Post 1965 immigration to the US

Résumé du document

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 represents a crucial shift in the history of American immigration. This reform set the basis of the modern immigration policy as we know it today, by implementing a new system based on two criteria, called "preferences". These are: family reunification and scarce work skills. The system created by this piece of legislation, ending the old race-based quota system, has had many consequences in the last 40 years. The Hart-Celler Act, however, still contained country quotas regarding the Eastern Hemisphere, and a global quota regarding the Western hemisphere, but did not limit the number of family reunification visas. The reform produced unexpected effects, among which was the arrival of a huge number of immigrants from Latin America and Asia (south East Asia in particular). As a matter of fact the law did not intend to attract immigrants from those continents who, on a long term, have definitely changed the ethnic and cultural composition of the American population, which used to be predominantly white in 1965.

Extraits

[...] However the settlement of immigrants is much more dependent on a combination of both work demand and network factor than ethnic presence. If the Central Valley of California attracts Mexicans immigrants it is at least as important to consider the field jobs as the Mexican community living there. Network theory can explain why Mexicans come to this particular place and not other immigrants, while the push pull theory could only explain immigration as a whole. The impact of the US presence overseas The origins of the migrants are very diverse but a few observations can be made vis-à-vis the relation of their countries with the US. [...]

[...] That is why the new immigrants represent two different kinds of supply for the American economy. Income inequalities are strongly dependent on race and gender. On the one hand cheap labor is appreciated on the labor market for reasons that are different from the ones of the previous waves. The service sector has created a new demand for low-skilled cheap jobs that often do not require English proficiency. The boom of certain parts of the service sector has engendered direct and indirect jobs in an endogenous process. [...]

[...] Post 1965 immigration to the US After 1965, immigration to the United States, particularly from Asia and Latin America, has increased substantially. Taking into account the key aspects of migration theory, what are the key similarities and/or differences in these post-1965 flows of migration to this country? The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 represents a crucial shift in the history of American immigration. This reform set the basis of the modern immigration policy as we know it today, implementing a new system based on two criteria, called “preferences”: family reunification and scarce work skills. [...]

[...] Agriculture and industry still represent opportunities for migrants. Moreover, the ending of the Bracero Program in 1964, one year before the Hart-Cellar Act, did not mean the end of the workers flow from Mexico to the US as far as agriculture is concerned. Mexicans still come to harvest the US crops under different legal status, or temporary workers or illegal immigrants. By the way percent of illegal immigrants apprehended in the last 20 years were Mexicans, which means that among other origins, immigrants come legally. [...]

[...] Then the possibility of migration is embodied in the person of the immigrant who has “succeeded”, in the same way as the myth of the “American uncle” existed in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. The consequence of communication in this regard has two consequences. On the one hand it is an incentive for the rest of the community to migrate to the US in general, creating chain migration, and on the other hand it explains the geographic settlement of the migrants within the US territory in particular. The presence of a settled community in some specific cities leads to the growth of the community. [...]