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

Giovanni Facchini, Timothy Hatton and Max Steinhardt ()

No 14934, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

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)
Pages: 44 pages
Date: 2021-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-his and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published - published in: Journal of Economic History, 2024, 84 (1), 232-270.

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp14934.pdf (application/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:iza:izadps:dp14934

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().