“We are two countries, two peoples. An older America is passing away, and a new America is coming into its own. The new Americans who grew up in the 1960s and the years since did not like the old America. They thought it a bigoted, reactionary, repressive, stodgy country. So they kicked the dust from their heels and set out to build a new America, and they have succeeded. To its acolytes the cultural revolution has been a glorious revolution. But to millions, they have replaced the good country we grew up in with a cultural wasteland and a moral sewer that are not worth living in and not worth fighting for—their country, not ours.”
― The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization“Proposing an immigration policy that serves America’s interests should not require an apology.”
― Ann Coulter, ¡Adios, America!: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World HellholeIn the turbulent mid-1960s, as the United States grappled with the aftershocks of Robert and John F. Kennedy's assassinations and the escalating civil rights movement, two towering figures—President Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) and younger brother Senator Ted Kennedy—orchestrated a legislative masterstroke that would, in retrospect, unravel the very threads of American identity. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, commonly known as the Hart-Celler Act, was sold to the public as a noble correction to outdated discriminatory policies. Yet, beneath the rhetoric of fairness and equity lay a cynical bid for electoral dominance, a pact between LBJ's ruthless pragmatism and Kennedy's ambitious ascent that flooded the nation with unprecedented waves of immigration. This reform did not merely adjust quotas; it demolished the cultural, economic, and social bulwarks that had preserved America's cohesive fabric for 189 years, prioritizing short-term votes over long-term stability.
To understand the depth of this betrayal, one must first revisit the immigration landscape they inherited. The National Origins Quota System, enshrined in the Immigration Act of 1924, was no arbitrary relic; it was a deliberate safeguard designed to maintain ethnic and cultural continuity in a nation forged by waves of predominantly European settlers. This system allocated visas based on the 1890 census, favoring immigrants from Northern and Western Europe—Scandinavians, Germans, British—while capping entries from Southern and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and beyond. Annual quotas were modest: Italians limited to about 1,000, Greeks to 300-400, Portuguese to 400-500, and Asians virtually excluded under the discriminatory Asian-Pacific Triangle provision, which allotted a mere handful of slots per nation. Proponents argued this preserved America's Anglo-Protestant core, mitigating the social frictions seen in earlier unrestricted eras, such as the labor unrest and cultural clashes of the late 19th century. Critics, including LBJ and Kennedy, decried it as racist vestige, but their push for reform was less about justice than leveraging the civil rights momentum to consolidate Democratic power. As LBJ assumed the presidency in November 1963, Teddy inherited his late brother's stalled immigration bill, a perfect vehicle for burnishing his legacy while courting new voter blocs.
On December 22, 1945, Truman issued an executive order, the "Truman Directive," prioritizing DPs for existing immigration quotas. Congress passed the The displaced persons act of 1948, but it contained discriminatory clauses, notably a cut-off date (Dec 22, 1945) that excluded most Jewish survivors who fled after the war from Poland and other areas. Truman strongly denounced the act, calling it a "pattern of discrimination and intolerance" against Jews. He fought for changes and succeeded in getting Congress to pass an amended version in 1950, removing much of the bias and allowing more Jewish refugees to enter.
Lyndon Johnson, the master wheeler-dealer from Texas, wasted no time weaponizing immigration as a political tool. In his first State of the Union address on January 8, 1964—just weeks into his tenure—he thundered for Congress to "open the door to the many" by dismantling the quota system, framing it not as policy tinkering but as an extension of the civil rights crusade. This was no coincidence; LBJ viewed immigration reform through the lens of electoral arithmetic. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 had alienated Southern whites, fracturing the Democratic coalition that had dominated since the New Deal. To offset this, Johnson needed to galvanize urban liberals, ethnic minorities, and emerging immigrant communities—groups ripe for mobilization in key swing states like New York, California, and Illinois. By tying immigration to civil rights, he positioned Democrats as the party of inclusivity, a narrative that would pay dividends in the 1964 landslide victory and beyond. In a January 1964 White House strategy session amid a blinding snowstorm, LBJ huddled with aides and congressional leaders, declaring immigration a "must" alongside public accommodations in the Civil Rights Act. He bullied committees into prioritizing hearings, ensuring the bill's momentum. This wasn't altruism; it was vote husbandry. Historical records reveal LBJ's explicit instructions to expedite the process, recognizing that a grateful influx of non-European immigrants—many predisposed to Democratic patronage—could lock in urban machines for decades.
Enter Ted Kennedy, the 32-year-old junior senator from Massachusetts, whose involvement was less about brotherly piety than raw ambition. Thrust into the Senate in 1962 after his brother's assassination elevated him from obscurity, Kennedy saw the immigration bill as his breakout role—a chance to etch his name alongside LBJ's while building a national profile. He co-sponsored the Senate version, chaired hearings, and masterminded its floor passage, marking his first major legislative triumph. Kennedy's rhetoric echoed LBJ's, lambasting the quotas as "un-American" and linking them to broader inequities, but his motivations ran deeper into political calculus. As a Kennedy scion, he inherited a family machine greased by Irish Catholic immigrants, but the old quotas had ossified inflows, limiting fresh Democratic foot soldiers. By championing reform, Kennedy aimed to turbocharge naturalization pipelines, ensuring waves of Asian, Latin American, and African newcomers—historically loyal to welfare-state parties—would swell voter rolls. In Senate debates, he invoked Emma Lazarus's poem from the Statue of Liberty, romanticizing an "open door" for the "huddled masses," yet glossed over the practical fallout. Kennedy's floor management was masterful: he parried amendments, rallied wavering colleagues, and secured a 73-74 to 18 vote in 1965, mirroring the civil rights tallies that had already polarized the nation. But this success came at a price—a Faustian bargain with demographic destiny, where short-term applause drowned out long-term alarms. Possibly resulting in southerner Jimmy Carter beating him in the race for president 1980, a brutal fight for the soul of JFK's party.
