Opening Heaven's Door: Public Opinion and Congressional Votes on the 1965 Immigration Act

Giovanni Facchini, Timothy Hatton and Max Steinhardt ()

No 6, CEH Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic History, Research School of Economics, Australian National University

Abstract: The Immigration Act of 1965 marked a dramatic shift in policy and one with major long term consequences for the volume and composition of immigration to the United States. Here we explore the political economy of a reform that has been overshadowed by the Civil Rights and Great Society programs. We find that public opinion was against expanding immigration, but it was more favorable to abolishing the old country of origin quota system. Votes in the House of Representatives and the Senate were more closely linked to opinion on abolishing the country of origin quotas than to public opinion on the volume of immigration. Support for immigration reform initially followed in the slipstream of civil rights legislation both among members of Congress and their constituents. The final House vote, on a more restrictive version of the bill, was instead more detached from state-level public opinion on civil rights and gained more support from those whose constituents wanted to see immigration decreased.

Keywords: US immigration policy; 1965 Immigration Act; Congressional voting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J68 N12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-his, nep-mig and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cbe.anu.edu.au/researchpapers/CEH/WP202106.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: Opening Heaven’s Door: Public Opinion and Congressional Votes on the 1965 Immigration Act (2024)
Working Paper: Opening Heaven's Door: Public Opinion and Congressional Votes on the 1965 Immigration Act (2021)
Working Paper: Opening heaven’s door: Public opinion and congressional votes on the 1965 Immigration Act (2021)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:auu:hpaper:099

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEH Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic History, Research School of Economics, Australian National University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().