Transcript
Adriel: What would you say were the effects of post-war boom on the passing of the Immigration Act of 1965?
I would say that the post-war boom helped. I think there is a correlation between interest in immigration and the stance of the people and politicians about how it will affect the economy. I think that at the time, and for that matter since, the sense was that it would be helpful economically to admit more people. Particularly, as it was originally drafted in 1964 and 1965, the thought was that a high percentage that would actually occur would be high skilled workers.
Adriel: So it was like an unexpected change?
I think it was unexpected that not many people came in as family members of U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents.
Adriel: How did the cold war and America’s rise as a super power affect the public’s opinion on the Immigration Act of 1965?
I came to that question more about not public opinion but about political opinion or legislative opinion, I think probably pretty similar. Certainly, in Congress people who were testifying in favor of the bill and legislators who spoke in favor of the bill, one of the major reasons that they said that the immigration law had to be reformed was because it put America in a bad light to have racial restrictions and racial tests for immigration. The restrictions and tests applied in Asia in particular, which was a continent of particular geo-political significance. I think the cold war politics was a very important factor in passing the 1965 act.
Adriel: How do you think the post-war 1965 immigration would defer from the immigration before that time?
The pre-1965 immigration had to some extent the same sort of preferences for close family connections, and was based on employment or upward skills, but the difference was it was filtered through this geographical preference through the National Origins Quota system. And so, there were some places like England and Germany where you could get in from, even if you were very low preference. There were lot and lots of other placed you could not get in from even if you were very high preference. The critical factor was where you were from. The major difference was the region of the world where people came from before 1968, when the 1965 act was completely implemented. Before 1968, three quarters or more of the immigrants were from Northern and Western Europe. Since then, it is increasingly from Central and South America and Asia. So there was a major demographic change in the source of immigration.
Adriel: How do you think that change in demographics impacted the country?
There is a historian named Oscar Handlin. He planned to write a book on the history of immigration to the United States, and then he realized that the history of immigration was the history of United States. I think that immigration has completely changed the country. If you look within your lifetime, United States would be a majority minority country. Some states are already majority minority and lots of cities are already majority minority.
This country was once really a white country and that is not true any more. What difference does that make? I think the United States is a lot more multicultural, a lot more cosmopolitan and has a lot more sophisticated than the rest of the world. But that change, that it used to be a predominantly white country with an additional minority group of mainly African Americans, and a tiny number of Asian Americans, and an even smaller number of Native Americans, plus a handful of Latinos in particular parts of the country. That was the world in the 1940 s and 1950 s. That was America. It is simply not that way anymore.
Adriel: Do you believe that the family reunification aspect of the 1965 Immigration Act to be a success of the bill or a failure?
I must say I am impressed with your questions. You must have spent an enormous amount of time looking into this. Really interesting questions of the type that.. you are a high school student?
Adriel: Yeah
Well, that’s quite something. This is the type of questions I expect at a conference of immigration professors or something. It is an interesting question, is the family reunification a success of the bill or a failure. I think family reunification turned out to be a much more substantial portion of the immigration stream than people in Congress expected at the time. I think they expected family reunification and employment based immigration to be more or less equal. I think family reunification turned out be a much larger proportion. Another thing is, that there was some thinking in Congress at the time that family reunifications would be sort of a temporary thing, that there were a lot of families that were separated at the time and that they would be reunified. I am not sure that they fully appreciated that the family reunification idea would apply with full force and with great effect for people who only became U.S. citizens or permanent residents years or decades after the 1965 Act came into effect. In some extent, it was an unexpected consequence or at least it was a feature of the operation of the law that was not fully appreciated at the time it was passed. On the other hand, I think as the immigration law goes back and forth between being harsh and humane, sometimes people get deported for fairly minimal things and separated from their family for fairly minimal offences. But in other instances, the law recognizes the important human relationships and accommodates them. I regard the family reunification provision as a success because it recognizes the interests of new Americans as well as the Americans who’d been in the United States for a while, and it doesn’t put people who come to the United States in this terrible dilemma that you can come to the United States but not necessarily with your family. That would be a very harsh immigration system and in fact, that was our rule.
