1965 Immigration Act

Making (Il)Legal Immigrants

Question 1How did the 1965 Immigration Act affect the demographics of Asian

immigrant communities in the US?

1965 Categories

1. Unmarried children under 21 years of age of U.S. citizens

2. Spouses and unmarried children of permanent residents

3. Professionals, scientists, and artists "of exceptional ability"

4. Married children over 21 years of age and their spouses and children of U.S. citizens

5. Siblings and their spouses and children of U.S. citizens

6. Workers in occupations with labor shortages

7. Political refugees

Transforming Asian America

1960 1985

52% Japanese27% Chinese20% Filipino1% Korean1% South Asian

15% Japanese21% Chinese21% Filipino11% Korean10% South Asian12% Vietnamese4% Laotian3% Cambodian

• Chain Migration from 1.2 million in 1965 to 10. 9 million by 2000

• “Brain Drain”& occupational downgrading as well as widening gap between rich & poor

• Tension between newly immigrated and established Americanized communities as well as with other minority groups

Question 2While opening up Asian immigration,

how did the Act affect Mexican immigrant communities in the US?

East vs West

• Numerical equality proven not a fair approach cap on western hemisphere creates problem of illegal immigration

• “The imposition of 20,000 annual quota on Mexico recast Mexican migration as ‘illegal.’ When one considers that in the early 1960s annual ‘legal’ Mexican migration comprised some 200,000 braceros and 35,000 regular admissions for permanent residency, the transfer of migration to ‘illegal’ form should have surprised no one” (261)

Legality & Racialization

• Increased policing of border and of Mexican communities because of 1965 Act• 781,000 deportations in 1976 vs 100,000 for all other

nationalities (261)• Actions by INS (ICE) and “the statistics they

produce, have made an extraordinary contribution to the commonplace fallacy insinuating that Mexicans account for virtually all ‘illegal aliens,’ have served to stage the U.S.-Mexico border as the theatre of an enforcement ‘crisis,’ and have rendered ‘Mexican’ as the distinctive national/racialized name for migrant ‘illegality’” (261)

No Person Is Illegal

• To racialize MX immigrants as illegal is dehumanizing. • It obscures & simplifies social, political, & economic conditions

of immigration