As I’ve been doing research on Edward Kennedy, I’ve discovered that he was one of the driving forces around the Immigration Act of 1965. What this act did was remove the racial quotas that privileged immigration from European countries over other (i.e. brown) countries.

It abolished the national origins system set up in the Immigration Act of 1924 and modified by the Immigration Act of 1952. While seeming to maintain the principle of numerical restriction, it so increased the categories of persons who could enter “without numerical limitation” as to make its putative numerical caps—170,000 annually for the Eastern Hemisphere with a maximum of 20,000 per nation plus 120,000 annually for the Western Hemisphere with no national limitations—virtually meaningless within a few years.

It was pretty difficult to find even this fairly simple explanation of the act on the internet–for some reason, there is website after website of nativist rhetoric explaining exactly how this legislation was one of the worst pieces of legislation ever created in all of history.

Whatever could the reason for these websites be?

Let’s be perfectly clear what this bill did. It made it so that quotas that preferenced European immigration over immigration from other countries were removed. It made it so that immigrants from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Arab countries could compete on fair footing with immigrants from “desirable” white countries.

Hm. Why, oh, why, are so many nativists boo hooing over 45-year-old legislation?

What’s more important to notice about this legislation than how much nativists hate it, is how it points the very basic inequality of the immigration system.

How many times have nativists and politicians and organizations said “Go to the back of the line, wait your turn, otherwise it’s not fair or equal!” And yet, the need for this particular piece of legislation demonstrates that immigration to the U.S. was utilized as a way to increase an influx of “desirable” immigrants during a time when the Indian wars (which questioned the legitimacy of U.S. expansionism) had only just ended and squatting and homesteading was still an essential part of U.S. control and dominance of Native lands. In other words, the U.S. still needed that unending demand for land by naive and idealistic European immigrants to “prove” the inherent right the U.S. had to lands that didn’t belong to it.

Or, immigration was desirable in so far as it reinforced and advanced white supremacy.

But even as the Immigration Act was so important in creating a more just an equal type of immigration, you can see the remnants of white supremacy all over immigration policies still today. A major example sits with how few immigrants from Iraq and Afghanistan have been permitted into the U.S., even as the U.S. makes their countries unsafe and inhospitable in many areas.

Another example lies in noticing which ethnic groups are most likely to be detained and deported. It’s no small coincidence that the huge illegal Irish populations in the Northern New England area have remained largely unaffected by increased ICE raids and racial profiling, even as indigenous Latin@ and Arab/Persian/Muslim populations have had to just get used to increased surveillance.

To scream about how immigrants should stand in line and wait in order to assure fairness and equality for all involved assumes that the immigration system does not have a historical need to support white supremacy at it’s basic foundation. And although various acts like the Immigration Act of 1965 have helped to bring about a more fair type of immigration system, how on earth can it be expected that a system that was created to support and supplement a violent and corrupt nation/state would suddenly “play fair” simply because new laws were put in place?

Supporting white supremacy is still the core reasoning behind immigration structures in the U.S.–and the only people who seem to understand that any more are the hardline nativists and right wing fundementalists that weep over the day this legislation came about.