WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.500 Imagine you're part of a highly exclusive club, 00:00:04.320 --> 00:00:06.780 and the founders of this club set up these incredibly 00:00:06.780 --> 00:00:09.900 rigid rules for who gets in. Right, like a carefully 00:00:09.900 --> 00:00:12.919 curated, highly restricted guest list. Exactly. 00:00:13.419 --> 00:00:15.939 They basically ensure that only people who look 00:00:16.120 --> 00:00:19.739 talk and act exactly like them ever make it past 00:00:19.739 --> 00:00:21.920 the velvet rope. But eventually, you know, the 00:00:21.920 --> 00:00:23.699 pressure gets too high. Oh, totally. You can't 00:00:23.699 --> 00:00:25.820 keep that up forever. Right. People are protesting 00:00:25.820 --> 00:00:28.019 outside. The optics are just terrible on the 00:00:28.019 --> 00:00:30.420 global stage. So the club leaders say, fine, 00:00:30.579 --> 00:00:32.159 we'll change the rules. We'll make the admissions 00:00:32.159 --> 00:00:35.140 process fair. But there's a catch, right? There's 00:00:35.140 --> 00:00:37.920 a huge catch. They promise the existing members. 00:00:38.500 --> 00:00:40.840 They literally swear to them that the actual 00:00:40.840 --> 00:00:43.759 identity and demographic makeup of the club will 00:00:43.759 --> 00:00:46.630 not change at all. Which, I mean, When you think 00:00:46.630 --> 00:00:48.829 about the actual mechanics of human behavior 00:00:48.829 --> 00:00:51.530 and global movement, that is an impossible promise 00:00:51.530 --> 00:00:53.710 to keep. Completely impossible. Because the new 00:00:53.710 --> 00:00:56.509 rules end up fundamentally rewiring the club's 00:00:56.509 --> 00:00:59.810 entire DNA in ways the founders explicitly promised 00:00:59.810 --> 00:01:01.850 wouldn't happen. Yeah. And that club we're talking 00:01:01.850 --> 00:01:04.629 about is the United States. Yep. And those new 00:01:04.629 --> 00:01:07.230 rules were the Immigration to Nationality Act 00:01:07.230 --> 00:01:10.849 of 1965. You might also hear it called the Hartzeller 00:01:10.849 --> 00:01:14.400 Act. Right. So today, our mission for this deep 00:01:14.400 --> 00:01:18.159 dive is to explore how this one single piece 00:01:18.159 --> 00:01:20.780 of legislation, which was actually signed by 00:01:20.780 --> 00:01:22.780 President Lyndon B. Johnson at the foot of the 00:01:22.780 --> 00:01:25.640 Statue of Liberty, changed absolutely everything. 00:01:25.680 --> 00:01:27.939 It really did. We're going to look at how rewired 00:01:27.939 --> 00:01:30.500 the demographic DNA of the country and how its 00:01:30.500 --> 00:01:34.040 unintended consequences are still like the invisible 00:01:34.040 --> 00:01:36.120 architecture dictating the headlines you read 00:01:36.120 --> 00:01:39.400 today. OK, let's unpack this. Yeah, to really 00:01:39.400 --> 00:01:42.359 grasp the magnitude of what happened in 1965, 00:01:42.859 --> 00:01:45.319 we have to start by looking at the system they 00:01:45.319 --> 00:01:47.400 were trying to dismantle. Because, you know, 00:01:47.400 --> 00:01:49.239 you can't understand the cure without understanding 00:01:49.239 --> 00:01:51.739 the disease. That makes sense. So before 1965, 00:01:52.019 --> 00:01:53.560 US immigration was governed by something called 00:01:53.560 --> 00:01:56.019 the National Origins Formula, which was established 00:01:56.019 --> 00:01:58.620 back in the 1920s. Right. And its purpose was 00:01:58.620 --> 00:02:00.480 incredibly blunt. I mean, it was designed specifically 00:02:00.480 --> 00:02:04.680 to preserve American homogeneity by heavily favoring 00:02:04.680 --> 00:02:06.340 immigrants from Northern and Western Europe. 00:02:06.409 --> 00:02:09.289 It was essentially a demographic freezing mechanism. 00:02:09.560 --> 00:02:12.460 And it's wild how they did it. The lawmakers 00:02:12.460 --> 00:02:15.520 in the 1920s actually used an older census, the 00:02:15.520 --> 00:02:19.240 1890 census, to calculate the quotas. Wait, 1890? 00:02:19.379 --> 00:02:21.180 Why would they go back that far if it was the 00:02:21.180 --> 00:02:23.639 1920s? They did that entirely on purpose because 00:02:23.639 --> 00:02:27.319 in 1890, the massive waves of Italian, Eastern 00:02:27.319 --> 00:02:29.740 European, and Jewish immigrants hadn't really 00:02:29.740 --> 00:02:32.819 arrived yet. Oh, wow. Yeah. So by tying the quotas 00:02:32.819 --> 00:02:36.099 to that older data, they legally locked the door 00:02:36.099 --> 00:02:38.400 behind the Northern Europeans. That is, I mean, 00:02:38.400 --> 00:02:41.069 it's just... calculated. And the numbers from 00:02:41.069 --> 00:02:44.550 that time are striking. Prior to the 1965 act, 00:02:44.849 --> 00:02:47.569 the United States was about 85 % white. Right. 