The passing of the nation’s 39th president has sparked numerous assessments of the Carter presidency, yet few appraisals have focused on the wide-ranging legacy that Jimmy Carter left on immigration policy and the lasting markers to address humanitarian and enforcement challenges. The Carter presidency illustrates the long history of authorities that are used today, including humanitarian parole and creation of lawful pathways to admit people in orderly ways, and the persistent roots of issues such as spontaneous migration from the Caribbean.
As the country recalls the values that informed much of Carter’s presidency, perhaps the most important was his embrace of human rights as a defining principle of public policy. He established upholding human rights as a new and enduring tenet of American foreign policy. His actions on refugee and immigration policy matters, including establishing the modern refugee resettlement system, were a manifestation of that promise, both in foreign and domestic policy realms.
Humanitarian Parole and Creation of Lawful Pathways
With the fall of Saigon that ended the war in Vietnam, the Carter administration pressed key neighboring countries in Southeast Asia—Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines—as well as Hong Kong to offer first asylum to boat people fleeing Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Securing their cooperation was premised on the promise that the United States and other Western nations would resettle the refugees if the countries permitted camps on their territories and stopped closing their land borders or pushing arriving refugee boats from their shores. The Carter administration then exercised its parole authority to admit 360,000 Laotian, Vietnamese, and Cambodian refugees.
The administration in 1979 participated in a companion measure, the Orderly Departure Program (ODP) from Vietnam. With the essential ingredient of U.S. leadership, ODP was created under the auspices of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to provide a safe and legal way for Vietnamese to immigrate to the United States and 40 other countries without risking perilous journeys at sea or on land routes through Cambodia. ODP beneficiaries were primarily relatives of Vietnamese refugees already in the United States, former U.S. government employees, Amerasians (children of American servicemen), and former political prisoners. ODP lasted into 1999 and resettled more than 506,000 Vietnamese in the United States.
Moving from Ad Hoc Solutions to a Humanitarian Protection System
These initiatives addressing the Indochina refugee crisis took place in the absence of a formalized system, forcing ad hoc solutions for this crisis and earlier ones, including the arrival of large numbers of Hungarian, Chinese, and Cuban refugees in the 1950s and ’60s.
Although asylum was among the founding principles of the United States as a country, the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), which represents the basic architecture of U.S. immigration law, did not contain refugee or asylum provisions. Most post-World War II refugees from Europe were admitted under a set of ad hoc U.S. laws in 1948 and in the 1950s as “displaced persons,” “refugees,” or “escapees,” as well as under the executive branch’s parole authority.
With passage of the 1965 Immigration Act, Congress added to the INA a provision for conditional entry of refugees. But it limited the definition to those fleeing persecution on account of race, religion, or political opinion from any “communist dominated” country or a country within the “general area of the Middle East.”
In 1968, the United States signed the 1967 U.N. Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, which incorporated the 1951 U.N. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, to which it had not been party. The Protocol expanded the refugee definition to include individuals who have a “well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.” Nonetheless, the INA did not include a conforming definition of refugee or a mandatory provision against refoulement—the pushback of a person to a place where they may face persecution or other threats.
The Refugee Act of 1980, which Carter signed into law on March 17, 1980, addressed the gap that existed between these binding international commitments and U.S. law. It was driven by the experiences of a peak period of refugee resettlement and international diplomacy surrounding refugee needs as well as the absence of a systematic approach to refugee admissions and resettlement as an element of the nation's immigration policies. The administration proposed the legislation, which was shepherded through Congress by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA), a steadfast champion of refugee and immigrant rights. With Carter’s signature, the United States finally established a politically and geographically neutral standard for granting refugee and asylum status, applicable equally, regardless of country of origin—a principle of universal human rights the president had vigorously pursued.
Rising Migration from the Caribbean
Closer to home, refugee and refugee-like flows from Cuba and Haiti arriving on the Florida shores were an additional backdrop to the Refugee Act of 1980. Cubans were paroled into the United States, whereas Haitians were placed into deportation proceedings—an outcome of the Cuban Adjustment Act, which Congress enacted in 1966 in response to the Castro takeover of Cuba in 1959. The law, which remains in place today, functionally treats Cubans as refugees, allowing them to be paroled into the United States and soon become eligible for permanent resident status (a “green card”). Cubans were, and remain, the only nationality group to which such a measure applies.
