I'm not sure it was as obvious as all that. Hindsight is 20/20. Moreover, I don't think people in 1965 really imagined that so many people would be willing or able to move across oceans. Travel got much cheaper and (as a result) much more commonplace than it was then. Immigration from Mexico was one thing because Mexicans could simply walk across the border. Immigrants from Asia had a much harder and more expensive time of it.
What I'm given to understand is that the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 was thought of as bringing immigration law into line with the color-blind philosophy in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The thinking, as I understand it, was that it was as unjust to discriminate by race in immigration as it was in any other part of the law.
I do think politicians should have gone to the public and made the argument nonetheless. I think they probably could have sold it to the public at the time, given the political climate at the time. I think the same people who were against the Civil Rights Act would have been against the Immigration and Nationality Act, but I also think the rest of the country would have been as supportive of it as they were the Civil Rights Act.
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Date: 2016-05-29 05:54 am (UTC)What I'm given to understand is that the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 was thought of as bringing immigration law into line with the color-blind philosophy in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The thinking, as I understand it, was that it was as unjust to discriminate by race in immigration as it was in any other part of the law.
I do think politicians should have gone to the public and made the argument nonetheless. I think they probably could have sold it to the public at the time, given the political climate at the time. I think the same people who were against the Civil Rights Act would have been against the Immigration and Nationality Act, but I also think the rest of the country would have been as supportive of it as they were the Civil Rights Act.
We'll never know.