00:02:47.729 --> 00:02:49.750 Black people, most of whom were descendants of 00:02:49.750 --> 00:02:52.530 enslaved people, made up about 11 % of the population. 00:02:53.069 --> 00:02:55.840 And Latinos made up less than 4%. And it wasn't 00:02:55.840 --> 00:02:58.479 just a subtle preference either. The 1920s laws 00:02:58.479 --> 00:03:01.379 were so explicitly race based and focused on 00:03:01.379 --> 00:03:03.699 keeping out those undesirable groups from southern 00:03:03.699 --> 00:03:06.500 and eastern Europe, not to mention almost entirely 00:03:06.500 --> 00:03:09.280 banning immigration from Asia and Africa, that 00:03:09.280 --> 00:03:11.500 Adolf Hitler actually praised them. Wait, really? 00:03:11.639 --> 00:03:14.180 Hitler praised US immigration policy. He did. 00:03:14.400 --> 00:03:17.360 He wrote admiringly about America's exclusionary 00:03:17.360 --> 00:03:20.800 laws in Mein Kampf. He literally cited them as 00:03:20.800 --> 00:03:24.139 a model for racial purity. That is a chilling 00:03:24.139 --> 00:03:27.080 detail. I mean, when the architect of the Holocaust 00:03:27.080 --> 00:03:29.780 is taking notes from your immigration policy, 00:03:30.240 --> 00:03:34.189 that is a profound indicator of how legally entrenched 00:03:34.189 --> 00:03:36.969 this racial exclusion was. Absolutely. But, you 00:03:36.969 --> 00:03:39.909 know, by the 1960s, that system was cracking 00:03:39.909 --> 00:03:42.129 under pressure. Domestically, you had the Civil 00:03:42.129 --> 00:03:44.050 Rights Movement. You just couldn't be passing 00:03:44.050 --> 00:03:45.789 the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act 00:03:45.789 --> 00:03:48.650 at home while maintaining a racially discriminatory 00:03:48.650 --> 00:03:51.310 quota system at your borders. Exactly. But if 00:03:51.310 --> 00:03:53.969 we connect this to the bigger picture, the domestic 00:03:53.969 --> 00:03:56.449 pressure was only half the story. The international 00:03:56.449 --> 00:03:58.349 pressure was just boiling over. And you have 00:03:58.349 --> 00:04:00.870 to remember the context of the Cold War. Right. 00:04:00.949 --> 00:04:03.069 The U .S. versus the Soviet Union. Yeah. The 00:04:03.069 --> 00:04:06.310 United States was in this global battle for ideological 00:04:06.310 --> 00:04:08.189 supremacy. They're trying to win the allegiance 00:04:08.189 --> 00:04:10.469 of all these newly independent nations across 00:04:10.469 --> 00:04:14.009 Africa and Asia, right? Exactly. Decolonization 00:04:14.009 --> 00:04:16.910 is sweeping the globe. New nations are forming 00:04:16.910 --> 00:04:19.769 and joining the UN. And the Soviet Union is actively 00:04:19.769 --> 00:04:22.529 using American immigration policy as a massive 00:04:22.529 --> 00:04:24.930 propaganda weapon. Because it's so obviously. 00:04:24.939 --> 00:04:27.519 hypocritical. Right. They're pointing at the 00:04:27.519 --> 00:04:29.519 U .S. and telling these new African and Asian 00:04:29.519 --> 00:04:32.620 nations, look at them. They claim to be the beacon 00:04:32.620 --> 00:04:35.800 of democracy, but their laws explicitly state, 00:04:36.040 --> 00:04:39.379 your people are inherently inferior and not welcome. 00:04:39.699 --> 00:04:42.540 Wow. U .S. foreign policy just couldn't effectively 00:04:42.540 --> 00:04:44.639 operate under that hypocrisy. I have a nightmare 00:04:44.639 --> 00:04:46.639 for them diplomatically. Which brings up something 00:04:46.639 --> 00:04:49.730 I really want to dig into with you. If the global 00:04:49.730 --> 00:04:52.490 pressure was that intense, and the domestic civil 00:04:52.490 --> 00:04:54.930 rights pressure was that intense, why didn't 00:04:54.930 --> 00:04:57.230 presidents like Truman or Eisenhower fix it earlier? 