification and economically successful. But 1965 was not the turning point for this

had already begun to shift popular seniment tward a view of Chinese change. In fact the shift began in the 1940s, as China became an inceasinly

immigrants as highly educated people with legitimate families, as allies of important strategic site in both the conflict ih Japan and the emerging

the West, and fully capable of rapid assimilaion into the .S. middle class: a global competition with the Soviet Union. The United States repealed the

model minorit. 17

Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943. The United States also set up exchange The Cold War lso helps eplain the very rapid rise of Koean immigra­ programs for Chinese university students and intellectuals, in the hopes of

ion near the end of the centur. Although Koea had not been a traditional building ties with the Naionalist movement and epanding .S. inluence

target of .S. imperial power previous to mid-century, .S. involvement in in the region.14 In 1946 (with moe than 100,000 .S. troops stationed in

the Korean War· (an effort to contain Soviet and Chinese inluence in Asia) China) Congress made the Chinese wives of .S. ciizens and legally admit­

led to an era of close military and economic cooperation between the South ted Chinese immigrants eligible to immigrate, without regard to quotas.

Korean dictatorship and the .S. government, and to attempts to integrate Almost 17,000 Chinese imigrants came as spouses of .S. citizens in the

key sectors of the Koean population into the orbit of the United States decade before the 1965 act went into effect. 15

through educaional exchanges, cultural exchange, and spreading consumer Then in 1949, the "loss" of mainland China produced a migratory crisis

capitalism. Because South Koea was never "lost," there was no efugee crisis similar to later experiences in Havana, Saigon, and Tehran. The .S. consulate

like the one that emerged in Hong Kong in 1949. Yet Koean immigrants, in Hong Kong received a sudden influx of 100,000 applications for admis­

like Chinese, experienced a radical reconiguring of the racial exclusions they sion. Unable to apply for immigrant status because of the quota system, these

had long faced in the context of new ways of dividing the wold into friend refugees availed themselves of the existing structure for gaining entry to the

and enemy during the Cold War. Media accounts of Koreans began to con­ United States. They presented themselves as .S. citizens or close relatives

strue them as racially acceptable allies, vicims to be rescued from Commu­ of .S. citizens, though the consul believed that many of these relaionships

nist aggression. Perhaps nowhee was the emerging idea that Koreans were wee falsiied. The victory of the Communist Party in mainland China also

racially suited to becoming Americans more visible than in the rapid rise in stranded a cohort of Chinese exchange students with Nationalist political

adoption of Koean babies by white citizens of the United States (beginning leanings. In response, the .S. government used refugee policy to admit the

in the aftermath of the war and growing to constitute nearly 60 percent of stranded students and a total of about 25,000 highly skilled Chinese workers

all oerseas adoptions by the mid 1970s). Adopted babies, however, did not outside he quota system between 1953 and 1965. The Jusice Deparment

make use of family uniicaion prefeences, so this did not lead to a broader also began a "confession" program for Chinese who were in the country

growth in Koean immigraion. The Korean spouses of .S. service person­ based on false documentation, regularizing 30,000 people as legal immigrants

nel staioned in South Korea, on the other hand, became links in family-based in the 1950s. This allowed Chinese American families to create legitimate

chain migrations as the new law made it possible to bring paents and sib­ documentation of their actual family relationships in place of the elaborate

lings of citizens, and immediate relatives of immigrants, to the United States. system of false paper family ties. 16

Meanwhile, South Koea developed a class system in which foeign educa­ These factors explain why the family preferences, included in 1965 with

tion in English became one of the most important ways to secure pefeen­ the epressed intent to exclude Chinese immigrants, actually facilitated a

tial employment. Eventuall, student exchange and professional peferences massive increase in Chinese immigraion. As in the Filipino case, in 1965 a

became an avenue for immigration, as many Koreans shifted their status from large pool of Chinese families had ecendy emigrated to the United States 18 exchange visitor to immigrant.

and were therefoe poised to make use of measues· allowing for reuniica­ The case for situaing Cuba and Vietnam as examples of Cold War immi­ tion with close family overseas. Another group was ecently regularized, free

gration is cleaer sill. The United States and Cuba shaed ties of "singular from the strictues of "paper" family relationships, and uniquely poised to

intimacy" that stretched back to the early epansion of .S. commercial

134 JESSE HOFFNUN G-GARSKOF TH E IMMIGRATIO N REFORM ACT OF 1965 135 inteests in Cuba in the 1830s. The U.S. military occupied the island in 1898

