Archiving Immigration Reform: The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and Its Legacies

Project Purpose:

This project was researched and designed as an educational supplement to the Asian American & Diaspora Studies Symposium, held at Duke University on October 4, 2025 and titled “Six Decades Later: Legacies of the 1965 Immigration Act.” Its purpose is to provide access to primary resources related to the symposium theme and the papers presented. Beyond the symposium, this project will also benefit students and educators at all learning levels and across several fields of inquiry.

The broader aims of this project are:

• For educators: to incorporate these resources into teaching on U.S. immigration history to deepen historical context and encourage interdisciplinary, comparative analysis of contemporary U.S. society.
• For students: to build critical media literacy through close readings of primary sources and engagement with diverse historical perspectives.
• For the general public: to deepen understanding of the global history of U.S. immigration and to connect that history to ongoing debates about migration, belonging, and citizenship.

If you have questions about the materials here or would like to learn more, please contact Matthew Hayes or Adhitya Dhanapal.

Introduction:

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, also known as the Hart-Celler Act, was a major turning point in U.S. immigration history. Signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the Civil Rights Movement, it abolished the national origins quota system of 1924. That earlier system had set immigration quotas by nationality, favoring Northern and Western Europeans while excluding Chinese, Japanese, South Asians, and people from U.S. territories such as Hawai‘i, Puerto Rico, and Alaska.

The 1965 Act replaced this quota system with two main pathways: family reunification—allowing U.S. citizens and permanent residents to sponsor relatives—and employment-based visas for those with needed skills or expertise.

The effects of the law quickly reshaped American society. From the 1970s onward, more immigrants arrived from Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Caribbean, settling in both urban and rural communities. Extended family immigration fostered new cultural traditions, while immigrant labor supported industries from manufacturing to agriculture and technology. Many local economies were revitalized, though the influx also created new pressures on housing, infrastructure, and urban planning.

Politically, the Act sparked ongoing debates about national identity, multiculturalism, border control, and race relations. The materials presented here highlight a range of perspectives that emerged as Americans were confronted by the sweeping changes set in motion by the 1965 Act.

Materials:

These materials offer a multifaceted view of the 1965 Immigration Act in relation to the symposium theme. While our focus is primarily on law and labor, we also include sources on demography, social and academic discourse, and activism. Legal materials range from statutes and judicial commentary to transcribed hearings. Read alongside census maps and surveys, they reveal how legal language shaped—and reshaped—categories of belonging and identity, as well as how new institutions worked to integrate immigrant communities, particularly outside major cities.

Labor emerges as another key thread. The 1965 Act reshaped industries from agriculture and textiles to services and technology. These shifts generated new labor markets, altered skill preferences, and fueled workers’ movements seeking rights and protections. The materials presented here document these transformations and their far-reaching effects.

The collection also highlights the role of libraries in preserving immigrant histories. For example, the Library of Congress only established the subject heading “Asian Americans” in 1986—decades after such materials were already circulating in libraries and being taught in Asian American Studies courses. This delay hindered the discovery of works reflecting pan-Asian experiences and solidarity movements. As cataloging practices have broadened, so too have imperatives to collect materials that reflect the diversity of Asian American communities, especially at regional levels. Duke University Libraries has played a central role in this effort; holdings from both general collections and the Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library represented here. With the growth of Duke’s Asian American and Diaspora Studies minor—the first of its kind in the Southeast—and with new legislation continuing to shape the lives of minority communities across the U.S., it is more urgent than ever to build collections that preserve and amplify these histories.

Credits:

This project was directly supported by the following people: Susan Thananopavarn, Kate Dickson, Heather Martin, Roger Peña, Giao Luong Baker, Kristina Zapfe, Hannah Jacobs, Mike McArthur, and Caitlin Kelly.