The legislative odyssey of the Hart-Celler Act underscores the duo's tactical cunning, laced with compromises that foreshadowed chaos. Introduced in the House as H.R. 2580 by Judiciary Chairman Emanuel Celler on January 15, 1965, and mirrored in the Senate by Philip Hart, the bill sailed through the lower chamber on a 318-95 vote, buoyed by LBJ's arm-twisting. Yet, the Senate proved thornier. Southern and Western conservatives, smelling the rat of unchecked Latin American inflows, stalled proceedings with demands for Western Hemisphere caps—a blind spot in the original draft. Figures like Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina railed against "open borders," warning of overwhelmed social services and cultural dilution. Kennedy and LBJ, desperate to avoid filibuster, capitulated: they grafted on a 120,000-visa annual limit for the hemisphere, plus labor certifications, placating foes while preserving the core overhaul. This concession, born of political expediency, was the act's original sin—underestimating chain migration's explosive potential. The bill, which had lapsed with the 88th Congress in 1964, roared back in the 89th, passing with bipartisan gloss despite the undercurrents of discord. On October 3, 1965, LBJ signed it at Liberty Island, flanked by Kennedy and a phalanx of dignitaries, under the shadow of the statue's torch. His pen stroke abolished national origins quotas and the Asian-Pacific Triangle, capping total visas at 290,000 annually (170,000 for Eastern Hemisphere, 120,000 for Western), with no more than 20,000 per country. Family reunification and skilled worker preferences dominated, a formula Celler himself later called a "gratuitous condescension" for its naivety.
The immediate aftermath masked the impending rupture. Proponents, including Kennedy, assured skeptics that inflows would remain stable—perhaps even decline—echoing LBJ's claim that the act would "not affect the lives of Americans." Kennedy testified before Congress: "The bill will not flood our cities with immigrants. It will not upset the ethnic mix of our society." These were bald-faced lies, rooted in electoral optimism rather than data. Policymakers, blinded by Cold War optics and the rush to virtue-signal against Soviet propaganda, ignored projections from demographers like the Migration Policy Institute's forebears, who foresaw surges from family-based petitions. Within a year, applications spiked, as U.S. relatives—already seeded by wartime and student visas—sponsored kin en masse. Annual immigration, stagnant at 250,000 under quotas, ballooned to nearly 500,000 by 1970, and over 1 million by the 1990s. Europe’s share plummeted from 70% to 20%, while Asia and Latin America dominated—China, India, Mexico leading the charge. This wasn't organic evolution; it was engineered disruption, a direct consequence of Kennedy and LBJ's vote-chasing blueprint.
“We have the most resilient economy in the world, we’re better positioned than any country in the world to lead the world in the 21st Century.” “The ‘constant, unrelenting stream’ of immigrants that has come to the United States for generations. Not dribbling, significant flows.” “China doesn’t have it, Japan doesn’t have, it most European countries don’t have it,”
― Vice President Joe Biden, during remarks to the National Association of Manufacturers 2014
The long-term devastation to America's social fabric is incalculable, a slow-motion catastrophe that Kennedy and LBJ ignited for partisan scraps. Demographically, the act remade the nation in their image: by 2020, non-Hispanic whites dipped below 60% of the population, a seismic shift from 88% in 1965. Cities like Los Angeles and New York, once ethnic mosaics of Europeans, became polyglot enclaves where English fluency waned and parallel societies sprouted—enclaves straining schools, hospitals, and welfare rolls. Economically, the influx depressed wages for low-skilled natives, fueling the Rust Belt's hollowing out as manufacturing fled to accommodate cheap labor. Socially, the "ethnic mix" Kennedy promised to preserve fractured irreparably: intergroup tensions escalated, from 1992's Los Angeles riots to today's sanctuary city standoffs, as cultural assimilation lagged behind numbers. The act's family-chain mechanism amplified this, prioritizing extended kin over merit, inverting the meritocratic ethos that built America. Politically, it was jackpot for Democrats: new citizens, often from collectivist societies, tilted red states blue—California's transformation from Reagan bastion to Pelosi fiefdom is exhibit A. LBJ's Great Society, already bloated, buckled under the load, ballooning deficits and dependency ratios. Kennedy, who chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee for decades, doubled down, blocking reforms like 1986's employer sanctions, perpetuating the flood.
Critics from the era, like Senator Robert Byrd, presciently warned of "profoundly altering the character of the nation," but were drowned out by the civil rights halo. The act's defenders hail it as a "milestone," akin to the Voting Rights Act, for upending exclusion.
Yet, this ignores the collateral: eroded trust in institutions, as borders became sieves; a welfare magnet drawing the unskilled, perverting the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free" into a voucher for entitlements; and a balkanized polity where hyphenated identities supplanted e pluribus unum. Kennedy's Chappaquiddick scandal in 1969 and LBJ's Vietnam quagmire tarnished their legacies, but immigration endures as their most insidious bequest—a vote-buying scheme that sacrificed homogeneity for hegemony.
Teddy Kennedy and LBJ's 1965 gambit was no emancipation; it was demolition. By abolishing quotas for applause and alliances, they unleashed forces that diluted America's essence, prioritizing power over posterity. The founder’s fabric they tore—woven from shared heritage, language, and opportunity—lies in tatters, a cautionary tapestry for future reformers. As the nation hurtles toward a majority-minority future, one wonders: was the electoral elixir worth the existential hangover? History, unsparing, indicts them not as liberators, but as architects of decline.
Editorial comments expressed in this column are the sole opinion of the writer.