00:04:57.250 --> 00:04:59.110 That's a great question. Like, why was it so 00:04:59.110 --> 00:05:02.230 incredibly hard to pass this reform? Who was 00:05:02.230 --> 00:05:04.589 actively guarding the door? Well, the guardians 00:05:04.589 --> 00:05:07.410 of that door were a group of very powerful conservative 00:05:07.410 --> 00:05:09.889 politicians who controlled the immigration subcommittees 00:05:09.889 --> 00:05:12.790 in Congress. Men like Senator James Eastland 00:05:12.790 --> 00:05:15.610 and Representative Michael Fan, they vehemently 00:05:15.610 --> 00:05:18.069 opposed immigration reform because they genuinely 00:05:18.060 --> 00:05:21.819 wanted to maintain that white European ethnic 00:05:21.819 --> 00:05:24.600 profile of the country. They held the levers 00:05:24.600 --> 00:05:27.620 of bureaucratic power, and they simply refused 00:05:27.620 --> 00:05:30.000 to let any reform bills out of committee. Even 00:05:30.000 --> 00:05:32.259 President John F. Kennedy, who started this whole 00:05:32.259 --> 00:05:34.540 reform push, he actually wrote a pamphlet called 00:05:34.540 --> 00:05:37.459 The Nation of Immigrants back in 1958. Even he 00:05:37.459 --> 00:05:39.759 couldn't get it past them. Nope. He was completely 00:05:39.759 --> 00:05:42.540 blocked. It wasn't until after Kennedy's assassination 00:05:42.540 --> 00:05:45.800 that Lyndon B. Johnson used his massive political 00:05:45.800 --> 00:05:49.259 capital. LBJ framed immigration reform as a continuation 00:05:49.259 --> 00:05:52.040 of Kennedy's legacy and tied it to the broader 00:05:52.040 --> 00:05:54.439 civil rights push, finally forcing the issue 00:05:54.439 --> 00:05:58.170 onto the floor. Because the geopolitical and 00:05:58.170 --> 00:06:00.730 domestic pressures made some kind of reform inevitable, 00:06:01.230 --> 00:06:04.329 the resistance didn't just die, it mutated. And 00:06:04.329 --> 00:06:07.730 that mutation took place in the gritty, unglamorous 00:06:07.730 --> 00:06:10.569 committee rooms of Congress. That's where a political 00:06:10.569 --> 00:06:12.850 compromise was struck that is arguably one of 00:06:12.850 --> 00:06:15.129 the greatest historical ironies in United States 00:06:15.129 --> 00:06:17.189 law. Here's where it gets really interesting. 00:06:17.560 --> 00:06:20.240 To get this bill through Representative Fein's 00:06:20.240 --> 00:06:23.360 subcommittee, they had to compromise on how the 00:06:23.360 --> 00:06:26.339 new quote unquote fair visas would actually be 00:06:26.339 --> 00:06:29.319 handed out. Yeah. And Fein insisted that family 00:06:29.319 --> 00:06:32.480 unification had to take priority over employability 00:06:32.480 --> 00:06:34.670 or skilled labor. And we really have to look 00:06:34.670 --> 00:06:37.350 at the mechanics of his reasoning here. Feyen 00:06:37.350 --> 00:06:39.730 pushed for family reunification because he looked 00:06:39.730 --> 00:06:42.750 at the country, saw that it was 85 % white and 00:06:42.750 --> 00:06:45.689 European, and calculated that prioritizing the 00:06:45.689 --> 00:06:48.089 relatives of people already in the U .S. would 00:06:48.089 --> 00:06:51.009 simply result in more white Europeans immigrating. 00:06:51.110 --> 00:06:54.069 Oh, I see. Yeah, if you prioritize family and 00:06:54.069 --> 00:06:56.389 the family already here is European, the new 00:06:56.389 --> 00:06:59.029 arrivals will be European. He thought he was 00:06:59.029 --> 00:07:01.129 building a mechanical workaround to maintain 00:07:01.129 --> 00:07:03.689 the racial status quo without explicitly using 00:07:03.689 --> 00:07:05.949 race in the text of the law. It's like he tried 00:07:05.949 --> 00:07:08.769 to build a dam to stop a river, but accidentally 00:07:08.769 --> 00:07:11.889 engineered a massive canal right into the country 00:07:11.889 --> 00:07:15.389 because his plan backfired spectacularly. I mean, 00:07:15.449 --> 00:07:18.129 he completely misread global economics, didn't 00:07:18.129 --> 00:07:22.259 he? He absolutely did. By the mid -1960s, Europeans 00:07:22.259 --> 00:07:24.339 largely weren't migrating in the numbers they 00:07:24.339 --> 00:07:27.220 used to. The Marshall Plan had worked. European 00:07:27.220 --> 00:07:29.540 economies were recovering post -World War II, 00:07:29.800 --> 00:07:32.240 so the urgent economic drive to leave Europe 00:07:32.240 --> 00:07:35.100 was fading. But immigrants from outside Europe, 00:07:35.319 --> 00:07:37.800 who did manage to get in... maybe through a student 00:07:37.800 --> 00:07:40.879 visa or a high skilled labor exemption, could 00:07:40.879 --> 00:07:43.639 now use those family preference categories to 00:07:43.639 --> 00:07:45.879 bring over their spouses, their children, and 00:07:45.879 --> 00:07:48.000 their siblings. Exactly. And this is the birth 00:07:48.000 --> 00:07:51.420 of what sociologists call chain migration. By 00:07:51.420 --> 00:07:53.819 prioritizing family ties over everything else, 00:07:54.100 --> 00:07:57.480 the law inadvertently created a compounding demographic 00:07:57.480 --> 00:07:59.540 shift. How did that actually look in practice? 