A New America

• Pose the following warm-up question to students: Do you think restrictions on immigration shape how Americans think about citizenship and belonging? Explain.
   
• Ask students to share in a small group first, then as a whole group. Students can use Single-Round-Robin as a small group discussion structure.
   
• After students share in a small group setting, ask students to share with the whole group.

• Explain that the approaches communities had in support and/or opposition to, were based on their specific experiences with the legal system.
   
• Explain that in this lesson they will learn about the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (the Hart-Celler Act). Ask students to recall what other historic legislation was passed by Congress around that same time. Show images of President Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law.
   
• Facilitate a brief discussion, asking students:
  • What was happening with race relations in America during the 1960s?
  • How were Americans’ ideas about citizenship and belonging changing?
  • How might the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 have influenced public opinion and political will on the topic of immigration?
  • Show images of President Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Immigration Act of 1965 on Liberty Island.
     
• Have students complete the Photo Analysis Worksheet (HANDOUT A), probing them to think about the setting in particular. Why did Johnson choose New York City rather than Washington, D.C., or San Francisco for the ceremony?

Just as the editorial cartoons examined in lesson one reflect a period of anti-Chinese sentiment in the 1800s, cartoons from 1965 provide historical context for understanding how immigration policy changed during the civil rights era.

• Have students use the Cartoon Analysis worksheet, to interpret what the following cartoons say about changing attitudes toward immigration in the 1960s: “You Can Go Back to Wherever You Came From” and “Speaking of National Origins.”
   
• Close by having students jot down predictions of how Hart-Celler will be different than the existing immigration law at that time.

Explain that the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (The Hart-Celler Act) replaced the national origins system with a more inclusive policy and formed the basis of our current immigration laws.

• Assign students to read “Introduction: The Hart-Celler Immigration Act of 1965” (reading 2). When done reading, have them “turn-and-talk” with a partner about the questions in the “Think About…” box at the bottom of the reading.
   
• Then, have students work independently to write a “single sentence summary” on the back of the reading comparing the main difference in immigration law before and after the Hart-Celler Act was passed.
   
• Next, have students read the text of the Hart-Celler Immigration Act of 1965 or selected excerpts (reading 3), focusing on what is said in sections 1-3 of the law. d. After reading, students should be able to list key provisions of Hart-Celler:
  • Abolished the national origins quota system (originally established in 1921 and modified in 1952).
  • Allocated 170,000 visas to countries in the Eastern Hemisphere and 120,000 to countries in the Western Hemisphere. This was the first time any numerical limitation had been placed on immigration from the Western Hemisphere. This increased the annual ceiling on immigrants from 150,000 to 290,000.
  • Non-quota immigrants and immediate relatives (i.e., spouses, minor children, and parents of U.S. citizens over the age of 21) were not to be counted as part of either the hemispheric or country ceiling.
  • Gave higher preference to the relatives of American citizens and permanent resident aliens than to applicants with special job skills.

Close by having students write a one-paragraph response, comparing the Hart-Celler Act to the national origins system it replaced in terms of the essential question, “How do our immigration laws reflect or contradict American values and liberal traditions?”

Use Mix-Pair-Share to refresh and review the previous lesson. Suggested question include:

• What was the national origins system?
   
• Who signed the Hart-Cellar Act?
   
• What is the name of one of the two acts LBJ signed before the Hart-Cellar Act?

• Explain that the approaches communities had in support and/or opposition to, were based on their specific experiences with the legal system.
   
• Explain that the Hart-Celler Act did not pass without controversy. The legislation sparked intense debate, both in the political realm and in popular opinion.
   
• Provide students with primary source documents related to the debate, including the “A Special Message to Congress” (reading 4) and newspaper articles from 1964-1965 (reading 5).
   
• Assign students to complete the What Side of History? worksheet, identifying what position each speaker takes on the question of immigration reform. Do they support or oppose Hart-Celler? What arguments or reasons do they put forth to defend their position? Students must use evidence from the texts.
   
• Debrief the readings and worksheet. Take notes on the board as students share their responses. Help students identify distinctions between arguments and how people can arrive at the same position but for different reasons.

• In this final part of the lesson, draw students’ attention to the fact that the Hart-Cellar Act represented a radical break from previous immigration policy. People did not realize what a profound effect its passing would have on the country’s demographic changes. The prevailing focus at the time—during the height of the civil rights movement and amid the Cold War—was on the democratic principles of freedom and equality. The racialized nature of the national origins system had become an increasing source of embarrassment and hypocrisy for the United States, which wanted to be seen as the leader of democracies around the world. Perhaps nowhere is this predictive failure more apparent than in the words of President Lyndon B. Johnson himself, who in his remarks (reading 6) at the bill’s signing in 1965 said: "The bill that we sign today is not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions. It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives, or really add importantly to either our wealth or our power.”
   
• Have students read an excerpted portion or the full text of President Johnson's “Remarks at the Signing of the Immigration Bill, October 3, 1965.”
   
• Once they have completed the reading, return students’ attention to the part of Johnson’s remarks that begins with, “"The bill that we sign today is not a revolutionary bill…” President Johnson’s prediction was clearly very wrong. Today, the United States has more immigrants than any other country in the world. According to the Pew Research Center, more than 40 million people living in the United States were born in another country, making up about one-fifth of the world’s migrant population in 2015. The American immigrant population is also very diverse, representing almost every country in the world.

• Tell students to imagine that they can communicate with the past and have been tasked with writing a letter to President Johnson about current day immigration trends and issues that answers the question: What should Americans in 1965 know about immigration in America five decades into the future? This letter should inform the way the president and congressional leaders think about Hart-Celler by providing them with hindsight.
   
• Have students conduct research and include a minimum of three pieces of evidence in their letters, citing at least one source from list A and one source from list B.
   
  • List A
    • “Fifty Years On, the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act Continues to Reshape the United States”
    • “The Contradictory Legacy of the 1965 Immigration Act”
    • “1965 Immigration Law Changed the Face of America”
       
  • List B
    • Statistical Portrait of the Foreign-Born Population in the United States
    • “Key findings about U.S. immigrants”

Allow students time to research and write their letters.