Immigration
Kennedy's most important effort in overhauling the immigration system came in the form of the Immigration Act of 1965, which ended the widely criticized practice of basing selection for citizenship on the person's country of origin. He continued to work with U.S. Immigration and Citizenship Services and the FBI to eliminate backlogs in the program. In addition, he supported aid for immigrant children, especially those with limited-English proficiency in elementary and secondary education. To further his goals, he worked to pass the 1968 Bilingual Education Act to provide the students with the equal opportunity to succeed in school. In recent years Kennedy had less luck on the immigration front; he worked across the aisle to try to pass comprehensive reform that would create a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants, but strong anti-reform sentiment from conservatives who dubbed it an amnesty bill helped sink the effort.