Tom Gjelten, writing for NPR in 2015 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Immigration and Nationality Act (the 60th anniversary of which is just two months away):

During the debate over the bill, however, conservatives said it was entirely appropriate to select immigrants on the basis of their national origin. The United States, they argued, was fundamentally an Anglo-Saxon European nation and should stay that way.

Sen. Sam Ervin (D-N.C.) said he objected to the idea of giving people from Ethiopia the same right to immigrate to the United States as people from England, France, Germany, or Holland. “With all due respect to Ethiopia,” Ervin said, “I don’t know of any contributions that Ethiopia has made to the making of America.”

Ohio Representative Michael Feighan, another Democrat, also objected to the Act, and offered a remedy:

Rather than giving preference to those immigrants whose skills were “especially advantageous” to the United States, Feighan insisted on prioritizing those immigrants who already had relatives in the United States, with a new preference category for adult brothers and sisters of naturalized U.S. citizens.

In justifying the change, Feighan told his conservative allies that a family unification preference would favor those nationalities already represented in the U.S. population, meaning Europeans. Among the conservative groups persuaded by Feighan’s argument was the American Legion, which came out in support of the immigration reform after originally opposing it.

In an article praising Feighan’s legislative prowess, two Legion representatives said he had “devised a naturally operating national-origin system.” A family unification preference, they argued, would preserve America’s European character.

“Nobody is quite so apt to be of the same national origins of our present citizens as are members of their immediate families,” they wrote. […]

But the scheme backfired.

I came across this article today while preparing for Karen Attiah’s latest Resistance Summer School session.

Built on a racist premise, the “unintended consequences” of the Immigration and Nationality Act brought to America an unprecedented number of brown-skinned immigrants—including my mom, and by extension, me. Republicans (and “conservative” Democrats) have been striving to reverse this legislative “mistake” ever since.

I have little doubt the passage of this bill, and the resulting surge of non-white Americans, is a central facet of the far right’s Great Replacement Theory, this president’s hateful anti-immigration rhetoric, and Monday’s unprecedented takeover of the D.C. police and National Guard deployment.

America’s been fighting its base anti-immigration sentiment since its inception, and we now have a president enthusiastic to magnify, not minimize, our country’s worst tendencies.