Fifty Year Later: A Brief History of the Immigration Act of 1965

THE NATIONAL ARCHIVE
 
Today’s post comes from Rebecca Brenner, an intern in the History Office at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

Fifty years ago on October 3, 1965, at the base of the Statue of Liberty, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Immigration Act of 1965 into law.
The act was an important milestone in American immigration history. It was a significant improvement from the National Origins Act of 1924, which barred Asian immigrants, limited Latin American immigrants, and established rigid immigration quotas for European countries.
These quotas, established in an era of post–World War I isolationism and xenophobia, lasted from 1924 through 1965:

• Armenia: 124
• Australia: 121
• Austria: 785
• Belgium: 512
• Czechoslovakia: 3,073
• Estonia: 124
• France: 3,954
• Germany: 51,227
• Great Britain and Northern Ireland: 34,007
• Hungary: 473
• Irish Free State: 28,567
• Italy: 3,845
• Latvia: 142
• Lithuania: 344
• Netherlands: 1,648
• Norway: 6,453
• Poland: 5,962
• Russia: 2,248
• Sweden: 9,561
• Switzerland: 2,081
• Yugoslavia: 671

Aliens needed to apply for spots on the quota in their country of birth, regardless of where they and their family lived. Some quota waiting lists were a dozen years long, while others were not filled.

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