Chapt 13

Great changes occurred in the old immigrant/quota system in the post World War Two era. Up into the 1965, the Immigration Act of 1924 set the basic guidelines to immigration law in the United States in regards to how newcomers can legally enter this country. The demise of the Chinese Exclusion Act in the '40s ended the long, racist system that was a huge product of the 1920s American attitudes towards immigrants. Filipinos received better opportunities to migrate into America mainly due to small quotas and the celebration of finally gaining independence in their home country. Even so, strict admissions were still laid for most Asian immigrants (Japanese, Korean, Southeast as United States politicans were still debating over whether the old or a new immigration system should be put into place.

A lot of controversy was sweeping across America as citizens and Congress members were divided over "lowering the barriers" of the country's borders and how strict our immigrant policies should be. Some political leaders, such as Senator Patrick A. McGarran, though once a believer in the national origins concept of protecting America's borders, found himself siding with the broad notion of naturalizing newcomers to the United States. The reason for Americans being uncertain about allowing more immigrants in was due not only to the masses of Europeans arriving from a war torn continent, but the direct fear of Communism spreading to this country since it was already on the rise in many nations. Others, though caught up in the fears of the twenties rather than the realities of the forties, felt this massive immigrant movement was some kind of plot to sneak Jews into the United States. I was always curious about the anti-Semitic mindset of Americans after World War Two, especially since these were the people our troops found in the concentration camps and provided them with food, water, and clothing. Obviously, many of the principles and aspects of American ideology that turned the original thirteen colonies into the United States evolved around Christian (mainly Protestant) ideals; people in America have historically looked down on others outside their way of life, particularly Jews since they have been considered historical enemies of Christian life. It can infered that since many Anglo-Americans after World War Two didn't learn about the horrors of the Holocaust that sympathy towards many Jewish immigrants was, for the most part, non-existent.

The Immigration Act of 1965 accomplished more than what it authors could have forseen. It helped to change the face of American attitudes towards immigrants and enabled quotas for people from countries that had more applicants than quota spaces in the system. The reform went through three provisions: 1) The quota system was phased out over a five year period, with numbers of immigrants that were released into a pool of distribution, 2) Natives of any country only received more than 10% of the newly authorized quota numbers, and 3) A seven-person  board is to be established to advise the president, along with two appointed members by the Speaker of the House and five other members from Congress. The president, after receieving the recommendations from this board, would have the authority to allow 50% of unallocated numbers be preserved for people at a disadvantage with the new quota system and 20% to all other refugees. In short, this immigration reform helped to distribute evenly the number of people coming into the United States, while helping those who aren't qualified for the quota system at the same time.