U.S. minorities on pace to be majority in months, not decades

[kwassa]

7. It's all LBJ's fault. The change in immigration law.

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (Pub.L. 89–236, 79 Stat. 911, enacted June 30, 1968), also known as the Hart–Celler Act,[1] abolished the National Origins Formula that had been in place in the United States since the Emergency Quota Act. It was proposed by Representative Emanuel Celler of New York, co-sponsored by Senator Philip Hart of Michigan, and promoted by Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts.

The Hart-Celler Act abolished the national origins quota system that was American immigration policy since the 1920s, replacing it with a preference system that focused on immigrants' skills and family relationships with citizens or U.S. residents. Numerical restrictions on visas were set at 170,000 per year, with a per-country-of-origin quota, not including immediate relatives of U.S. citizens, nor "special immigrants" (including those born in "independent" nations in the Western Hemisphere, former citizens, ministers, and employees of the U.S. government abroad).[1]

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The 1965 act marked a radical break from the immigration policies of the past. The law as it stood then excluded Asians and Africans and preferred northern and western Europeans over southern and eastern ones.[2] At the height of the civil rights movement of the 1960s the law was seen as an embarrassment by, among others, President John F. Kennedy, who called the then-quota-system "nearly intolerable".[3] After Kennedy's assassination, President Lyndon Johnson signed the bill at the foot of the Statue of Liberty as a symbolic gesture.

In order to convince the American people of the legislation's merits, its proponents assured that passage would not influence America's culture significantly. President Johnson called the bill "not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions",[4] while Secretary of State Dean Rusk estimated only a few thousand Indian immigrants over the next five years, and other politicians, including Senator Ted Kennedy, hastened to reassure the populace that the demographic mix would not be affected; these assertions would later prove grossly inaccurate.[5][

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Act_of_1965