The effects of the US 1965 Immigration Act Introduction and Annotated Essay

The effects of the US 1965 Immigration Act Introduction and Annotated bibliography - Essay Example To accomplish this it restricted immigration on the basis of how many existing proportions of the population there already were. The 1965 Act, however, set an annual limit to no more than twenty thousand from each country, regardless of how many peoples from that country already occupied the United States. By 1968 the annual limitation to any country from the Western Hemisphere was set to one hundred and twenty thousand immigrants, and visas were given on a first come-first serve basis. The equalization of immigration policies resulted in a shift in immigration from European-Asian immigrants, to Central-South American immigrants. Immigration also doubled from 1965-1970 and then again from 1970-1990. This flux of immigrants not only changed the ethnic makeup of the United States, but with the introduction of so many to the U.S workforce it also shifted the male earnings inequalities. This prompted congress to pass the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) and the 1990 Immigra tion Act, in an attempt to stabilize the influx and the economy.