Given this flagrant disparity in treatment by nationality, Congress, with a push from the Carter administration, enacted the Cuban-Haitian Entrant Act of 1980. The law created a special immigration status called “entrant” for Cubans and Haitians who during a limited time period between April-June 1980 had been paroled into the United States, had an asylum application pending, or were in deportation proceedings. About 150,000 entrants were eligible to adjust to permanent residence. And the law provided for federal reimbursement to states for services provided to entrants—a precursor to many immigration programs since.
However, this solution came about only on the heels of the arrival of 125,000 Cuban migrants fleeing repression in what came to be called the Mariel boatlift in spring 1980. At its outset, Carter famously declared “we will continue to provide an open heart and open arms.” Coming during an election year defined by the Iranian hostage crisis, this message contributed to an image of weakness in the face of foreign challenges. The politics were not unlike those of the Biden presidency, where border challenges have eclipsed significant accomplishments in rebuilding and re-engineering the immigration system.
Mariel foreshadowed present-day dilemmas in another way. The Refugee Act of 1980 represented an historic achievement that continues to serve the United States well in responding to overseas refugee resettlement imperatives. At the same time, it did not foresee nor adequately address today’s reality: asylum-seeking at U.S. borders that has overtaken overseas refugee resettlement.
The Start of Significant Unauthorized Migration and Dawn of a Balanced Policy Solution
Alongside this humanitarian reality, Carter took office as the now decades-long controversy surrounding illegal immigration began brewing. Numerical limits on immigration from Western Hemisphere countries and the end of the Bracero program in the mid-1960s led to a surge in the size of the unauthorized population, from 44,000 in 1964 to 870,000 in 1976 and 1 million by 1977. The public outcry for controlling unauthorized immigration was reflected in Congress, in both the Democratic and Republican parties.
With the growing importance of the immigration issue, Carter appointed Leonel Castillo, a well-known local public official and activist, as commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS)—the first Hispanic appointed to that position and among the first in a senior administration role overall. Early on, Carter sent a bill to Congress that called for sanctions on employers who hired unauthorized immigrants and an amnesty granting permanent residence to unauthorized immigrants living in the United States prior to 1970. With opposition both from the agricultural lobby and Hispanic civil-rights groups, the bill died without a single Senate hearing.
Recognizing the no-win politics of the issue, Kennedy and other congressional leaders, including Rep. Peter Rodino (D-NJ), with Carter’s support pressed Congress to establish a Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy (SCIRP). Lawmakers did so in 1978, giving the commission a broad mandate to study and make recommendations on immigration policy.
Unlike panels where controversial policy ideas are often sent to die, this commission proved its worth. To chair it, Carter appointed Father Theodore “Ted” Hesburgh, a respected cleric, civil-rights leader, and Notre Dame University president. The commission included Cabinet officials, congressional representatives, and public members including Hispanic, Asian and labor voices. The commission held public hearings across the country, consulted with experts and constituency groups, commissioned numerous scholarly research publications, and produced dozens of policy proposals. Its rigor and seriousness stand as a gold standard of consultative and deliberative processes for gathering knowledge and building consensus.
The commission’s final report was presented in early 1981, shortly after Carter left office. Two commission members, Sen. Alan Simpson (R-WY) and Rep. Romano Mazzoli (D-KY), championed its work in three successive Congresses as the blueprint for legislation. Their bipartisan leadership led to the passage and signing by President Ronald Reagan of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). As one of the most consequential pieces of immigration legislation in recent history—for the first time recognizing the need to holistically address the existing unauthorized population and immigration enforcement—its origins are a further lasting contribution of the Carter legacy.
Immigration issues that loom large today have deep roots that date at least as far back as the Carter years. The values, leadership, and scope of solutions that Carter demonstrated constitute a legacy of enduring imprints and insights that remain relevant for immigration policymaking going forward.
Doris Meissner served as deputy associate attorney general with responsibility for immigration matters at the Department of Justice during the Carter presidency.
