The Case Against Legal, Skilled Immigration, By James Reed

The blogger Arctotherium, writing for the critical journal for thinkers, Aporia magazine.com, sets out the case against legal, skilled immigration. This is the stuff that the intellectually dull Trump wants, and is the standard fodder of the establishments across the West. It is the religion of the New Class in Australia. There is always a shortage of skills in Australia, even though the list of such skills has included in the past, dog handlers and yoga instructors, things that can and should be available from locals here. It was always a way of getting the Third World Great White Replacement into the country. And as well, bringing in the skilled professional class is just a way of replacing the local professional class, which is what is being done right now with mass Asian immigration, but remains unspoken. The following comments made about America, are applicable to Australia, particularly given the influence of the Chinese population in defeating the previous federal Liberal government due to its criticisms of China:

"Asian-Americans are an extremely left-wing group, so much so that despite their economic success, Asians are much more pro-government-intervention than whites, and are closer to blacks or Hispanics (who have much more to gain from redistribution).¹⁰ For instance, a supermajority of Asians (66%) believe that the government should do more to solve problems, compared to only 44% of whites. Similarly, a supermajority (70%) of Asians say government regulation is necessary to protect the public interest, compared to only 53% of whites.

And when asked explicitly, Asians are much more pro-socialist. 49% have a positive impression of socialism, compared to only 31% of whites.

Boosters of Asian immigration might note that Asians are still slightly more supportive of capitalism than socialism, but what matters is the difference from the status quo. The balance of power among the American elite determines the current equilibrium between a market economy and state intervention. Mass immigration of an elite group 20+ points more favorable to state intervention than the people with whom they are competing will shift things in an interventionist direction. The tech-right is rightfully concerned with creeping regulationism and socialism. They should take heed."

Australians too should take heed.

https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/increasing-skilled-immigration-is

"When asked, 71% of Trump supporters want to increase high-skilled immigration to the United States. This isn't a priority for most of Trump's coalition, but one wealthy and disproportionately influential faction has consistently and publicly advocated for increasing high-skilled immigration, to the point that Trump himself has endorsed giving green cards to all foreign students. This faction is the libertarian-adjacent tech-right, whose support for Trump is motivated by concerns about regulations, freedom of speech and averting California-style political dysfunction in the rest of the country. They are making a fatal mistake.

Elon Musk is the highest-profile member of the tech-right. I would identify Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, Vivek Ramaswamy, David Sacks, Mike Solana, and even heterodox right-leaning intellectuals like Crémieux and Samuel Hammond as members as well. This is not a comprehensive list.

The case for high-skilled immigration is simple. National IQ is the best predictor of economic growth and development, explaining roughly 70% of the variance in GDP per capita by itself.¹ Combine this with the allocative benefits underlying mainstream economists' support for immigration² and the innovative benefits of getting more smart people into cognitive clusters like San Francisco, and the argument for admitting high-skilled immigration is strong. But it is wrong. Skilled immigrants are not just labor and innovation machines. They, and their children, are influential political and cultural actors whose effect in those domains is to undermine the things that make America exceptional.

The tech-right appreciates some of America's virtues, particularly our economic dynamism and freedom of speech, often contrasting the United States favorably with the rest of the Anglosphere or with Europe. They are right to do so: America is exceptional.

Economics

National IQ may explain most of the variance in wealth between countries (with a history of Communism and large resource endowments accounting for most of the remainder), but the relationship breaks down at the high end. Among rich countries without large resource rents or a history of Communism, the United States stands out as being much wealthier than IQ alone would predict. Meanwhile, the non-US Anglosphere (United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada) underperforms, being poorer than both the United States and north west Europe. The gap between the Anglosphere and the United States is even starker if you look at productivity rather than GDP per capita.³

East Asia is Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore. Anglo is the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Europe is those countries used by Anatoly Karlin in his 2015 analysis of this phenomenon minus the UK (moved to Anglo because of Brexit), Israel (not European) and Ireland (which has since become a tax haven). These countries are chosen because their wealth is not grossly inflated by tax havens/tourism/resource rents and they don't have a history of Communism. Chart is mine, data sources are here, here, and here. See also the analogous charts for productivity and the country level charts.

