It was all part of ending racism. The Hart-Celler Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which President Lyndon Johnson signed into law on October 3, 1965, set aside restrictions on immigration that had been in place since the 1920s, which had limited the numbers of Asians, Southern Europeans, and Eastern Europeans who could come to the U.S. Johnson proclaimed: “For over four decades the immigration policy of the United States has been twisted and has been distorted by the harsh injustice of the national origins quota system…. Only 3 countries were allowed to supply 70 percent of all the immigrants…. This system violated the basic principle of American democracy—the principle that values and rewards each man on the basis
of his merit as a man.”
That was all well and good, but this act ended up admitting multitudes not on the basis of their merit at all, but solely in order to shore up the Democrats’ voter base.
Once the act became law, immigration into the United States began to increase steadily. In 1965, 4.8 percent of the people in the United States had been born somewhere else. By 2016, it was 14 percent.
Yet when Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act, he said: “This bill that we will sign today is not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions. It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives, or really add importantly to either our wealth or our power.” Yet this bill was revolutionary, and it did affect Americans as much or more than anything any president has ever done.
As it was being debated, Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York, brother of the slain President John F. Kennedy, sought to “set to rest any fears that this bill will change the ethnic, political or economic makeup of the United States.” Another Kennedy brother, Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, promised that “our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually…. The ethnic mix of this country will not be upset.”
It took a while. The first time the annual immigration rate topped a million was in 1990, and the U.S. began to take in an average of over a million people a year early in the twenty-first century. Immigrants streamed in from all over the world. Johnson’s direct attack on national quotas as un-American lent gravity to the claim that any suggestion that they be brought back was “racist,” even when they were motivated by a desire to preserve the United States as a cohesive culture with common values. Any suggestion that immigration be limited in any way, meanwhile, was condemned as “xenophobic.”
The earlier assumption that immigrants should assimilate and adopt American values was lost. Only “racists” were concerned that the U.S. might be bringing in large numbers of people who had vastly different priorities and perspectives, which would gravely threaten the continued existence of the nation as a free society. The fact that the impetus for opening the floodgates had been a bill that erased national or ethnic quotas for immigration allowed leftists to bat down any opposition to mass, unrestricted immigration as “racist.” Even today, they’re still doing it.
As these immigrants streamed in, little to no effort was made to value and reward each man on the basis of his merit as a man, as Johnson had claimed that the bill would allow America to do. Instead, that, too, was dismissed as “racist.” Those who came in with no appreciable skills, and who lacked even any ability to speak English, came to be prized over others, for they would end up being dependent on the government.
That was good, as it would necessitate more government expenditure, which would require higher taxes. Those who depended upon the government, meanwhile, could be counted upon never to vote for the party that promised to reduce the size of government, or to cut welfare benefits at very least for those who were capable of working some kind of job. The Democrat Party’s top dogs saw that by opening the borders even more completely than they had done already, they could ensure their candidates a reliable voting base for years to come. Republicans who had ties to businesses that appreciated the steady stream of cheap labor, meanwhile, were happy to go along.
And so today we are a deeply divided nation that is the home of millions of people who despise it and everything it stands for. This situation didn’t come about by accident.