Jimmy Carter and Immigration: A Wide-Ranging Legacy That Remains Relevant Today
The passing of the nation’s 39th president has sparked numerous assessments of the Carter presidency, yet few appraisals have focused on the wide-ranging legacy that Jimmy Carter left on immigration policy and the lasting markers to address humanitarian and enforcement challenges. The Carter presidency illustrates the long history of authorities that are used today, including humanitarian parole and creation of lawful pathways to admit people in orderly ways, and the persistent roots of issues such as spontaneous migration from the Caribbean.
As the country recalls the values that informed much of Carter’s presidency, perhaps the most important was his embrace of human rights as a defining principle of public policy. He established upholding human rights as a new and enduring tenet of American foreign policy. His actions on refugee and immigration policy matters, including establishing the modern refugee resettlement system, were a manifestation of that promise, both in foreign and domestic policy realms.
Humanitarian Parole and Creation of Lawful Pathways
With the fall of Saigon that ended the war in Vietnam, the Carter administration pressed key neighboring countries in Southeast Asia—Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines—as well as Hong Kong to offer first asylum to boat people fleeing Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Securing their cooperation was premised on the promise that the United States and other Western nations would resettle the refugees if the countries permitted camps on their territories and stopped closing their land borders or pushing arriving refugee boats from their shores. The Carter administration then exercised its parole authority to admit 360,000 Laotian, Vietnamese, and Cambodian refugees.
The administration in 1979 participated in a companion measure, the Orderly Departure Program (ODP) from Vietnam. With the essential ingredient of U.S. leadership, ODP was created under the auspices of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to provide a safe and legal way for Vietnamese to immigrate to the United States and 40 other countries without risking perilous journeys at sea or on land routes through Cambodia. ODP beneficiaries were primarily relatives of Vietnamese refugees already in the United States, former U.S. government employees, Amerasians (children of American servicemen), and former political prisoners. ODP lasted into 1999 and resettled more than 506,000 Vietnamese in the United States.
Moving from Ad Hoc Solutions to a Humanitarian Protection System
These initiatives addressing the Indochina refugee crisis took place in the absence of a formalized system, forcing ad hoc solutions for this crisis and earlier ones, including the arrival of large numbers of Hungarian, Chinese, and Cuban refugees in the 1950s and ’60s.
Although asylum was among the founding principles of the United States as a country, the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), which represents the basic architecture of U.S. immigration law, did not contain refugee or asylum provisions. Most post-World War II refugees from Europe were admitted under a set of ad hoc U.S. laws in 1948 and in the 1950s as “displaced persons,” “refugees,” or “escapees,” as well as under the executive branch’s parole authority.
With passage of the 1965 Immigration Act, Congress added to the INA a provision for conditional entry of refugees. But it limited the definition to those fleeing persecution on account of race, religion, or political opinion from any “communist dominated” country or a country within the “general area of the Middle East.”
In 1968, the United States signed the 1967 U.N. Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, which incorporated the 1951 U.N. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, to which it had not been party. The Protocol expanded the refugee definition to include individuals who have a “well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.” Nonetheless, the INA did not include a conforming definition of refugee or a mandatory provision against refoulement—the pushback of a person to a place where they may face persecution or other threats.
The Refugee Act of 1980, which Carter signed into law on March 17, 1980, addressed the gap that existed between these binding international commitments and U.S. law. It was driven by the experiences of a peak period of refugee resettlement and international diplomacy surrounding refugee needs as well as the absence of a systematic approach to refugee admissions and resettlement as an element of the nation's immigration policies. The administration proposed the legislation, which was shepherded through Congress by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA), a steadfast champion of refugee and immigrant rights. With Carter’s signature, the United States finally established a politically and geographically neutral standard for granting refugee and asylum status, applicable equally, regardless of country of origin—a principle of universal human rights the president had vigorously pursued.
Rising Migration from the Caribbean
Closer to home, refugee and refugee-like flows from Cuba and Haiti arriving on the Florida shores were an additional backdrop to the Refugee Act of 1980. Cubans were paroled into the United States, whereas Haitians were placed into deportation proceedings—an outcome of the Cuban Adjustment Act, which Congress enacted in 1966 in response to the Castro takeover of Cuba in 1959. The law, which remains in place today, functionally treats Cubans as refugees, allowing them to be paroled into the United States and soon become eligible for permanent resident status (a “green card”). Cubans were, and remain, the only nationality group to which such a measure applies.