The comparison with the non-US Anglosphere is particularly instructive because these countries are very similar to the United States culturally, genetically and institutionally. Britain, Australia, and Canada have all grown more slowly than the United States since the 2008 financial crisis.

And all three have embraced a policy of enormous amounts (far more, per capita, than the United States) of skilled, legal immigration, particularly from China and South Asia. All three have seen relatively stagnant personal incomes, and skyrocketing housing prices. One might object on the grounds that immigration to Canada, Australia, and Britain isn't really skilled, but this is what "skilled immigration" looks like when refracted through government bureaucracies. We should treat these countries as a cautionary tale; we could very easily end up in their shoes.

Freedom of speech

American speech is the freest in the world, a fact recognized by much of the tech-right. A comparison to our Anglosphere cousins is instructive. The United States is not jailing tens of thousands of people or sending police door-to-door for political speech as the United Kingdom is. We are not calling on speech to be regulated as a weapon of war, as the former Prime Minister of New Zealand did in 2023. We do not have Canada's hate speech laws⁴ or widespread government subsidies of pro-government media outlets. American scientists are not prohibited by the government from communicating their results to the public, as in Australia. We can be proud of our strongly pro-free speech legal environment.

But we can't rest easy. America's free speech maximalism comes from Supreme Court decisions based on the First Amendment. And the Constitution does not enforce itself.⁵ The Soviet Union infamously had constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech; without a strong pro-free speech elite culture the letter of the law is meaningless. All it takes is the wrong judicial appointment from a pro-censorship Democratic Party and it could be removed. And when the bureaucracy and tech company workers are in alignment, the government can and has worked with those companies to censor without tripping legal safeguards. It's no surprise that, despite the First Amendment, nearly half of Americans do not feel free to speak our minds. Maintaining American freedom of speech requires that tech workers, judges, lawyers and bureaucrats broadly support it. If the composition of those groups changes dramatically, support could evaporate. Right now, the United States has one of the most pro-freedom-of-speech populations in the world.⁶ But change Americans and you will change America.

Disaggregating "skilled immigrants"

Just as "immigrants" can be usefully decomposed into skilled and unskilled, "skilled immigrants" conceals an important divide. Using innovation as a proxy for skill, we can reasonably divide skilled immigration to the United States into two groups: white and Asian.⁷ Excluding the "other" category for lack of information, we can estimate that European immigrants make up 12% of US immigrants, but 39% of US immigrant innovators. Meanwhile, Asian immigrants make up 31% of non-other US immigrants and 56% of non-other US immigrant innovators. Combined, these two groups make up 43% of non-other US immigration and 95% of non-other US immigrant innovators. Skilled immigration from elsewhere is a rounding error.

Note that "Other" innovators are going to be very disproportionately white (Canadian, Australian, or Israeli). Other Latin America will be disproportionately white too. But I lack the information to properly account for this. Source.

Of the two groups, Europeans are more likely to be innovators. They are 8.2 times more represented among innovators than among the US population, versus 4.5 times for Asians. Yet both groups are very overrepresented among inventors and account for a sizeable chunk of American innovation. This makes sense; immigration from both places is highly selective.⁸ With that said, there's significant regression to the mean. Among the US-born, Asians are actually underrepresented among innovators, while white, native-born Americans are almost exactly in line with the national average.

As a rule, European immigrants are more accomplished than their Asian counterparts, as are their kids, though both groups make significant contributions.⁹ However, neither skilled immigrants nor their children confine themselves to laboratories. They become professors, activists, lawyers, judges, politicians, bureaucrats and journalists. In other words, they get involved in politics. Unlike economics or innovation, which is positive-sum, politics is zero-sum. More influence for group A means less for group not-A. And unless stopped, an Asian elite will undermine what makes America exceptional. Let's consider the politics of Asian-Americans.

Economics

Asian-Americans are an extremely left-wing group, so much so that despite their economic success, Asians are much more pro-government-intervention than whites, and are closer to blacks or Hispanics (who have much more to gain from redistribution).¹⁰ For instance, a supermajority of Asians (66%) believe that the government should do more to solve problems, compared to only 44% of whites. Similarly, a supermajority (70%) of Asians say government regulation is necessary to protect the public interest, compared to only 53% of whites.