Corps). Immigraion shot up from a few hundred a year to nearly 10,000 a and again in 1906. By the 1950s a major low of tourists, cultural profes­

year by 1963, and to more than 16,000 in 1965, when U.S. Marines invaded sionals, and business visitors moved in both direcions between Cuba and

the Dominican Republic to prevent a victory by center-left forces in an the United States, and a steadily growing steam of immigrants moved to the

emerging civil war. Mter the United States helped install a new right-wing United States from Cuba. South Vietnam was more like South Korea, the

authoritarian regime, the State Department remained acutely concerned that site of a new effort by U.S. irms and government representatives to integrate

any interruption in the flow of visas could beed resentment of the United

local elites into a sphee of U.S. influence afte ; - rld War II, and especially

States. Yet because the regime in Santo Domingo o s a U.S. ally, U.S. immi­

during the Vietnam War. Vietnamese immigration to the United States was gration oficials did not teat migrants leeing the Dominican Republic in

these years as efugees unless they could prove spec i ic experiences of per­

a minor part of this new relationship, showing only modest growth even

after the 1965 reforms. The victories of Cuba's Twenty-Sith of July move­ secution. Dominican migration, though encouraged by .S. foreign policy, ment in 1959 and of the North-Vietnamese army in 1975 produced migrant

faced increasing restriction under immigration policy after the reforms of waves from both countries that, especially at irst, skewed toward precisely

1965. As a esult many Dominican immigrants settled in the United States the urban elites who had been most closely linked with U.S. irms and ofi­

through the use of family euniication exemptions, by overstaying tourist cials. In both cases, the U.S. foreign policy interests as well as humanitarian

visas, or through the dangerous open-boat voyages to Puerto Rico. 20 impulses led to a speedy recognition of the efugee status of these migrants.

Central Americans, especially Salvadorans and Guatemalans, suffered even Under U.S. law, "refugee;' a legal concept that emerged to refer to stateless

more dramatically from the double standards inlecting United States ref­ people after Wold War II, became a blanket term eferring to all immigrants

ugee policy during the Cold War. Neither country had been subject to from Cuba, Indochina, the Soviet Union, and (in smaller numbers) other

U.S. military government, along the model of the Philippines, Cuba, or the enemy states during the Cold War and its immediate aftermath. Immigrants

Dominican Republic, in the wake of 1898. But both had been part of the from these selected countries did not have to demonstrate speciic instances

larger expansion of U.S. inluence in the region. Most infamously, the United of oppression or persecution; merely desiring to leave a Communist polity

Fruit Company monopolized land and shipping in the banana egions of was grounds for humanitarian relief. Legislation passed in 1966, 1977, and

Guatemala, exerting enormous political power through ties · with local oi­ 1980 allowed millions of asylum seekers and refugees from these countries

cials and the .S. foein and clandestine services. In the ealy 1950s, the to adjust their status to that of immigrant, independent of the numerical

CIA successfully plotted a coup that 4elped to cut short a social democraic limits, preference systems, and even some of the admissibility requirements

experiment and brought to power a bloody right-wing dictatorship. The imposed by the 1965 act (see igure 20). These were Cold War immigrants,

United States then implemented new international aid policies in Central but deinitely not post-1965 immigrants.19

America, designed to foster development as a way to oulank communism. Like Cuba and the Philippines, the Dominican Republic had a "post-

By the later years of the Cold War, however, economic aid gave way to 1898" relationship with the United States, which had militarily occupied the

military assistance. After the "loss" of Nicaragua in 1979, the Guatemalan epublic from 1916 to 1924. But only small numbers of relatively well-off

military, armed, rained, and advised by the United States, waged a genocidal Dominicans raveled to the United States befoe 1961, when Santo Domingo

campaign against Mayan communities, as well as organized labor and the experienced its own Cold War refugee crisis. In the wake of the assassination

partisan Left, leaving more than 200,000 dead.21 In these same years the of dictator Rafael Trujillo, thousands of Dominicans sought U.S. visas, the

United States funded and trained government troops in a bloody civil war in only pracical way to leave the countr. This created an immediate backlog in