00:07:59.759 --> 00:08:02.120 Let's look at how it physically worked. One highly 00:08:02.120 --> 00:08:04.959 educated immigrant arrives from, say, South Korea. 00:08:05.129 --> 00:08:07.170 They establish citizenship. They sponsor their 00:08:07.170 --> 00:08:09.529 siblings. Those siblings arrive, get established, 00:08:09.670 --> 00:08:11.670 and sponsor their own spouses. And then it just 00:08:11.670 --> 00:08:14.069 keeps going. Right. Those spouses sponsor their 00:08:14.069 --> 00:08:16.589 parents or their siblings. It's exponential growth. 00:08:16.810 --> 00:08:18.930 It rapidly accelerated immigration from Asia, 00:08:19.189 --> 00:08:22.189 Africa, and Latin America. And the lawmakers 00:08:22.189 --> 00:08:24.209 at the time were just entirely blind to this 00:08:24.209 --> 00:08:27.040 reality. When the bill is being debated and it 00:08:27.040 --> 00:08:29.560 passed by wide margins by the way like 74 percent 00:08:29.560 --> 00:08:31.639 of Democrats and 85 percent of Republicans voted 00:08:31.639 --> 00:08:34.580 for it Politicians were literally standing on 00:08:34.580 --> 00:08:37.320 the Senate floor making sweeping promises. They 00:08:37.320 --> 00:08:40.019 couldn't possibly keep oh The quotes from that 00:08:40.019 --> 00:08:43.460 time are amazing Yeah, Ted Kennedy publicly assured 00:08:43.460 --> 00:08:46.039 the American public that and this is a direct 00:08:46.039 --> 00:08:48.779 quote the ethnic mix of this country will not 00:08:48.779 --> 00:08:52.019 be upset Which really goes to show that legislation 00:08:52.019 --> 00:08:54.799 is essentially a massive experiment on society. 00:08:55.320 --> 00:08:59.159 The lawmakers of 1965 abolished the old racist 00:08:59.159 --> 00:09:02.220 national origins formula, which was undeniably 00:09:02.220 --> 00:09:04.639 historic and necessary. Right, totally. But they 00:09:04.639 --> 00:09:07.340 fundamentally misunderstood the mechanical reality 00:09:07.340 --> 00:09:09.419 of the new system they just built. They thought 00:09:09.419 --> 00:09:11.320 they were tweaking a dial, but they had actually 00:09:11.320 --> 00:09:13.419 installed an entirely new engine. Well, let's 00:09:13.419 --> 00:09:15.240 talk about the mechanics of that engine, because 00:09:15.240 --> 00:09:17.720 knowing who they wanted to let in didn't solve 00:09:17.720 --> 00:09:19.679 the problem of how to actually process them. 00:09:20.120 --> 00:09:22.820 Congress had to build an entirely new bureaucratic 00:09:22.820 --> 00:09:26.080 machine, and that resulted in a category preference 00:09:26.080 --> 00:09:29.259 system. Right, because if you're abolishing quotas 00:09:29.259 --> 00:09:32.120 based on race, you need a new metric. So they 00:09:32.120 --> 00:09:35.019 prioritized relatives of U .S. citizens first. 00:09:35.539 --> 00:09:38.000 Then they prioritized professionals and people 00:09:38.000 --> 00:09:41.200 with specialized skills, and finally, refugees. 00:09:42.039 --> 00:09:44.960 Okay. But to handle the skilled workers, they 00:09:44.960 --> 00:09:47.899 introduced something called a labor certification 00:09:47.899 --> 00:09:49.700 requirement. Okay, stop right there, because 00:09:49.700 --> 00:09:52.179 this is a huge piece of the puzzle. How does 00:09:52.179 --> 00:09:54.179 a company actually prove an American can't do 00:09:54.179 --> 00:09:56.480 the job? I mean, they can't just send a letter 00:09:56.480 --> 00:09:58.500 to the government saying, hey, we need a guy, 00:09:58.600 --> 00:10:02.440 right? No, exactly. It created a massive new 00:10:02.440 --> 00:10:05.440 layer of corporate immigration law. The Secretary 00:10:05.440 --> 00:10:08.080 of Labor had to legally certify that there was 00:10:08.080 --> 00:10:10.960 an actual shortage of American workers for that 00:10:10.960 --> 00:10:13.679 specific job in that specific location before 00:10:13.679 --> 00:10:16.019 a foreign worker could be brought in. That