a
reference to the number of Hungarian refugees allowed to enter the United
States in a
given year. The US
government, each year, permits a certain number of refugees and immigrants to enter the country. In the mid-1950s, 37,000 Hungarian refugees fled to the United
States,
following a revolution in
Hungary. At that
time, the US
government had assigned immigrant quotas by nationality. In the mid- 1960s,
laws changed and quotas were no longer based on nationality, but were split up into quotas for people from the Western and
Eastern Hemisphere. In 1978 this changed again and was no longer split at all, but rather was a
single quota for the total number of immigrants entering the US, from anywhere in the
world.