Kevin Johnson
- Distinguished Professor, School of Law
In a forthcoming book entitled, "The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965: Legislating a New America," Dean Kevin R. Johnson discusses the true effects of the Immigration Act of 1965, 50 years after it had been passed by Congress. The paper is entitled, "The Beginning of the End: The Immigration Act of 1965 and the Emergence of Modern U.S./Mexico Border Enforcement."
Excerpt from the abstract:
In the 1965 Act, however, Congress went considerably further than simply removing the discriminatory quotas from the immigration laws. Affirmatively acting to eliminate various forms of bias that had been part and parcel of the American immigration laws for generations, Congress flatly prohibited a variety of considerations from influencing the U.S. government’s decisions to issue immigrant visas: “No person shall receive any preference or priority or be discriminated against in the issuance of an immigrant visa because of his race, sex, nationality, place of birth, or place of residence . . . .” This firm admonition imposes on the U.S. government the equivalent of what might be characterized as a color-blindness-plus requirement in the evaluation of immigrant visa applications, a fundamental transformation of the nation’s previous approach to immigration admissions.
This forthcoming book also contains contributions from other Temporary Migration Cluster affiliates, Leticia M. Saucedo, Jeannette Money, and Giovanni Peri, and is edited by Gabriel J. Chin and Rose Cuison-Villazor. It will be published by the Cambridge University Press.