And when asked explicitly, Asians are much more pro-socialist. 49% have a positive impression of socialism, compared to only 31% of whites.

Boosters of Asian immigration might note that Asians are still slightly more supportive of capitalism than socialism, but what matters is the difference from the status quo. The balance of power among the American elite determines the current equilibrium between a market economy and state intervention. Mass immigration of an elite group 20+ points more favorable to state intervention than the people with whom they are competing will shift things in an interventionist direction. The tech-right is rightfully concerned with creeping regulationism and socialism. They should take heed.

Freedom of speech

Americans, as a group, are very pro-freedom-of-speech by world standards. But there is considerable variation among ethnicities. Descendants of northwest Europeans are, broadly speaking, the most pro-freedom-of-speech, while Asian groups are much less so.

important if we increase skilled immigration), is in the bottom left. China, Japan, and "other Asian" are all below and to the left of the big northwest European cluster. Source.

The tech-right is rightfully dismissive of "misinformation studies" for being an exercise in the redefinition of truth along partisan lines. But not everyone shares their views. When asked about protecting press freedom vs curbing false information, Asians are 12 points more likely than whites to favor censorship.

It's impossible to know for sure, but given this difference, there is probably a connection between increased Asian dominance of tech companies and the shift we have seen from a broadly libertarian ethos of freedom-of-speech to one more favourable to censorship.

Affirmative action

The tech-right rightfully despises Affirmative Action/DEI as an anti-meritocratic, institution-wrecking racial spoils system. It may surprise those familiar with the case of Students for Fair Admissions versus Harvard to know that Asians support Affirmative Action by large margins.

Asians support Affirmative Action. This is consistent across multiple polls and methodologies. Whites are the only racial group not to support it. Source.

The resolution to this seeming contradiction is that Asians oppose Affirmative Action in college admissions, where it hurts them, but support it in other areas, like government or corporate hiring and promotion and above all taxpayer-subsidized low-interest Small Business Administration loans, where it benefits them. There is no universal principle involved. (A tech company founded in Indian and headquartered in the US was recently found guilty of discriminating against non-Indians.)

Views on America

We only have one America. If you value America's unique freedom and economic and technological development and dynamism, the wellbeing of the country is paramount. There is no second America to flee to. Hence the American elite must be patriotic, must acknowledge America's virtues, seek to maintain and improve them, and have a stake in the country.¹¹

As it happens, Asians feel the least positive about America of any racial group. Asians are least likely to believe that America is better than most other countries, to feel proud or grateful to be American, to feel that life in the United States is better than in the rest of the world, or to feel attached to the United States. I initially found this counterintuitive, since Asian-Americans are majority foreign-born, and so personally moved to America because it was better than their home country. But it's true. For engineers, workers and scientists, this is fine. However, it's not the profile of a group you want running your institutions.

Change over time

This might be acceptable if it were a transient phase that faded as Asians accustomed themselves to the United States. Unfortunately, the reverse is true. Asian-Americans appear to de-assimilate over time. Or rather, Asians assimilate to the leftist, anti-American norms¹² of Asian-Americans.¹³

Conclusion

"The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils."
—Enoch Powell

Skilled immigrants and their children will, through participation in the political process, form a disproportionately influential elite.¹⁴ In the current system, skilled immigrants are majority Asian, and if the results of similar experiments in the rest of the Anglosphere are any guide, additional skilled immigrants will be even more Asian. Compared to whites, Asians are more pro-regulation, pro-socialism, pro-Affirmative Action, and less pro-freedom of speech. The predictable effect of ramping up skilled immigration will therefore be to shift the US elite, and thus the country, even more in the direction of regulationism, DEI and censorship.

You can have capitalism, meritocracy, freedom-of-speech and patriotism, or you can have enormous amounts of legal, skilled immigration. But you cannot have both, not under an immigration system remotely similar to the existing one.¹⁵ To support increasing skilled immigration while viewing leftism as a civilization-wrecking scourge, as Elon Musk and many others in the tech-right do, is shooting yourself in the foot.¹⁶ Rather than lobby to expand skilled immigration, the tech-right should either join immigration restrictionists, or work to create a different skilled immigration system that does not lead to a dramatic shift in the composition of American elites.¹⁷