INVADE THE WORLD, INVITE THE WORLD: 1965 Immigration Law co-sponsor Eugene McCarthy’s awakening to the threat of immigration.

According to McCarthy, discriminating against non-Europeans in immigration via the existing national origin quota system was viewed as “repugnant,” and Congress sought to replace it with a system which placed all nations on an equal footing. This view, shared by McCarthy at the time and not repudiated in his book, ignores the reality that certain nationalities are, by virtue of their language and culture, more easily assimilated into American life.

McCarthy notes that Congress, not desiring an increase in overall immigration levels, capped immigration from the western hemisphere (Latin America and the Caribbean) at 120,000 per year, while a cap of 165,000 per year was placed on immigration from the rest of the world. At this rate, immigration from the western hemisphere should not have been more than six million over the past fifty years. Yet the Hispanic population of America now exceeds 50 million.

So what went wrong? According to McCarthy, the caps were eroded away continuously on an ad hoc basis to adapt to immigration pressures that often were the result of American foreign policy. Cubans were given a welcome mat almost immediately, Vietnamese and other refugees from the failed Vietnam War were allowed in, as were people disrupted by Central American wars pursued by president Reagan.