sounds 00:10:16.019 --> 00:10:18.799 like a ton of paperwork. No, it was. The employer 00:10:18.799 --> 00:10:20.879 had to prove they tried to hire locally, that 00:10:20.879 --> 00:10:22.899 they were offering a prevailing wage, and that 00:10:22.899 --> 00:10:25.159 hiring an immigrant wouldn't dep... the wages 00:10:25.159 --> 00:10:27.299 of Americans. So if you're listening to this 00:10:27.299 --> 00:10:29.779 and you work in tech, or maybe agriculture, and 00:10:29.779 --> 00:10:32.500 you hear about visa categories today, like the 00:10:32.500 --> 00:10:35.360 H -1B for software engineers or the H -2A for 00:10:35.360 --> 00:10:38.700 seasonal farm workers, the DNA for those complex 00:10:38.700 --> 00:10:41.279 wage rules and certifications was written right 00:10:41.279 --> 00:10:44.580 here in the 1965 act. That's the structural legacy, 00:10:44.580 --> 00:10:47.460 but while they were building this complex new 00:10:47.460 --> 00:10:49.700 system to open up the Eastern Hemisphere, you 00:10:49.700 --> 00:10:52.620 know, increasing visas for Asia and Africa, they 00:10:52.620 --> 00:10:56.080 made a crucial profound shift regarding the Western 00:10:56.080 --> 00:10:58.519 Hemisphere. What did they do? For the very first 00:10:58.519 --> 00:11:01.860 time in U .S. history, the 1965 Act placed a 00:11:01.860 --> 00:11:04.240 strict numerical cap on immigration from the 00:11:04.240 --> 00:11:07.860 Americas. They capped it at 120 ,000 people annually. 00:11:08.220 --> 00:11:09.779 Wait, I need to make sure I'm understanding this. 00:11:10.299 --> 00:11:12.639 By making the global system more quote unquote 00:11:12.639 --> 00:11:16.740 fair and ending the European quotas, they simultaneously 00:11:16.740 --> 00:11:18.659 clamped down on their next door neighbors. That 00:11:18.659 --> 00:11:20.940 is exactly what happened. It's like sharing a 00:11:20.940 --> 00:11:23.440 driveway with your neighbor for decades and Suddenly, 00:11:23.639 --> 00:11:25.159 in the name of making your house more open to 00:11:25.159 --> 00:11:27.200 strangers, you build a toll booth in the middle 00:11:27.200 --> 00:11:29.350 of that shared driveway. That's a great way to 00:11:29.350 --> 00:11:31.649 visualize it. Historically, before this act, 00:11:31.789 --> 00:11:33.490 there were no numerical limits on the Western 00:11:33.490 --> 00:11:36.309 Hemisphere. And there was a very specific economic 00:11:36.309 --> 00:11:38.889 reason for that, which was American agriculture. 00:11:39.029 --> 00:11:41.590 Right. Farm labor. Yeah. Migrant agricultural 00:11:41.590 --> 00:11:44.190 workers from Mexico and other parts of the Americas 00:11:44.190 --> 00:11:46.929 could move relatively freely across the border. 00:11:47.230 --> 00:11:49.850 They would come north to work the critical farming 00:11:49.850 --> 00:11:52.389 seasons in the U .S., harvest the crops, and 00:11:52.389 --> 00:11:54.629 then return home. So it was just a regular cycle? 00:11:54.909 --> 00:11:58.330 Exactly. It was a circular, functional, general... 00:11:59.769 --> 00:12:02.750 The border wasn't a hard wall for labor. It was 00:12:02.750 --> 00:12:04.889 a commute. And I imagine the agricultural industry 00:12:04.889 --> 00:12:07.629 was just terrified of this cap. Did they just 00:12:07.629 --> 00:12:10.149 sit by and let Congress close the driveway? Not 00:12:10.149 --> 00:12:12.690 at all. Agricultural lobbyists like the American 00:12:12.690 --> 00:12:15.850 Farm Bureau were furious. They went to the congressional 00:12:15.850 --> 00:12:18.470 hearings and practically screamed that placing 00:12:18.470 --> 00:12:21.389 an arbitrary cap of $120 ,000 on the Western 00:12:21.389 --> 00:12:23.690 Hemisphere was going to ruin their industry. 00:12:23.730 --> 00:12:26.710 I bet. They argued that the U .S. economy relied 00:12:26.710 --> 00:12:29.269 heavily on that seasonal labor and that a cap 00:12:29.269 --> 00:12:31.389 wouldn't magically make Americans want to do 00:12:31.389 --> 00:12:33.610 backbreaking agricultural work. But they were 00:12:33.610 --> 00:12:36.799 ignored. And it's incredible how a policy designed 00:12:36.799 --> 00:12:40.000 to fix an injustice in one hemisphere accidentally 00:12:40.000 --> 00:12:42.320 criminalized a functional labor market in another. 