Immigration Reform During The Mid-Twentieth Century

During the mid-twentieth century, America saw the development of ethnic diversity and cultural pluralism as a replacement for Americanization and anti-immigrant sentiments. In the last chapter of her book, Mae Ngai traces pluralism from its progressive origins through the immigration reform of 1965.1 There was a short period after WWII when the U.S. seemed to open it’s doors to the rest of the world, however the Cold War reversed this sentiment. According Ngai, at this point, pluralism became a political rather than a cultural phenomenon, and the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 was a device against communism, which consolidated anti-immigration, more than it was an immigration reform.2 The Cold War brought to light, the hegemonic attitude of the