"As historian Otis Graham has written, the law of unintended consequences “was about to produce a major case study.” Under the new system, the total numbers of immigrants would triple to one million annually and the source countries of immigration would radically shift from Europe to the third world — two consequences that supporters of the 1965 reform bill guaranteed would never happen."
"When Times news coverage did get into technical details of the reform bill at all, it ignored the reform’s “hidden mathematics.” Uncritically relaying unfounded forecasts and glib assurances in the service of wishful thinking, it overlooked the elephant in the next room — i.e., massive potential third-world influxes. “The bill would greatly increase immigration from such nations as Poland, Greece, Italy and Portugal,” one particularly incurious Times report maintained, failing to even mention India, China, Africa and Latin America, where populations were rapidly expanding."
"Years later, surveying the impact of the legislation, journalist Theodore White said the 1965 reforms were “noble, revolutionary and one of the most thoughtless of the many acts of the Great Society.” If that is the case, The Times bears a good share of the responsibility for bringing us to a demographic milestone Americans were promised they would never see."
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