00:12:43.059 --> 00:12:45.440 Because putting a cap on visas didn't magically 00:12:45.440 --> 00:12:47.720 put a cap on the economic demand for those workers, 00:12:47.860 --> 00:12:51.240 did it? Precisely. By cutting off legal circular 00:12:51.240 --> 00:12:53.519 migration from the Western Hemisphere, the law 00:12:53.519 --> 00:12:55.799 didn't stop the flow of people. It just made 00:12:55.799 --> 00:12:59.740 the existing natural flow illegal. The 1965 Act 00:12:59.740 --> 00:13:02.159 inadvertently created the modern framework of 00:13:02.159 --> 00:13:04.220 unauthorized border crossings. That is just, 00:13:04.220 --> 00:13:06.700 it's a staggering reality. You abolish a racist 00:13:06.700 --> 00:13:09.220 quota system, but in the exact same pen stroke, 00:13:09.340 --> 00:13:12.120 you lay the foundation for a massive modern border 00:13:12.120 --> 00:13:14.820 crisis in the Southwest. The same law that let 00:13:14.820 --> 00:13:17.710 the light in also built a new wall. And because 00:13:17.710 --> 00:13:19.889 the law simultaneously opened the doors wide 00:13:19.889 --> 00:13:22.370 to Asia and Africa through family reunification 00:13:22.370 --> 00:13:24.350 while artificially restricting the Americas, 00:13:24.870 --> 00:13:27.470 the decades following 1965 saw a transformed 00:13:27.470 --> 00:13:30.690 America grappling with entirely new social demographic 00:13:30.690 --> 00:13:33.610 and legal realities. The demographic shift is 00:13:33.610 --> 00:13:36.169 just mind blowing when you look at the numbers. 00:13:36.710 --> 00:13:39.370 Pew Research estimates that without the 1965 00:13:39.370 --> 00:13:43.210 act, the United States in 2015 would have been 00:13:43.210 --> 00:13:47.639 75 percent white. and less than 1 % Asian. That's 00:13:47.639 --> 00:13:50.899 a huge difference. Huge! Instead, it sparked 00:13:50.899 --> 00:13:54.139 a wave that brought in millions. Let's look at 00:13:54.139 --> 00:13:56.970 one specific example. In just the 20 years following 00:13:56.970 --> 00:14:00.610 the act, 25 ,000 Filipino professional workers 00:14:00.610 --> 00:14:03.350 entered the U .S., including thousands of nurses. 00:14:03.629 --> 00:14:05.669 And there is a very mechanical reason for that. 00:14:05.789 --> 00:14:07.629 Remember the labor certification we talked about? 00:14:07.649 --> 00:14:10.169 Oh, right. The proof of shortage. Exactly. American 00:14:10.169 --> 00:14:12.470 hospitals were facing massive nursing shortages, 00:14:12.669 --> 00:14:15.889 so it was incredibly easy for a hospital to prove 00:14:15.889 --> 00:14:18.250 to the Department of Labor that they needed to 00:14:18.250 --> 00:14:21.169 hire Filipino nurses. The mechanism of the law 00:14:21.169 --> 00:14:23.350 perfectly met the economic demand of the health 00:14:23.350 --> 00:14:25.929 care sector, completely changing the fabric of 00:14:25.929 --> 00:14:28.350 the American workforce. It's a beautiful example 00:14:28.350 --> 00:14:30.289 of the law actually working the way it was supposed 00:14:30.289 --> 00:14:32.809 to. But we also have to look at where the law 00:14:32.809 --> 00:14:35.629 failed or, well rather, who it actively targeted. 00:14:35.870 --> 00:14:38.450 Yeah, that's important. Because while the Act 00:14:38.450 --> 00:14:41.250 removed national origin discrimination, it's 00:14:41.250 --> 00:14:43.809 wild to realize that a law celebrated for ending 00:14:43.809 --> 00:14:46.970 racial discrimination simultaneously codified 00:14:46.970 --> 00:14:49.450 discrimination against other groups. Yes, the 00:14:49.450 --> 00:14:52.429 concept of progress in legislation is rarely 00:14:52.429 --> 00:14:55.330 absolute. It's almost always selective. Even 00:14:55.330 --> 00:14:58.049 after 1965, the Immigration and Naturalization 00:14:58.049 --> 00:15:01.570 Service continued to ban LGBTQ plus immigrants 00:15:01.570 --> 00:15:03.950 from entering the country. How did they legally 00:15:03.950 --> 00:15:06.090 justify that if the whole point of the new law 00:15:06.090 --> 00:15:08.830 was equality? They bypassed the concept of equality 00:15:08.830 --> 00:15:12.210 by classifying LGBTQ plus individuals under medical 00:15:12.210 --> 00:15:14.629 and psychological exclusions. Wait, what? Yeah, 00:15:14.769 --> 00:15:17.370 they banned them under the guise of being mentally 00:15:17.370 --> 00:15:20.549 defective or having a constitutional psychopathic 00:15:20.549 --> 00:15:23.730 inferiority. The medicalization of homosexuality 00:15:23.730 --> 00:15:26.389 was used as a legal loophole to maintain a strict 00:15:26.389 --> 00:15:28.789 barrier. That is awful. And that outright ban 00:15:28.789 --> 00:15:30.950 wasn't formally rescinded until the Immigration 00:15:30.950 --> 00:15:34.230 Act of 1990. 