america.gov. In the Eastern Hemisphere 170,000 immigrants were allowed in; in the Western Hemisphere 120,000 immigrants were welcomed in, Daniels continues. The law did limit the number of immigrants from "any nation" to 20,000 per year. As for "refugees" the law permitted only 6% of the total number of immigrants to be those considered refugees (Daniels reports that the 6% amounted to about 17,400 visas).
Between 1966 and 2000 about 22.8 million immigrants entered the U.S., and "the bulk" of those twenty-two million were "family members of recent immigrants" (called "chain migration") (Daniels). According to the Center for Immigration Studies the law (technically called "The Hart-Celler Act of 1965") "for the first time" gave a higher priority to "relatives of American citizens and permanent resident aliens than to applicants with special job skills" (www.cis.org).
Some of those preferences included: a) unmarried adult sons and daughters of U.S. citizens; b) members of "the professions and scientists and artists of exceptional ability"; c) married children of U.S. citizens; d) "brothers and sisters of U.S. citizens over age twenty-one"; e) unskilled and skilled workers in jobs "for which there is insufficient labor supply…" among a few other categories. The bill in 1965 was basically designed to put a stop to the blatant discrimination of the previous laws based on national origins, but the Center for Immigration Studies explains that while "some people feared a major increase" in the number of immigrants entering the U.S. others assured the doubters that would not be the case. To wit, Attorney Robert Kennedy wrote a letter to The New York Times: "The time has come for us to insist that the quota system be replaced by the merit system…It deprives us of...
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