Adriel: But in a country like Canada where family reunification is not a major issue, and immigration in Canada isn’t such a big issue as it is here. So in that light do you see it as a failure?
Are you suggesting that if we didn’t have as many slots for family reunification then that immigration wouldn’t be as much politically charged?
Adriel: Yes
It is possible that is the case. But I think immigration is politically charged in this country. I think it would be politically charged anyway. Because one of the things that is going on with immigration is that it is changing the racial demographics of the country and that makes a lot of people uneasy. I think they would be uneasy if of the million immigrants a year, we changed 300,000 of the family reunification people to employment-based visas, I think that same level of anxiety or at least much the same level of anxiety would be there.
Adriel: How do you think the bill revolutionized what it means to be American?
Obviously, in practice, most people, most Americans before the law were white, descriptively. But it wasn’t just that that is how it was. It was that the law by preferring white immigrants and discouraging non-white immigrants, the law really sent the message that this is
Adriel: Who we are.
Exactly. It is a white country. Of course at the time, and this was going on simultaneously with other debates and battles and revolutions about what it means to be a citizen, and who belongs and who does not belong. Obviously, I am talking about the civil right movement which I think enormously contributed to the passage of the immigration act, and the immigration act would not have been possible without it. But, this was another front in which that question played out. The outcome, certainly the outcome descriptively, the outcome demographically, is that it is no longer the case that the typical average normal regular American is a white person. The demographic changes are because of the Immigration Act. But, I also think the Immigration Act, the sentiments behind it, the things that people said when they supported it, the reasons for it, now that wasn’t an unintended consequence. It wasn’t an accident that the old racial discriminatory laws were gotten rid of. That was a choice, a principled explicit choice. It was an important step in that process.
Adriel: Are you yourself a child of an immigrant?
No, my grandfather came over. My father was born in the United States and I was born in the United States. My grandfather was born in China.
Adriel: How did the positive 1960 liberalism feelings affect Congress’ stance toward immigration?
I think that the Immigration Act was at peace with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. They were all parts of a democratic coalition that had decided that the time had really come to get rid of legally supported racism in the United States. You can see that in the identities of the supporters of these laws, and basically, these were the same group of people that supported all of these things. I don’t think that you could have had the 1965 Immigration Act without the full flowering of the civil rights movement and the penetration of the civil right movement into mainstream political culture. Furthermore, I would say that to a significant degree, that’s a different aspect of globalism that has survived and continues to survive. The evidence for that, in my view, is that unlike a lot of other periods in U.S. history, the controversy about immigration now, is about undocumented immigration. There is really not a lot of sentiment to get rid of or reduce or eliminate legal immigration. There is some, but it is sort of a fringe effort. I think that goes to the success, at least the core ideas, of that period.
Adriel: Would you say that has anything to do with the great society movement being part of those core ideas of the era?
No. The great society stuff had a lot to do with public benefits with government intervention in the economy to make things better for people. There are some people who support that and there are others who do not even in the Democratic Party. That second step of liberalism has not necessarily had the same level of success as the first level. The core idea of liberalism that at least we should not discriminate, the law should not discriminate people on the basis of race, that has been untouched. There is very little retrenchment in that idea. There are plenty of people who oppose things like affirmative action and who want to reform welfare who say, I oppose discrimination in employment and discrimination in any government program including immigration. But, that is not the question. Do we take it so far as to affirmative action? No, I think the great society program was a little different.
Adriel: How do you say the debates of the 1965 Immigration act compared to the debates on immigration today?
I sort of touched on that. The remarkable thing to me is that there isn’t a lot of opposition to legal immigration even though legal immigration is a predominantly a benefit to people of color. Three quarters or more of immigrants now are from Latin America, South America or Asia. In a way it is like affirmative action in the sense that it is a program that proportionally benefits people of color. It certainly does not have any of the negative controversy that affirmative action does. I am not saying there is no racial component to the issue of undocumented immigration. I think there is. But it is remarkable to me that the racial anxiety is out there. It can’t get any traction. There are plenty of people out there who do want to “reform” legal immigration. The federation for American immigration reform, for example, wants to reduce legal immigration as well as undocumented or unauthorized immigration. But they can’t get a significant number of people to go along with them. I think that is a huge difference. There were people in 1965 who said , we don’t want to change the racial demographics of the country, that would be a mistake. There is really only a tiny, tiny, minority of people who are willing to say that now.
