Professor Chin Discusses Immigration and Nationality Act on C-SPAN

Professor Gabriel "Jack" Chin appeared on the C-SPAN program "American History TV", speaking on the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.  Chin's talk was part of a two-day symposium hosted by the U.S. Capitol Historical Society titled "Congress and a Nation of Immigrants, 1790-1990: From the First Naturalization Act to the Simpson-Mazzoli Act" held May 5-6 in Washington, D.C. 

Chin called the Act "the most effective civil rights legislation since Reconstruction" on the basis of its having realized the goal of bringing race neutrality to immigration more effectively than the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or Voting Rights Act of 1965 achieved their respective goals.  Although diversification of the immigrant stream has often been viewed as an unintended or even unwelcome consequence of the Act, Chin cited evidence that Congress intended to eliminate racial considerations from immigration law and understood that this would result in increased numbers of non-white immigrants.

Gabriel "Jack" Chin, Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Law at King Hall, is a prolific and much-cited criminal and immigration law scholar whose work has addressed many of the most pressing social issues of our time.