American Immigration and Citizenship - University of California, Irvine.ppt

Race, Cold War Civil Rights and the Hart-Celler Act of 1965
Anita Casavantes Bradford
Assistant Professor,
History and Chicano/Latino Studies
University of California Irvine
February 7, 2014
Immigration Reform: Messy Now, Messy Then
The 1964 Civil Rights Act, 1965 Voting Rights Act, and 1965 Hart-Celler Act are usually understood together as a high point for postwar liberal anti-racism—hooray for American democracy! But as you might expect, the story’s actually plicated—and a lot more interesting….
Key Concepts for This Lecture
World War II--The “Double V” campaign
The McCarran Walter Act (1952)
Post-war liberal anti-discrimination coalition
Immigration reform as Cold War foreign policy
1965 Hart-Celler Act:
Family reunification
Chain migration
Ironies/Unintended Consequences
Civil Rights, Postwar Liberalism and Calls for Immigration Reform, 1941-1952
The “long civil rights era:” African American anti-discrimination struggle (1940s)
-The “Double V” campaign: victory against fascism/racism abroad AND at home
-. government concern with racist reputation overseas
-NAACP and white elites form early anti-discrimination coalition
Nazi Anti-. Propaganda:Or, the (really evil) Pot Calling the Kettle Black?
The Cold War and the McCarran Walter Act (1952)
Conservatives in Congress resist ending national origins quota-offer the McCarran Walter Act as a ‘reform’:
Raised numerical quotas (but only slightly)
Gender equity: allowed husbands of . women to enter as non-quota immigrants
Abolished Japanese exclusion
BUT…
The Cold War and the McCarran Walter Act (1952)
Found other ways to exclude racial “undesirables:”
Token quotas for ‘Asia Pacific Triangle’ and postcolonial people (a pre-emptive attempt to block non-white immigration from the developing world)
Qualitative restrictions/administrative procedures to block legal Mexican immigration-but tolerated/encouraged illegal entry and labor
Exclusion/deportation/denaturalization of ‘subversive’ and ‘immo