El Salvador. This conlict displaced more than a million Salvadorans. About the processing of applications. Trujillo's death came close on the heels of the

half of those led the count. Neither Guatemala nor El Salvador had any "loss" of Cuba and only weeks after the Bay of Pigs debacle. It was thus very

signiicant historical eperience with mass migraion to the United States, uncomfortable for the Kennedy administration when; in 1962, frustrated

so unlike Dominicans they could not use family reuniicaion eemptions. visa seekers joined protests and riots outside the consulate. The U.S. govern­

The numerical restrictions and labor certiication measures in the ·1965 law ment responded by building two new modern consulates and sending in a

therefore worked as intended, to restrict the legal entry of these new migrant "planeload" of visa oficers to the Dominican Republic (as well as the Peace

streams. But, in perhaps the most cynical of all the immigration policies of

136 JESSE HOFFNUN G-GARSKOF TH E IMMIGRATIO N REFORM ACT OF 1965 137 the period, the United States denied the vast majority of peiions for asylum

immigration crisis and spurring the implementation of inceasingly estrictive by Salvadorans and Guatemalans. The oficial foreign policy of the Reagan

and punitive border enforcement measures. This made it more dificult to and Bush administraions denied or excused state violence and genocide in

move back and forth to Meico seasonall, and led to a growing long-term Central America, and immigration policy followed suit. The irst wave of.

undocumented populaion, alongside the 1.3 million legal immigrants who about 300,000 Guatemalan and Salvadoran asylum seekers was unable to

entered from Meico between 1955 and 1980. In 1980, the Census bureau regularize to the status of legal immigrant unil the early 2000s. Meanwhile,

counted 2.2 million persons born in Meico living in th�United States, about growing numbers of Central Americans used mig;ation to the United States

15.6 percent of the foein-born.24

Qargely by means of entry without inspection over the Meican border) as This pattern conforms to what Castells and Miller see as a lobal trend in

a strategy for coping with economic hardship, during both the wars and the labor migration in the three decades after Wold War II: the concentration of economic adjustments that followed.22

investment and epansion of production in the highly developed countries Cold War migration thus provides a �ompelling framework for explaining

drew migrant workers from less-developed .countries. After the oil crises of the "trigger" in eight of the ten leading migration lows of the late twentieth

the 1970s, according to these authors, global patterns began to shift in com­ century. It does not work paricularly well, however, for the cases of Mexico

plex ways as capital investment began to relocate to the developing world. and India. As we have seen, Meican immigration roughly its the model of

Although imperfect, this timeline helps outline the transnational context for

a "post-1898" immigration. But it is really a case ll to itself. The epansion shifts in immigration in the United States after the late 1980s, in what we of U.S. inluence and capitl investment (1876-1930s) eshaped the Mei­

might call the post-Cold War immigration wave. For the case of Mexico can economy around the export of primary products into the U.S. market.

the key turning point was 1986, the year Meico implemented the necessary This created a migrant workforce that moved seasonally and cycliclly into

reforms to enter the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). This pockets of industrial agriculture and mining on both sides of the border. This

marked a deinitive shift away from policies designed to build Meican indus­ low increased dramatically in the 1920s, at the moment of new restrictions

try inward (to meet the needs of Meican consumers) and toward a develop­ on European immigration, only to be cut short by a massive repatriation

ment strategy based on the full integration of Mexican and U.S. economies. campaign during the Geat Depression. 23

The Meican government opened Mexican consumer markets to U.S. goods, The movement of migrants across the U.S.-Meico border began to grow

offeed incentives to manufacturing irms located in Mexico but serving again with the creaion of the Bracero Program in 1942. Until it s phased

the U.S. consumer market, and implemented policies (such as eductions in out in 1968, the program provided legal status, if not siniicant labor rights, to

social spending) designed to attract foreign investment. By 1994, the United about 450,000 Meicans each year. Most wee male workers who crossed the

States and Mexico would put the inishing touches on this new framework border at their own expense and without inspecion by U.S. authorities. Most

with the North American Free Trade Ageement (NAFTA). By the end of worked in the booming agricultural industries of the Souhwest. Most even­

the 2000s, Meico was the third-largest trading partner of the United States. tually eturned to Mexico in a pattern known as circular migraion. Migra­

