3-23-26

Democrats passed the Hart-Celler Act in 1965 and promised it would change nothing.

They were lying – or they had no idea what they were doing.

Either way, sixty years later, a congressman from Tennessee just introduced the bill to finally fix it.

How the 1965 Immigration Act Created Chain Migration

Rep. Andy Ogles of the House Freedom Caucus dropped legislation this week that would rip out the foundation of America's broken immigration system – the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, known as the Hart-Celler Act.

The bill would end chain migration, scrap the diversity visa lottery, and replace the entire family-reunification racket with a merit-based system built around one standard: "All immigration to the United States shall serve the economic, cultural, and security interests of the United States.”

That's it.

That's the whole concept.

The idea that America gets to decide who enters based on what's good for America is apparently so radical that it took sixty years to put it in writing.

Here's what Hart-Celler actually did.

When LBJ signed it at the base of the Statue of Liberty in 1965, he told the country it was "not a revolutionary bill" that would not "reshape the structure of our daily lives."

Attorney General Robert Kennedy – the man in charge of enforcing immigration law – told Congress that immigration from Asia would amount to about 5,000 people in the first year. His exact prediction: "after which immigration from that source would virtually disappear."

Within a decade, more than 70,000 Asian medical doctors alone had emigrated to the United States.

What Kennedy and Johnson missed was the mechanics of what family reunification actually creates. One green card holder sponsors relatives. Those relatives become citizens and sponsor more relatives.

The chain compounds with every new arrival – an average of two additional people entering the country for every single green card granted.

That is not an immigration system. That is a multiplication table.

Andy Ogles Wants to End the Diversity Visa Lottery and Chain Migration

Ogles has laid out what sixty years of Hart-Celler actually produced.

Since 1965, he says, roughly 60 million migrants have entered this country – approximately 90 percent from third-world countries.

The diversity visa lottery that Ogles' bill would eliminate hands out 55,000 immigrant visas annually at random to people from countries with otherwise low migration to the United States.

Fifty-five thousand visas.

By lottery.

Based on where someone was born.

No skill test. No background check of substance. No determination of what the applicant can contribute.

Ogles' bill replaces that with something unfamiliar to Washington: standards.

Prospective immigrants with gang affiliations would be ineligible – even without a conviction.

Prior arrests for domestic violence or driving under the influence would trigger disqualification.

Tax delinquency, visa overstays, misuse of public benefits – any of these could disqualify an applicant under the expanded "good moral character" requirements.

Mandatory vetting would include enhanced background checks, social media review, and in-person interviews.

Canada and Australia moved to merit-based immigration decades ago.=

Canada launched its points-based system in 1967 – two years after Hart-Celler passed.

Australia followed.

Trump noted the gap plainly: under those systems, roughly 60 to 70 percent of immigrants are selected based on economic contribution.

In the United States, that number has been sitting at 12 percent.

America has been running the least selective legal immigration system among the developed democracies we're constantly told to emulate – and it wasn't an accident.

Democrats Created This Legal Immigration Crisis and They Know It

Hart-Celler was a Kennedy-Johnson project.

Democrats built it.

Democrats defended it for sixty years.

And now that the consequences are undeniable – the chain migration feedback loop, the diversity lottery as a national security vulnerability, the systematic preference for whoever arrived last over what the country actually needs – Democrats will fight to preserve every inch of it.

Because the system Hart-Celler created isn't a bug in the Democratic coalition.

It is the strategy.

Historian Roger Daniels, hardly a conservative, wrote it plainly: "Had Congress fully understood its consequences, it almost certainly would not have passed."

Congress didn't understand it.

But Democrats understood it once they saw what it produced – and they've protected it ever since.

Ogles' bill will be screamed at as racist.

Every Republican who votes for it will be called every name in the book.

And none of those attacks will address the actual argument: that America has the right to decide who comes here, on terms that benefit Americans.