Adriel: Why do you think President Johnson didn’t think the bill was revolutionary in any way?
I think that the people who participated in the drafting of the bill recognized that there will be changes. I think that probably the way that people were selected gave them some comfort, the selection criteria were things that made it more likely that people would indeed be able to assimilate successfully. That is, if you already had family members here, it would be easier for you to assimilate. If you have job or good prospects of employment, it would be easier for you to assimilate. I also think that assimilation is an important concept here because at that time there was an idea that there would be more assimilation, that there would not necessarily be ethnic neighborhoods of recent immigrant to the extent there has been. I don’t think that he thought there won’t be changes, he thought those changes would be manageable and in line with the kinds of changes we’ve had with previous waves of immigrants. And I think that largely turned out to be true.
Adriel: Why do you think the people who wrote the bill included a provision that people living in communist nations and who were fleeing communist nations should be granted approval faster than people who aren’t?
There is no question that there were a number of things going on with this legislation. In my view, it was an important US legislation. It was subconsciously designed to deal with our problems with the communists and it was also “hard ball” legislation. Remember, Vietnam was going on at the time, so I think with that provision and many others, a recognition that one of the things that this bill was signed to do was further the competition with the Soviet Union and China.
Adriel: When the bill took effect in 1968, was it seen as an act of foreign policy or as a domestic issue?
I think both. A lot of people from the state department testified about the bill. Clearly there was a recognition that this was important for international relations as well as for domestic policy. In the legal academy anyway, there is a famous article called Desegregation as a Cold War Imperative. You know about the Board of Education, I presume?
Adriel: Yes
There is a brief written by the Attorney General and the U.S. Attorney General. The United Stated was not a party to the case. It was a case by private people against a state school district. The Unites States was not formally involved. But the Attorney General wrote a brief saying “segregation is an embarrassment to us internationally.” And 1964 was just after the Korean War. There were other conflicts going on in the world and Vietnam was in the horizon. That was one of the things that the court had to consider. With something that seems like a domestic issue, such as segregation, but of course when you think about it, it is perfectly reasonable that people in other countries were wondering why is the United States is holding out as a democratic and fair nation and a leader of the West and the political block, when they are racist. The same thing is true I think in the immigration context.
Adriel: Do you believe by doing this we were making more than a political statement but it was a moral statement to the world?
Yes. I think that. The main reason I think that is that I’ve read what people said in Congress of the earlier reform efforts. The earlier reform effort, here I am talking about the end of Chinese exclusion in 1943 and the partial liberalization in 1952, also both war years. In those years, there really was an effort to do the minimum necessary to get the political benefit. It was not a rejection of racial distinction in principle. It was a practical change in policy. It seems to me that in 1964 the language of the arguments, the reasons that people offered why Senators who were responsible for changing policy was categorically different. They were sick of it. They wanted to get rid of what they regarded as a shameful, immoral, un-American policy. It was one that had negative economic consequences, negative human consequences, and negative geo-political consequences. So there were lots of reasons to get rid of it. They wanted to get rid of it roots and branch, not simply to the minimum degree necessary to achieve some other practical goal.
Adriel: What opposition did the Bill face in Congress?
I think it faced opposition from certain kinds of racial conservatives. One of the key things hers is, in the 1964 election Lyndon B. Johnson won the Presidency by a huge landslide. The liberal democrats had a super majority control in the Congress. So, the administration and the Democrats were in the driver’s seat. The opposition was pretty much the same opposition that we saw to the Voting Right Act and to the Civil Rights Act. A conservative argument, I’d say to some extent is a racist argument. By changing the law we risked dramatic changes to the United States. Our current system works, why would we change it? Those were the basic arguments. I think they were fairly clearly racially tinged.