Although integraion with the U.S. economy (and large oil eserves) helped tion became a crucial part of the cultul and economic systems of sending

push Mexico into the ranks of middle-income countries, it also produced communities in Meico and of eceiving communities in the United States.

major dislocations. Small farming communities, especially, contended with Employers in these industries continued recruiting Meican workers without

these dislocations by organizing the migration of some community members interruption after the cancellation of the Bracero Program. As a esult about

as part of mied strategies for economic survival. At the same ime the border

27 million Meicans enteed the United States without inspecion between became lmost unimaginably active in these years, the site of the counless 1965 and 1986. This s about the same number, each year, as· had enteed

transactions that were necessary for North American integration to work. without inspecion annually during the Bracero Program. But U.S. immi­

Movement back and forth across the border, to take advantage of diffeences gration officials no longer rounded up those who entered without visas and

in prices, wages, and legal regimes, was a central engine of economic growth delivered them to employers as guest workers. Now immigraion oficials

in both countries, although the costs and beneits of this growth were dis­ treated them as "deportable aliens." Appehensios of deportable aliens thee­

tributed unequally in both countries. By 2009, U.S. and Mexican citizens fore rose steadily in the 1970s, spurring media and political igues to decry an

conducted about $850 million of business across the border every day. An

138 TH E IMMIGRATIO N REFORM ACT OF 1965 JESSE HOFFNUNG-GARSKOF 139

average of half a million people crossed legally from Meico into the United Indian imigrants had few eising ties to the United States. W hile those

States each day to transport goods, to work, shop, visit family, get health other groups depended heavily on family uniication peferences, or refugee or attend school. W ithout this context, it is dificult to fully understand the

cae,

and exchange programs, in combination with professional preferences, Indians much smaller number of unauthorized crossings in the period.25

were unique in ceating a pioneer generation of immigrants almost exclusively The legal context for Mexican migrants inside the United States lso

throuh the preference system for highly skilled workers. Indian migrants thus changed dramatically after 1986, with the passage of the Immigration Reform

became the model for the eforms Congress imposed in 1990� This law raised and Control Act. Though the Reagan administrationpesented IRCA as an

the total oldwide cap on immigrant visas while shifing peferences to be effort to resolve a perceived crisis of unauthorized entry, the reforms actually

less favorable to family reuniication and more favorable to employment­ facilitated the boom in both legal and illegal immigration in the 1990s and

based immigration. The law also paved the way for the dramatic epansion of beyond. W hile imposing employer sanctions, and adding to the mounting

the guest worker program for nonagricultural workers. security apparatus at the border, IR CA included an amnesty provision that

Employers in the United States successfully advocated for these changes allowed the legalization of 3 million people, 2.3 million of them Mexican.

as Korea, India, Taiwan, and, most notably, China ceated new development Once protected by legal residency, this population began to move out of a models based (like Mexico's) on exports to Western markets, while dramati­

cally expanding their university systems and the supply of highly trained pro­ very high concentration of work in agricult4re toward urban labor in serv

ice,

construction, and manufacturing sectors, and out of California and Texas fessionals. In such a context, corporations with an increasinly lobal each, into other states. Newly regularized residents made use of family uniicaion

as well as U.S. universities and hospitals (long accustomed to incorporating provisions to help relaives move to the United States legall. They also pro­

Filipino nurses, Korean students, and Indian doctors and engineers) were as eager to integrate the growing number of Asian professionals and managers

vided the social netWork and resources for the major wave of unauthorized imigrants that entered in the wake of GATT and NAFTA. The post-1986

into a lexible high-skill global workforce, and to dip into the global market wave, legal and unauthorized, brought large numbers of women and children

for contingent middle-income and low-wage workers, as they were to relo­ into Meican migrant communities that were peviously overwhelingly

cate factories to Mexico or call centers to India. This drove a rapid increase in male. By 2000, Mexican immigrants of varying legal status counted for three

the number of temporary, nonimmigrant visas (including temporary work­ out of every ten foreign-born persons in the United States and formed part

ers, intercompany transfers, students, and exchange visitors). Nonimmigrant of the low-wage workforce in nearly every corner of the United States.26

work or exchange visas outnumbered immigrant visas by the end of the During the 1990s, similar restructuring programs, W TO membership, and

