What Do Vietnamese Pho, Afrobeat, and STEM Startups Have in Common? 1965. The Year a Quiet Law Made America Loud, Colorful, and Global

 Let’s talk about something that changed your life—and you probably didn’t even know it.

In 1965, Congress passed a law. It wasn’t flashy. No parades. No fireworks. Just paperwork, tucked into the fabric of American bureaucracy like thousands of other policies. It was called the Immigration and Nationality Act.

Sounds dull, right?

Except it completely rewired the demographics of the United States—and by extension, your neighborhood, your favorite food, the music on your playlist, the faces in your classroom, and maybe even the job you’ll have one day.

Before that law, immigration to the U.S. was based on quotas. Not skill, not family ties. Quotas. And those quotas? They were designed in the 1920s to keep the country white. To favor Northern and Western Europeans—Britain, Germany, Scandinavia—and keep out everyone else. Southern Italians? Jews? Too ethnic. Japanese? Chinese? Nope. Africa? Forget it.

But the world had changed. It was the 1960s. The Civil Rights movement was reshaping domestic policy. The Cold War meant America was trying to show the world it wasn’t racist—especially in front of newly independent African and Asian nations. And on top of that? U.S. industry needed skilled labor. The baby boomers were growing up. Labor markets were shifting. Globalization was just beginning to buzz in the background.

So the 1965 Act tossed the quotas and said, “Let’s base immigration on family ties and job skills.” Sounds fairer. And it was. But no one—no one—predicted what came next.

Suddenly, immigrants started coming from places they’d been locked out of for decades: India. Korea. Nigeria. China. El Salvador. Vietnam. Iran. The Philippines.

And they didn’t just come—they changed everything.

You want to talk unintended consequences?

• That pho place you love? That’s a direct result of the U.S. accepting Vietnamese refugees after the war—because the 1965 law made it possible.

• Your doctor? Quite possibly born in India or Nigeria.

• Your favorite math teacher? Could be from Taiwan.

• The kid who co-founded your favorite startup? Their parents came here in the '70s because their uncle sponsored them—family reunification, straight out of the '65 act.

• The engineer who helped build the phone in your pocket? A product of Silicon Valley’s immigrant workforce boom that wouldn’t have happened without that shift in law.

And by the 1990s? The face of America was entirely different. Today, over 85% of immigrants to the U.S. come from outside Europe. That wasn’t true before 1965. Not even close.

So if you’ve ever wondered why America feels more global, more mixed, more layered than the black-and-white photos in your history books—well, now you know. It started with a single piece of legislation.

And here’s the twist: no one really meant for it to happen this way. The people who passed the law said, “Don’t worry, it won’t change the country’s makeup.” They were wrong. Completely, gloriously wrong.

This wasn’t just an immigration policy. It was the fuse. And what followed was an explosion of culture, innovation, and complexity—like it always is, when people from all over the world are suddenly allowed to bring their stories to the same place.

And that place… is now your world.