June 27th marks the 52nd anniversary of the controversial 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), also known as the McCarran-Walter Act. {1}
The historical legacy of the Act is overwhelmingly negative, but also somewhat contradictory. The Act is justly vilified for creating a rigid immigration quota system based on national origins and racial categories. Yet, the Act also repealed the blanket exclusion laws against the immigration and naturalization of Asians, although it established only token quotas for Asian immigration and was clearly biased towards Europeans. While the national origins quota system was dismantled in 1965, other provisions of the Act – such as the creation of family and employment-based preference categories – remain an integral part of U.S. immigration law to this day. The Act also redefined the ideological grounds for the exclusion and deportation of immigrants. Most of these provisions were formally repealed by Congress in 1990, but many were resurrected by the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001.

more