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Oh god I hope this lie is part of an attempt to get right-wingers on board with a “let’s roll immigration policy back to what we had in 1950!” push.

I hope this because it’d be hilarious if they got what they wanted and realized that meant actual open borders with most or all of the Americas.

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Before Hart-Cellar we had national origin quotas, it wasn't a free-for-all.

For those outside the Americas, yes. Western hemisphere immigration had no meaningful restrictions until 1965.

We had little meaningful immigration pressure from the america at the time. The foreign born population dropped from 15% in 1921 to under 5% by 1970.

We’re backing away from:

> The U.S. had a draconian restrictive immigration policy from 1921-1965.

to “well ok not really but it didn’t matter”?

It did matter. It was restrictive in actual effect, in that it blocked immigration from the places it was mainly coming from, and dropped the foreign born population under 5% by 1970.

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