1990. That's so recent. It's a dark 00:15:34.230 --> 00:15:36.350 reminder that bureaucratic definitions can be 00:15:36.350 --> 00:15:38.649 weaponized just as effectively as quotas. And 00:15:38.649 --> 00:15:40.950 returning to the Western hemisphere cap, those 00:15:40.950 --> 00:15:44.269 dominoes kept falling, too. Just as the agricultural 00:15:44.269 --> 00:15:47.169 lobbyists warned, the restriction led to a massive 00:15:47.169 --> 00:15:50.490 rise in illegal immigration. Which in turn led 00:15:50.490 --> 00:15:52.250 to the militarization of the southern border 00:15:52.250 --> 00:15:55.870 in the 1970s and 80s, rising apprehensions, and 00:15:55.870 --> 00:15:58.230 eventually forced Congress to pass the Immigration 00:15:58.230 --> 00:16:01.009 Reform and Control Act of 1986. And to clean 00:16:01.009 --> 00:16:03.379 up the mess. Basically, they had to deal with 00:16:03.379 --> 00:16:05.740 the millions of unauthorized workers who had 00:16:05.740 --> 00:16:08.419 settled permanently because the circular migration 00:16:08.419 --> 00:16:10.860 pattern was broken. And those historical dominoes 00:16:10.860 --> 00:16:13.159 are still crashing right into our current legal 00:16:13.159 --> 00:16:15.960 battles. I mean, the non -discrimination clauses 00:16:15.960 --> 00:16:19.960 of the 1965 act, the very rules designed to stop 00:16:19.960 --> 00:16:22.580 things like the national origins formula, actually 00:16:22.580 --> 00:16:25.250 became a central weapon. in recent Supreme Court 00:16:25.250 --> 00:16:28.110 clashes. Yes, they did, because the act explicitly 00:16:28.110 --> 00:16:30.549 made it illegal to discriminate based on national 00:16:30.549 --> 00:16:33.049 origin or religion when issuing visas. Right. 00:16:33.450 --> 00:16:35.950 So if we jump forward to 2017, President Donald 00:16:35.950 --> 00:16:38.870 Trump issued an executive order temporarily halting 00:16:38.870 --> 00:16:41.269 immigration from several majority Muslim nations, 00:16:41.669 --> 00:16:43.389 which is often referred to as the travel ban. 00:16:43.690 --> 00:16:46.250 And to be clear, we're just looking at the legal 00:16:46.250 --> 00:16:48.610 mechanisms here, not taking sides on the policy 00:16:48.610 --> 00:16:51.440 itself. But when that happened, lower federal 00:16:51.440 --> 00:16:54.559 courts immediately stepped in and used the 1965 00:16:54.559 --> 00:16:57.779 Act to block it. Exactly. They essentially argued, 00:16:58.419 --> 00:17:00.460 look at the Hart -Celler Act. It specifically 00:17:00.460 --> 00:17:03.139 forbids nationality -based discrimination. The 00:17:03.139 --> 00:17:05.259 executive branch can't just ignore a statute 00:17:05.259 --> 00:17:08.180 passed by Congress. But the legal friction goes 00:17:08.180 --> 00:17:10.789 much deeper than that. When the battle went all 00:17:10.789 --> 00:17:12.890 the way up to the U .S. Supreme Court in June 00:17:12.890 --> 00:17:16.569 2018, the court ultimately upheld a version of 00:17:16.569 --> 00:17:18.410 the travel ban. Right. They overturned the lower 00:17:18.410 --> 00:17:21.230 courts. Yes. And their reasoning centered on 00:17:21.230 --> 00:17:23.630 the immense power of the executive branch. They 00:17:23.630 --> 00:17:25.630 ruled that the president has broad delegated 00:17:25.630 --> 00:17:28.049 authority over national security and border control 00:17:28.049 --> 00:17:30.990 and that this specific authority was not undermined 00:17:30.990 --> 00:17:34.450 or erased by the 1965 acts non -discrimination 00:17:34.450 --> 00:17:37.049 provisions. It perfectly illustrates how a text 00:17:37.049 --> 00:17:40.819 from 1965 isn't just historical artifact gathering 00:17:40.819 --> 00:17:43.759 dust, it is actively wrestling with the executive 00:17:43.759 --> 00:17:46.700 powers of the 21st century. The tension between 00:17:46.700 --> 00:17:49.039 congressional lawmaking and presidential authority 00:17:49.039 --> 00:17:51.740 is literally playing out using the vocabulary 00:17:51.740 --> 00:17:54.980 of 1965. It really is. And this raises an important 00:17:54.980 --> 00:17:57.319 question, one that I think anyone studying