Adriel: Would you say they were fighting for a traditional America?
They were fighting for a racially traditional America. Traditional American in that sense, yes.
Adriel: Do you think there are any other factors besides the liberalism at the time, the Cold War, in general the positive attitude at the time ‘cause this was quite a revolutionary bill at the time.
Right. I think it is economics, it is the Cold War, it’s the racism, its humanitarianism. It is a recognition of family reunification, typically for the people who are in the United States who cannot bring their relatives over. So economics, international politics, domestic politics, and humanitarian principles, I think were the main reasons.
Adriel: Why didn’t people at the time really didn’t think it was revolutionary at all?
I think for the same reasons that you can argue that it hasn’t been revolutionary. It has been revolutionary in a way, but on the other hand, it really is a story about continuity. That is, we have always had people who are here now, then a little while later some immigrants come, they seem different at first and then over time they settle in and have children and it turns out for the most parts they become part of the dynamic society. The new immigrants follow the path of the old immigrants. I think that is pretty much how it is played out. We have a situation where very, very, few children of immigrants who do not speak English. So in some fundamental way the same basic pattern that we’ve had continue to prevail. After a little while, everybody agrees that they believe that they are as American as anybody else. That has largely been the pattern. I don’t mean to suggest that assimilation has been perfect or integration has been perfect. There is sense that Asian Americans are considered perpetual foreigners. Even given that, I don’t think anybody is arguing that Asians don’t belong or cannot be a part of the United States.
Adriel: What led you to become a Professor in Immigration law?
I was just interested in the area, which is a circular answer. I was interested in the area because immigration has played such a large part in my young families’ life. It is something didn’t feel had been explored sufficiently in scholarship. I did not think, particularly the Asian American immigration experience, has been explored out thoroughly. I thought it would be interesting to write about, and meaningful to write about, because it was important and under explored.
Adriel: That is actually really true. I really agree with that. There really isn’t a lot of literature on Asian-American immigration.
There is a lot more now than there was.
Adriel: Thank you very much.
Would you do me a favor and send me your Website when you finish it.
Adriel: Sure.
I would say that the post-war boom helped. I think there is a correlation between interest in immigration and the stance of the people and politicians about how it will affect the economy. I think that at the time, and for that matter since, the sense was that it would be helpful economically to admit more people. Particularly, as it was originally drafted in 1964 and 1965, the thought was that a high percentage that would actually occur would be high skilled workers.
Adriel: So it was like an unexpected change?
I think it was unexpected that not many people came in as family members of U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents.
Adriel: How did the cold war and America’s rise as a super power affect the public’s opinion on the Immigration Act of 1965?
I came to that question more about not public opinion but about political opinion or legislative opinion, I think probably pretty similar. Certainly, in Congress people who were testifying in favor of the bill and legislators who spoke in favor of the bill, one of the major reasons that they said that the immigration law had to be reformed was because it put America in a bad light to have racial restrictions and racial tests for immigration. The restrictions and tests applied in Asia in particular, which was a continent of particular geo-political significance. I think the cold war politics was a very important factor in passing the 1965 act.
Adriel: How do you think the post-war 1965 immigration would defer from the immigration before that time?
The pre-1965 immigration had to some extent the same sort of preferences for close family connections, and was based on employment or upward skills, but the difference was it was filtered through this geographical preference through the National Origins Quota system. And so, there were some places like England and Germany where you could get in from, even if you were very low preference. There were lot and lots of other placed you could not get in from even if you were very high preference. The critical factor was where you were from. The major difference was the region of the world where people came from before 1968, when the 1965 act was completely implemented. Before 1968, three quarters or more of the immigrants were from Northern and Western Europe. Since then, it is increasingly from Central and South America and Asia. So there was a major demographic change in the source of immigration.
Adriel: How do you think that change in demographics impacted the country?
There is a historian named Oscar Handlin. He planned to write a book on the history of immigration to the United States, and then he realized that the history of immigration was the history of United States. I think that immigration has completely changed the country. If you look within your lifetime, United States would be a majority minority country. Some states are already majority minority and lots of cities are already majority minority.
