Immigration Reform Act of 1965

This sixteenth day of Filipino American History Month brings information on the Immigration Reform Act of 1965, which relaxed immigration quotas and allowed family reunification and large numbers of Filipino professionals to migrate to the United States of America.

The passage of the 1965 immigration act by the U.S. Congress triggered the “third wave” of immigration, which brought the largest number of Filipino immigrants to the United States of America. The act abolished the discriminatory national origins quota system that had unfairly restricted the entrance of non-Western European immigrants to the U.S. since 1924.

The Philippines thus experienced a "brain drain" phenomenon with the migration of highly skilled physicians, teachers, seamen, mechanics, engineers, and others from the country. In the 1980s, the exodus of those in the medical profession continued although mid-level professionals like nurses, medical technicians as well as paramedics increasingly dominated the flows. In the 1990s, advances in information technology triggered new waves of skilled labor migration consisting of engineers, computer programmers, designers, and allied skills workers. The primary reason Filipino workers leave their country is that the Philippines is not able to absorb their skills into their own local economy.

In U.S. hospitals today, nursing is no longer exclusively practiced by white and black women in white uniforms. Between 1965 and 1988, more than seventy thousand foreign nurses entered the United States, the majority coming from Asia….Philippines is by far the leading supplier of nurses to the United States [at least 25,000 Filipino nurses migrated to the U.S. between 1966 and 1985]…. Filipino nurses provide a critical source of labor for large metropolitan and public hospitals primarily in the states of New York, New Jersey, California, Texas, Florida, and Massachusetts. In New York City, Filipinos comprise 18 percent of RN (registered nurse) staff in the city’s hospitals. Filipino nurses are also geographically clustered in Mid-western urban areas, in particular Chicago.

The most significant features of the 1965 act was the establishment of a preference system designed to facilitate the reunification of immigrant families and the admission of workers with skills needed in the United States.