In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed a bill that has dramatically changed the method by which immigrants are admitted to America. This bill is the Immigration Act of 1965. This act, also known as the Hart-Cellar Act, not only allows more individuals from third world countries to enter the US (including Asians, who have traditionally been hindered from entering America), but also entails a separate quota for refugees. Under the Act, 170,000 immigrants from the Eastern Hemisphere are granted residency, with no more than 20,000 per country. One hundred twenty thousand immigrants from the Western Hemisphere, with no “national limitations,” are also to be admitted. The significance of this bill was that future immigrants were to be welcomed because of their skills/professions, and not for their countries of origin. Before President Johnson signed this bill, the Senate voted 76 to 18 in favor of this act, with the most opposition votes cast by Southern delegates. The House voted 326 to 69 in favor of the act.
Roughly 6.1 million unauthorized Mexican immigrants were living in the U.S. last year, down from a peak of nearly 7 million in 2007, according to the Pew Hispanic Center study released Monday. It was the biggest sustained drop in modern history, believed to be surpassed in scale only by losses in the Mexican-born U.S. population during the Great Depression....
I do believe deportation is 'turning off the job magnet' better than any economic indicators.
Mexican Immigrants in the United States, 2008 (click here)
The trend in Illegal immigration had taken a significant increase in the 1970s. I suggest The Immigration Act of 1965 might have portrayed and open door. Once that door was breached there was no stopping the flood of refugees from Mexico that followed. Any new immigration law has to take into account the language misinterpreted to provide an impetus to this mass movement of people.
It isn't as though the Obama Justice Department and Homeland Security hasn't made an impression on the folks across the US - Mexican border. Republicans like to attribute this to the high unemployment rate. Huh? Their reasoning is there is not enough work for anyone including illegals in the USA. Huh? The work these people do are routinely filled by illegals and not citizens, so how exactly was this work environment changing? We are still growing the same crops and doing the same cheap labor. I don't think the 2008 global economic collapse actually effected illegals, I will go so far as to say they would be more in demand as cheaper labor. I really think the deportation rate is the reason. Seriously.
April 23, 2012 4:00 PM
(AP) WASHINGTON - The number of Mexican immigrants (click here) living illegally in the U.S. has dropped significantly for the first time in decades, a dramatic shift as many illegal workers, already in the U.S. and seeing few job opportunities, return to Mexico.
An analysis of census data from the U.S. and Mexican governments details the movement to and from Mexico, a nation accounting for nearly 60 percent of the illegal immigrants in the U.S. It comes amid renewed debate over U.S. immigration policy as the Supreme Court hears arguments this week on Arizona's tough immigration law.
Roughly 6.1 million unauthorized Mexican immigrants were living in the U.S. last year, down from a peak of nearly 7 million in 2007, according to the Pew Hispanic Center study released Monday. It was the biggest sustained drop in modern history, believed to be surpassed in scale only by losses in the Mexican-born U.S. population during the Great Depression....I do believe deportation is 'turning off the job magnet' better than any economic indicators.
