chapter 13

Changing the Rules: Immigration Law 1948-1980

The immigration act lasted until 1965 and it marked the end of a racist system. However, as we know this was not the end of racism. This just marks a time where racism was a government action and the denial of certain groups was well known. This definitely did not stop racism between the people, in some ways it only intensified it.

The McCarran-Walter Act was passed in 1952 which ended total exclusion of racial and ethnic groups from naturalization and immigration. This made the laws “color blind”. This also was a huge deal. I think it is most interesting that President Harry S. Truman actually vetoed this bill, but Congress still passed it. I would have thought that the President would be all for this kind of bill, but I guess not. This act still had some of the discriminatory policies implemented before, but it was a start. It also was a way to keep up the nickname “Free World” because how free is a world if they don’t let groups of people come to? If we would have kept the immigration act and exclusion acts our country would have lost it’s diversity and would probably have a much lower population.

Post World War II brought many Europeans refugees to our shores. However, most people were against letting these people in because of a fear of being overrun by Europeans who are coming from a devastating and crumbling country. It just makes me laugh how us Americans can be so upset with letting people into our country because of a failing home country when majority of the first immigrants came for that reason. The first three groups, Siberian Asians, East Asians, and Polynesians mostly came because of exploring and migrating. Europeans came to America because they wanted to get away from the monarchy and the way the government was.

The pie charts on page 335 really caught my attention. It shows the legal immigration to the United States by region. In 1931-1960 the Europeans were the highest, in 1961-1969 Europeans and Latin Americans were the highest, 1970-1979 showed Latin Americans being the highest, and 1980-1984 has Asians being the highest. What is most impressive is over the years Asian immigrants increased. The first chart has Asians at 5% and the last chart has them at 48%!

I have never heard of the term “asylee”. An asylee is a refugee who who applies for entry into the United States while they are already in America. Some would be legal on something like a student visa, while others would be here illegally. The government tried to regulate the amount of asylees that came into America but the numbers got so high that the 1980 act put a cap of five thousand asylees. Having a refugee policy was part of the new American consensus.

This chapter really opened up my eyes to the way that the government handled immigrants. I like to think that immigrants were more than welcome to this new country, but in reality it was all just a front. We only wanted to promote that it was a new world where all people were welcome. We had regulations, laws, and acts that kept people from getting into our country. We had a rough start, and are still fighting ways to handle immigration.