1990s. U.S. employers drew increasingly on migrants with contingent legal trade agreements took the place of Cold War conflicts in governing relations

status and migrants entering without inspection to exert pressure on the between the United States and Central America, the Caribbean, and parts

middle and lower rungs of the U.S. labor market. The complex process of of South America. A hemispheric trade and producion system built on the

lobal restructuring, what has often been called "lobalization,'' including elimination of social spending and the close integration of economies with

signiicant changes in the nature of employment in the United States, is thus drastically different income levels and wage scales became· the key transna­

the key context for understanding the dramatic boom in migrations of both tional context for post-Cold War immigration from the region.

high- and low-skilled workers to the United States after 1990.27 The case of Indian immigraion also points stronly to lobal economic

In 1964, as Congess debated the bill that became the Immigration Reform Act, proponents of the eforms republished John restructuring as a framework for understanding post-Cold War immigraion . Kennedy's campaign pam­

phlet A Nation f patterns from Asia. Indian immigration Immgrans. Its argument, borrowed from the leading liberal foreign policy during the Cold War. It arose rather out of the patterns of

s not linked signicandy to U.S.

intellectuals of the day, was that the United States was in its very essence a bea­ igraion established under British colonial rule and in response to the new

con to the wold's immigrants, who flock to its shoes to join its exceptional conditions generated by decolonization. India, newly independent, began to

experiment in democracy and prosperit. W hile celebrating the contribu­ send mllions of emigrants abroad to the K and former British colonies in

ion of previous waves of immigrants, this account also portrayed the United the 1950s. The 1965 act opened the United States to a portion of this growing

States as unique in its capacity to assimilate and create modern subjects out of diaspora. Uike Chinese, South Korean, and Filipino immigrants after 1965,

newcomers from strange lands. This idea of a nation of immigrants became,

140 JESSE HOFFNUNG-GARSKOF as soon as the act was passed, the baseline for the classic division of U.S.

imigraion history into pre-1965 and post-1965 periods. Immigration laws, .

CHAPTER 11

including many provisions established by the 1965 eforms, are undoubt­ edly crucial to understanding immigrant flows. Yet building our neline of immigration history around the 1965 act narrowly frames the issue of late­

President Jimy Carter's

century immigraion around he quesion of whom Congess decided to admit. It eturns us to the idea of the UnitedStates as a uniquely welcoming

Inaugurl Address

"naion of immigrants" while hiding from view ransnational and imperial

MK PHIIP BDLEY

relationships and the lobal contexts that ae essential for understanding why and how late-century migrant streams actualy took shape. This narrow view

einforces a noion, too common in our public debates, that the desie of the wold's people to come to the United States is self-evident, not in need of explanaion. It facilitates the idea that contemporary immigration is meely a

collecion of millions of discrete decisions by individual immigrants to "seek

a better life" by becoming "American." And, in an ironic twist, it fuels the arguments of the most recent crop of ani-immigrant politicians who charge, for instance, that "thanks to Teddy Kennedy's 1965 immigration law, we no longer favor skilled workers from developed nations, but instead favor unskilled immigrants from the Third World."28

A brief analysis of the top ten immigrant flows in the United States "The American eam endures," Pesident since the 1960s suggests that the idea of 1965 as the primary turning point

Jimmy Carter told he American people in his inaugual address on January 20, in late-century immigration history gets the story wrong. I suggest that a

1977. "We must have faith in our country-and in one another . . . . Let our division into "Cold War" and "post-Cold War" immigration, with some

ecent mistakes bring a esurgent commiment to the basic principles of our special attention to the unique and singularly important case of Mexico, is

naion, for we know f we despise our own overnment we hae no fute."

a much better way to organize our understanding of late-century migra­ Dawing on the words of the Hebrew prophet Micah, Carter asked Americans tions. The idea is not merely to reframe immigration history around foreign

o renew "our search for humility, mercy and jusice."1 Carter's seventeen­ policy or global sructural change, but rather to point to the interplay among

minute address, short by inaugual standards, was deliveed in a "homileic imigration policy, foreign policy, and asyminetrical international exchange

style and moralisic tone" that appeared to offer "a therapeutic moment of as an eplanation for the timing and shape of new immigrant lows. The

tanquiiy" for the naion after the taumatic faled war in Vietnam upended story begins not with the opening of the Golden Door to the hazily undif­