This country was once really a white country and that is not true any more. What difference does that make? I think the United States is a lot more multicultural, a lot more cosmopolitan and has a lot more sophisticated than the rest of the world. But that change, that it used to be a predominantly white country with an additional minority group of mainly African Americans, and a tiny number of Asian Americans, and an even smaller number of Native Americans, plus a handful of Latinos in particular parts of the country. That was the world in the 1940 s and 1950 s. That was America. It is simply not that way anymore.
Adriel: Do you believe that the family reunification aspect of the 1965 Immigration Act to be a success of the bill or a failure?
I must say I am impressed with your questions. You must have spent an enormous amount of time looking into this. Really interesting questions of the type that.. you are a high school student?
Adriel: Yeah
Well, that’s quite something. This is the type of questions I expect at a conference of immigration professors or something. It is an interesting question, is the family reunification a success of the bill or a failure. I think family reunification turned out to be a much more substantial portion of the immigration stream than people in Congress expected at the time. I think they expected family reunification and employment based immigration to be more or less equal. I think family reunification turned out be a much larger proportion. Another thing is, that there was some thinking in Congress at the time that family reunifications would be sort of a temporary thing, that there were a lot of families that were separated at the time and that they would be reunified. I am not sure that they fully appreciated that the family reunification idea would apply with full force and with great effect for people who only became U.S. citizens or permanent residents years or decades after the 1965 Act came into effect. In some extent, it was an unexpected consequence or at least it was a feature of the operation of the law that was not fully appreciated at the time it was passed. On the other hand, I think as the immigration law goes back and forth between being harsh and humane, sometimes people get deported for fairly minimal things and separated from their family for fairly minimal offences. But in other instances, the law recognizes the important human relationships and accommodates them. I regard the family reunification provision as a success because it recognizes the interests of new Americans as well as the Americans who’d been in the United States for a while, and it doesn’t put people who come to the United States in this terrible dilemma that you can come to the United States but not necessarily with your family. That would be a very harsh immigration system and in fact, that was our rule.
Adriel: But in a country like Canada where family reunification is not a major issue, and immigration in Canada isn’t such a big issue as it is here. So in that light do you see it as a failure?
Are you suggesting that if we didn’t have as many slots for family reunification then that immigration wouldn’t be as much politically charged?
Adriel: Yes
It is possible that is the case. But I think immigration is politically charged in this country. I think it would be politically charged anyway. Because one of the things that is going on with immigration is that it is changing the racial demographics of the country and that makes a lot of people uneasy. I think they would be uneasy if of the million immigrants a year, we changed 300,000 of the family reunification people to employment-based visas, I think that same level of anxiety or at least much the same level of anxiety would be there.
Adriel: How do you think the bill revolutionized what it means to be American?
Obviously, in practice, most people, most Americans before the law were white, descriptively. But it wasn’t just that that is how it was. It was that the law by preferring white immigrants and discouraging non-white immigrants, the law really sent the message that this is
Adriel: Who we are.
Exactly. It is a white country. Of course at the time, and this was going on simultaneously with other debates and battles and revolutions about what it means to be a citizen, and who belongs and who does not belong. Obviously, I am talking about the civil right movement which I think enormously contributed to the passage of the immigration act, and the immigration act would not have been possible without it. But, this was another front in which that question played out. The outcome, certainly the outcome descriptively, the outcome demographically, is that it is no longer the case that the typical average normal regular American is a white person. The demographic changes are because of the Immigration Act. But, I also think the Immigration Act, the sentiments behind it, the things that people said when they supported it, the reasons for it, now that wasn’t an unintended consequence. It wasn’t an accident that the old racial discriminatory laws were gotten rid of. That was a choice, a principled explicit choice. It was an important step in that process.
Adriel: Are you yourself a child of an immigrant?
No, my grandfather came over. My father was born in the United States and I was born in the United States. My grandfather was born in China.
Adriel: How did the positive 1960 liberalism feelings affect Congress’ stance toward immigration?