Given this flagrant disparity in treatment by nationality, Congress, with a push from the Carter administration, enacted the Cuban-Haitian Entrant Act of 1980. The law created a special immigration status called “entrant” for Cubans and Haitians who during a limited time period between April-June 1980 had been paroled into the United States, had an asylum application pending, or were in deportation proceedings. About 150,000 entrants were eligible to adjust to permanent residence. And the law provided for federal reimbursement to states for services provided to entrants—a precursor to many immigration programs since.
However, this solution came about only on the heels of the arrival of 125,000 Cuban migrants fleeing repression in what came to be called the Mariel boatlift in spring 1980. At its outset, Carter famously declared “we will continue to provide an open heart and open arms.” Coming during an election year defined by the Iranian hostage crisis, this message contributed to an image of weakness in the face of foreign challenges. The politics were not unlike those of the Biden presidency, where border challenges have eclipsed significant accomplishments in rebuilding and re-engineering the immigration system.
Mariel foreshadowed present-day dilemmas in another way. The Refugee Act of 1980 represented an historic achievement that continues to serve the United States well in responding to overseas refugee resettlement imperatives. At the same time, it did not foresee nor adequately address today’s reality: asylum-seeking at U.S. borders that has overtaken overseas refugee resettlement.
The Start of Significant Unauthorized Migration and Dawn of a Balanced Policy Solution
Alongside this humanitarian reality, Carter took office as the now decades-long controversy surrounding illegal immigration began brewing. Numerical limits on immigration from Western Hemisphere countries and the end of the Bracero program in the mid-1960s led to a surge in the size of the unauthorized population, from 44,000 in 1964 to 870,000 in 1976 and 1 million by 1977. The public outcry for controlling unauthorized immigration was reflected in Congress, in both the Democratic and Republican parties.
With the growing importance of the immigration issue, Carter appointed Leonel Castillo, a well-known local public official and activist, as commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS)—the first Hispanic appointed to that position and among the first in a senior administration role overall. Early on, Carter sent a bill to Congress that called for sanctions on employers who hired unauthorized immigrants and an amnesty granting permanent residence to unauthorized immigrants living in the United States prior to 1970. With opposition both from the agricultural lobby and Hispanic civil-rights groups, the bill died without a single Senate hearing.
Recognizing the no-win politics of the issue, Kennedy and other congressional leaders, including Rep. Peter Rodino (D-NJ), with Carter’s support pressed Congress to establish a Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy (SCIRP). Lawmakers did so in 1978, giving the commission a broad mandate to study and make recommendations on immigration policy.
Unlike panels where controversial policy ideas are often sent to die, this commission proved its worth. To chair it, Carter appointed Father Theodore “Ted” Hesburgh, a respected cleric, civil-rights leader, and Notre Dame University president. The commission included Cabinet officials, congressional representatives, and public members including Hispanic, Asian and labor voices. The commission held public hearings across the country, consulted with experts and constituency groups, commissioned numerous scholarly research publications, and produced dozens of policy proposals. Its rigor and seriousness stand as a gold standard of consultative and deliberative processes for gathering knowledge and building consensus.
The commission’s final report was presented in early 1981, shortly after Carter left office. Two commission members, Sen. Alan Simpson (R-WY) and Rep. Romano Mazzoli (D-KY), championed its work in three successive Congresses as the blueprint for legislation. Their bipartisan leadership led to the passage and signing by President Ronald Reagan of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). As one of the most consequential pieces of immigration legislation in recent history—for the first time recognizing the need to holistically address the existing unauthorized population and immigration enforcement—its origins are a further lasting contribution of the Carter legacy.
Immigration issues that loom large today have deep roots that date at least as far back as the Carter years. The values, leadership, and scope of solutions that Carter demonstrated constitute a legacy of enduring imprints and insights that remain relevant for immigration policymaking going forward.
Doris Meissner served as deputy associate attorney general with responsibility for immigration matters at the Department of Justice during the Carter presidency.