Even during the few months leading up to Johnson’s signing of the 1965 Immigration Act, senators and representatives in Congress still debated the goals and potential effects of the bill. During a congressional hearing in August 1965, Representatives Robert Sweeney (D-OH) and Emanuel Celler (D-NY) offered two different explanations of the purpose and probable outcomes of the bill. Celler, as a sponsor of the bill, explained what he believed would be the limited effects of the bill on immigration and American society, while Sweeney placed the bill within the larger context of social and political movements in the United States following World War II and through the 1960s. Both representatives serve as examples of how even those who supported the bill differed in their views and understanding of the main purposes of immigration reform at the time. As these testimonies suggest, congressional records expose the politics that surrounded the Immigration Act of 1965.
Robert Sweeney: Mr. Chairman, I would consider the amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act to be as important as the landmark legislation of this Congress relating to the Civil Rights Act. The central purpose of the administration’s immigration bill is to once again undo discrimination and to revise the standards by which we choose potential Americans in order to be fairer to them and which will certainly be more beneficial to us.
Emanuel Celler: With the end of discrimination due to place of birth, there will be shifts in countries other than those of northern and western Europe. Immigrants from Asia and Africa will have to compete and qualify in order to get in, quantitatively and qualitatively, which, itself will hold the numbers down. There will not be, comparatively, many Asians or Africans entering this country…. Since the people of Africa and Asia have very few relatives here, comparatively few could immigrate from those countries because they have no family ties in the U.S.
Source: Congressional Record, August 25, 1965.
Evaluating the Evidence