policy, 00:17:57.359 --> 00:18:00.220 history or law needs to sit with. What's that? 00:18:00.400 --> 00:18:02.740 Can any single immigration policy, no matter 00:18:02.740 --> 00:18:05.539 how well -intentioned or carefully drafted, ever 00:18:05.539 --> 00:18:08.180 truly account for the complex realities of human 00:18:08.180 --> 00:18:11.079 movement, global economics and the fundamental 00:18:11.079 --> 00:18:13.720 desire of families to be together? Or are we 00:18:13.720 --> 00:18:17.119 always just creating new, rigid rules for a fluid 00:18:17.119 --> 00:18:21.339 world? Man. So what does this all mean for you? 00:18:21.630 --> 00:18:24.430 listening to this today. It really makes you 00:18:24.430 --> 00:18:26.430 wonder if the law is always just playing catch 00:18:26.430 --> 00:18:28.490 -up with human nature. Let's tie this all together. 00:18:28.789 --> 00:18:31.029 Sounds good. Whether you are prepping for a policy 00:18:31.029 --> 00:18:33.430 debate, trying to understand the evening news, 00:18:33.829 --> 00:18:35.910 or you just love uncovering the hidden gears 00:18:35.910 --> 00:18:38.829 of history, knowing the mechanics of the 1965 00:18:38.829 --> 00:18:41.950 Hart -Seller Act is your a skeleton key to understanding 00:18:41.950 --> 00:18:44.509 modern American demographics. Absolutely. It 00:18:44.509 --> 00:18:47.069 proves that the how of a law You know, the boring 00:18:47.069 --> 00:18:49.869 mechanical compromises like prioritizing family 00:18:49.869 --> 00:18:52.430 over labor or throwing a numerical cap on a specific 00:18:52.430 --> 00:18:54.950 hemisphere is often so much more impactful than 00:18:54.950 --> 00:18:57.809 the lofty why that politicians sell to the public. 00:18:57.960 --> 00:19:00.799 The mechanics always outlast the rhetoric, always. 00:19:01.920 --> 00:19:04.299 And speaking of old mechanics outlasting modern 00:19:04.299 --> 00:19:06.480 rhetoric, I want to leave you with one final 00:19:06.480 --> 00:19:09.220 fascinating detail to mull over. Oh, I love these. 00:19:09.299 --> 00:19:10.920 What is it? Well, we've talked about how the 00:19:10.920 --> 00:19:14.299 1965 Act overhauled everything. It abolished 00:19:14.299 --> 00:19:17.420 the 1920s quotas. It created new hemispheric 00:19:17.420 --> 00:19:20.240 caps. It instituted labor certifications. It 00:19:20.240 --> 00:19:22.420 entirely rewrote the rules of the club. Right. 00:19:22.740 --> 00:19:26.029 But. Amid all that massive bureaucratic overhaul, 00:19:26.410 --> 00:19:29.650 it specifically left one incredibly old piece 00:19:29.650 --> 00:19:32.569 of law untouched. Wait, so we completely rewire 00:19:32.569 --> 00:19:35.369 the entire U .S. immigration system, place strict 00:19:35.369 --> 00:19:38.089 caps on our neighbors, build a complex visa machine. 00:19:38.509 --> 00:19:41.049 But there is one group that can bypass all of 00:19:41.049 --> 00:19:43.630 this because of a treaty from, what, the 1700s? 00:19:43.849 --> 00:19:46.890 Exactly. The provisions of the 1794 J Treaty. 00:19:47.250 --> 00:19:49.390 1794. Yeah, it was signed with the United Kingdom 00:19:49.390 --> 00:19:51.369 back when the U .S. was still in its infancy. 00:19:51.630 --> 00:19:53.759 To this day, the provisions of that treaty still 00:19:53.759 --> 00:19:55.839 apply, legally guaranteeing Native Americans 00:19:55.839 --> 00:19:58.119 born in Canada the freedom of movement across 00:19:58.119 --> 00:20:00.539 the United States border. That is wild. They 00:20:00.539 --> 00:20:02.660 don't need the visas or the labor certifications 00:20:02.660 --> 00:20:04.900 we just spent the last 15 minutes detailing. 00:20:05.720 --> 00:20:08.000 Despite all the modern caps, quotas, and border 00:20:08.000 --> 00:20:11.359 militarization, that profound ancient indigenous 00:20:11.359 --> 00:20:14.420 right still quietly survives deep inside the 00:20:14.420 --> 00:20:17.380 machinery of modern bureaucracy. It's an amazing 00:20:17.380 --> 00:20:19.839 reminder to look closely at the rules of whatever 00:20:19.839 --> 00:20:22.319 club you're in, because sometimes times, the 00:20:22.319 --> 00:20:24.880 most profound forces shaping the future are the 00:20:24.880 --> 00:20:27.240 political compromises no one paid attention to, 00:20:27.599 --> 00:20:30.119 and the engine promises no one dared to erase. 00:20:30.700 --> 00:20:32.180 Thanks for joining us on this Deep Dive.