I think that the Immigration Act was at peace with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. They were all parts of a democratic coalition that had decided that the time had really come to get rid of legally supported racism in the United States. You can see that in the identities of the supporters of these laws, and basically, these were the same group of people that supported all of these things. I don’t think that you could have had the 1965 Immigration Act without the full flowering of the civil rights movement and the penetration of the civil right movement into mainstream political culture. Furthermore, I would say that to a significant degree, that’s a different aspect of globalism that has survived and continues to survive. The evidence for that, in my view, is that unlike a lot of other periods in U.S. history, the controversy about immigration now, is about undocumented immigration. There is really not a lot of sentiment to get rid of or reduce or eliminate legal immigration. There is some, but it is sort of a fringe effort. I think that goes to the success, at least the core ideas, of that period.
Adriel: Would you say that has anything to do with the great society movement being part of those core ideas of the era?
No. The great society stuff had a lot to do with public benefits with government intervention in the economy to make things better for people. There are some people who support that and there are others who do not even in the Democratic Party. That second step of liberalism has not necessarily had the same level of success as the first level. The core idea of liberalism that at least we should not discriminate, the law should not discriminate people on the basis of race, that has been untouched. There is very little retrenchment in that idea. There are plenty of people who oppose things like affirmative action and who want to reform welfare who say, I oppose discrimination in employment and discrimination in any government program including immigration. But, that is not the question. Do we take it so far as to affirmative action? No, I think the great society program was a little different.
Adriel: How do you say the debates of the 1965 Immigration act compared to the debates on immigration today?
I sort of touched on that. The remarkable thing to me is that there isn’t a lot of opposition to legal immigration even though legal immigration is a predominantly a benefit to people of color. Three quarters or more of immigrants now are from Latin America, South America or Asia. In a way it is like affirmative action in the sense that it is a program that proportionally benefits people of color. It certainly does not have any of the negative controversy that affirmative action does. I am not saying there is no racial component to the issue of undocumented immigration. I think there is. But it is remarkable to me that the racial anxiety is out there. It can’t get any traction. There are plenty of people out there who do want to “reform” legal immigration. The federation for American immigration reform, for example, wants to reduce legal immigration as well as undocumented or unauthorized immigration. But they can’t get a significant number of people to go along with them. I think that is a huge difference. There were people in 1965 who said , we don’t want to change the racial demographics of the country, that would be a mistake. There is really only a tiny, tiny, minority of people who are willing to say that now.
Adriel: Why do you think President Johnson didn’t think the bill was revolutionary in any way?
I think that the people who participated in the drafting of the bill recognized that there will be changes. I think that probably the way that people were selected gave them some comfort, the selection criteria were things that made it more likely that people would indeed be able to assimilate successfully. That is, if you already had family members here, it would be easier for you to assimilate. If you have job or good prospects of employment, it would be easier for you to assimilate. I also think that assimilation is an important concept here because at that time there was an idea that there would be more assimilation, that there would not necessarily be ethnic neighborhoods of recent immigrant to the extent there has been. I don’t think that he thought there won’t be changes, he thought those changes would be manageable and in line with the kinds of changes we’ve had with previous waves of immigrants. And I think that largely turned out to be true.
Adriel: Why do you think the people who wrote the bill included a provision that people living in communist nations and who were fleeing communist nations should be granted approval faster than people who aren’t?
There is no question that there were a number of things going on with this legislation. In my view, it was an important US legislation. It was subconsciously designed to deal with our problems with the communists and it was also “hard ball” legislation. Remember, Vietnam was going on at the time, so I think with that provision and many others, a recognition that one of the things that this bill was signed to do was further the competition with the Soviet Union and China.
Adriel: When the bill took effect in 1968, was it seen as an act of foreign policy or as a domestic issue?
I think both. A lot of people from the state department testified about the bill. Clearly there was a recognition that this was important for international relations as well as for domestic policy. In the legal academy anyway, there is a famous article called Desegregation as a Cold War Imperative. You know about the Board of Education, I presume?
