Six Decades Later: Legacies of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965

On Oct. 3 and 4, Duke’s Asian American and Diaspora Studies (AADS) Program partnered with the UNC Asian American Center to host a two-day symposium, “Six Decades Later,” centered on legacies of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. The symposium featured a series of talks and discussions that explored the origin and history of immigration regulation, examining how the Immigration Act of 1965 shaped Asian American communities in the United States and its implications for us today. 

Madeline Y. Hsu, Professor of History and Director of the Center for Global Migration Studies at the University of Maryland, opened Duke’s part of the symposium on Saturday with the talk, “The 1965 Immigration Act: A Triumph of Civil Rights or Flawed Legislative Compromise?” From the origins of immigration regulations in the U.S. in the late nineteenth century, through the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act, and eventually to the 1965 Hart-Celler Immigration Act, Hsu guided the audience through time and space, tracing the immigration journey and struggles of generations of Asian Americans against racially discriminatory immigration quotas. 

Hsu began by discussing how the racial targeting of the Chinese in California laid the groundwork for immigration restrictions that heavily favored Europeans and excluded Asians. In the late 1910s and early 1920s, to restrict immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe and Asia, Congress implemented literacy requirements and established the national origins quota system, which Hsu described as “the quantification of American racial prejudice.” Ultimately, the Hart-Celler Act, also known as the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, abolished the national origins quota system and introduced a preference system based on family relationship and skills, thereby opening doors to immigrants from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. However, Hsu argued, the act was also yet another attempt by American restrictionist policymakers to mitigate the impact of inevitable immigration reform while preserving the privilege of European immigration. 

Hsu’s talk was followed by Mae M. Ngai, the Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies and Professor of History at Columbia University. In her talk, “The Consequences of Unintended Consequences,” Ngai extended Hsu’s discussion by closely examining the two major unintended consequences of the 1965 Immigration Act: the increase in Asian American immigration through primarily family reunification and the rise in the Latinx population from Mexico and Central America through undocumented immigration.  

Ngai introduced the distinction between formal equality and substantive equality in the context of immigration and argued that, despite the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act, there was no reckoning for historical anti-Asian and anti-Mexican racism. Instead, the unintended consequences of the act perpetuate racism. Echoing Frederick Douglass, whom Ngai referred to as a hero in American history, Ngai emphasized that racism is not inherent to human nature but rather a political construct and a form of prejudice that can be overcome. Ngai concluded her talk with a powerful message: “We face the same choice today,” reminding us that it’s up to us to shape how we want this country to be in the future. 

The final speaker was Pawan Dhingra, the Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer, Aliki Perroti and Seth Frank ’55 Professor of U.S. Immigration Studies, and Chair of the Asian American and Pacific Islander Studies Program at Amherst College. In his talk, titled “Instability by Design: Asian Labor Under U.S. Immigration Law and Racial Capitalism”, he asked us to think about the Hart-Celler Act as a labor bill, a codification of the racial hierarchy of work and labor. Though the public rhetoric surrounding the bill was of civil rights and family reunification, there were clear economic motivations, with a preference for the professional and a desire to regulate the flow of workers.  

Dhingra described how many spouses of immigrants struggled in immigrating, because family was always secondary to the needs of capital. The three main streams of Asian labor were medical/technical professions, agricultural/low-wage service work, and small-businesses and entrepreneurship. Such distinct fields of labor have contributed to the bimodal distribution of wealth in Asian communities—a phenomenon at odds with the model minority myth, which continues to obscure the capitalistic exploitation of Asian labor. He concluded by emphasizing how systems of racial capitalism thrive on differentiation which limits solidarity, but also how understanding the narratives and personal stories behind immigrants allows us to construe their positionality beyond labor.  

The symposium concluded with each speaker answering questions about patterns of immigration then vs. now and the implications of understanding migration and responses to migration contextually. Thinking about the Hart-Celler bill as mitigatory, regulatory, and consequential allows us to continue to grapple with the complicated legacies of immigration today. For more resources on the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, please see the symposium’s companion website crafted by Duke librarians Matthew Hayes and Adhitya Dhanapal.