How Johnson’s ‘Great Society’ boosted #Silicon_Valley
FT.com 11/02/14
▻http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/0b30c256-901d-11e3-aee9-00144feab7de.html
When the Hart-Cellar Act [1965] was debated in Congress, politicians treated it simply as a logical extension of civil rights legislation. They expected little demographic change, with most additional migration coming from Italy, which had a backlog of 250,000 visa applications. Dean Rusk, then secretary of state, estimated 8,000 Indians would enter in the next five years. The number turned out to be 27,859. Arrivals from Europe were soon dwarfed by those from Latin America and Asia. Today the nation has 18m US and foreign-born Asian-Americans, including 4m Chinese-Americans and 3m Indian-Americans.
The act started a demographic revolution that intensified with further liberalisation of immigration laws. Until the 20th century, immigration comprised overwhelmingly North Europeans, along with enslaved Africans. But after Hart-Cellar, non-whites and Hispanics soon began to dominate immigration. The outcome is that the historically dominant white, non-Hispanic majority in the US will become a minority by 2040. This has already happened in California.