Adriel: Yes
There is a brief written by the Attorney General and the U.S. Attorney General. The United Stated was not a party to the case. It was a case by private people against a state school district. The Unites States was not formally involved. But the Attorney General wrote a brief saying “segregation is an embarrassment to us internationally.” And 1964 was just after the Korean War. There were other conflicts going on in the world and Vietnam was in the horizon. That was one of the things that the court had to consider. With something that seems like a domestic issue, such as segregation, but of course when you think about it, it is perfectly reasonable that people in other countries were wondering why is the United States is holding out as a democratic and fair nation and a leader of the West and the political block, when they are racist. The same thing is true I think in the immigration context.
Adriel: Do you believe by doing this we were making more than a political statement but it was a moral statement to the world?
Yes. I think that. The main reason I think that is that I’ve read what people said in Congress of the earlier reform efforts. The earlier reform effort, here I am talking about the end of Chinese exclusion in 1943 and the partial liberalization in 1952, also both war years. In those years, there really was an effort to do the minimum necessary to get the political benefit. It was not a rejection of racial distinction in principle. It was a practical change in policy. It seems to me that in 1964 the language of the arguments, the reasons that people offered why Senators who were responsible for changing policy was categorically different. They were sick of it. They wanted to get rid of what they regarded as a shameful, immoral, un-American policy. It was one that had negative economic consequences, negative human consequences, and negative geo-political consequences. So there were lots of reasons to get rid of it. They wanted to get rid of it roots and branch, not simply to the minimum degree necessary to achieve some other practical goal.
Adriel: What opposition did the Bill face in Congress?
I think it faced opposition from certain kinds of racial conservatives. One of the key things hers is, in the 1964 election Lyndon B. Johnson won the Presidency by a huge landslide. The liberal democrats had a super majority control in the Congress. So, the administration and the Democrats were in the driver’s seat. The opposition was pretty much the same opposition that we saw to the Voting Right Act and to the Civil Rights Act. A conservative argument, I’d say to some extent is a racist argument. By changing the law we risked dramatic changes to the United States. Our current system works, why would we change it? Those were the basic arguments. I think they were fairly clearly racially tinged.
Adriel: Would you say they were fighting for a traditional America?
They were fighting for a racially traditional America. Traditional American in that sense, yes.
Adriel: Do you think there are any other factors besides the liberalism at the time, the Cold War, in general the positive attitude at the time ‘cause this was quite a revolutionary bill at the time.
Right. I think it is economics, it is the Cold War, it’s the racism, its humanitarianism. It is a recognition of family reunification, typically for the people who are in the United States who cannot bring their relatives over. So economics, international politics, domestic politics, and humanitarian principles, I think were the main reasons.
Adriel: Why didn’t people at the time really didn’t think it was revolutionary at all?
I think for the same reasons that you can argue that it hasn’t been revolutionary. It has been revolutionary in a way, but on the other hand, it really is a story about continuity. That is, we have always had people who are here now, then a little while later some immigrants come, they seem different at first and then over time they settle in and have children and it turns out for the most parts they become part of the dynamic society. The new immigrants follow the path of the old immigrants. I think that is pretty much how it is played out. We have a situation where very, very, few children of immigrants who do not speak English. So in some fundamental way the same basic pattern that we’ve had continue to prevail. After a little while, everybody agrees that they believe that they are as American as anybody else. That has largely been the pattern. I don’t mean to suggest that assimilation has been perfect or integration has been perfect. There is sense that Asian Americans are considered perpetual foreigners. Even given that, I don’t think anybody is arguing that Asians don’t belong or cannot be a part of the United States.
Adriel: What led you to become a Professor in Immigration law?
I was just interested in the area, which is a circular answer. I was interested in the area because immigration has played such a large part in my young families’ life. It is something didn’t feel had been explored sufficiently in scholarship. I did not think, particularly the Asian American immigration experience, has been explored out thoroughly. I thought it would be interesting to write about, and meaningful to write about, because it was important and under explored.
Adriel: That is actually really true. I really agree with that. There really isn’t a lot of literature on Asian-American immigration.
There is a lot more now than there was.
Adriel: Thank you very much.
Would you do me a favor and send me your Website when you finish it.
Adriel: Sure.