Exchange with Amy Wax on Immigration

And a forthcoming debate on Indians in America

I debated Jared Taylor on diversity versus white identity on Friday. You can watch the whole thing here. I think Jared stuck to his normal talking points about his preferences and whites needing to act more like people from cultures that have failed, but didn’t really answer many of my points directly. Nonetheless, I like that Jared just admits that it’s all about race and he doesn’t care about what happens to American living standards, unlike others who use terrible economic arguments that they wouldn’t expect people to find compelling when applied to any other issue.

In the midst of the controversy over H1B visas, I began a correspondence with Amy Wax on the topic of high-skilled immigration. I eventually came to think that it would be useful to share the whole thing with subscribers and she agreed, so you can find the exchange below.

Because there was a lot of interest in the Jared livestream, Amy and I have decided to do one this Monday at 5:30 ET. Join us on the Substack app. I’ll probably post the whole thing on X within a day afterwards. (UPDATE: Watch or listen here.)

Talking to Amy helped me clarify some of my thoughts. The most important point to stress from my perspective is that the costs of restricting high-skilled immigration are absolutely massive. You may worry about cultural change or other things, but a single Jensen Huang or Elon Musk can carry a lot of dead weight. As of October, Nvidia’s market cap was around $3.5 trillion. By way of comparison, all US spending on federal welfare programs was $1.2 trillion in 2022. Nothing in Huang’s family background indicates that they would have been let into the country under a system that only sought proven geniuses, as some restrictionists say they favor. If one wants to take all the human and physical capital assets of some of the most successful companies in the US and toss them into the ocean, they need to have an incredibly compelling reason. You can decide whether Amy’s arguments meet that standard.

Few high-skilled immigrants are Huang or Musk. But those who are not household names still make massive contributions to the country. This just adds to the case, independent of the need to let in people who might wind up as famous innovators or CEOs.

Another thing I realized during this conversation is that the ways in which restrictionists think about culture is somewhat odd. They have failed to notice what’s right under their nose, which is that people who come here from all over the world are assimilating just fine. One part of the conversation with Jared I found particularly interesting was when he said that he would bet that second or third generation non-white Americans mostly cheer for their countries of origin in the Olympics. I haven’t seen data on this, but I seriously doubt it! I’ve been on college campuses with a lot of Asians, and they’re more likely to wear USA gear than shirts with pictures of Xi Jinping. I honestly think Jared is like a lot of racialists, and conservatives more generally, in that he spends too much time paying attention to doom porn about how America is disintegrating. It could be an age thing. I think most young white people do not consider native born Americans of non-European origins to be in any way fundamentally alien. In fact, most certainly feel more affinity towards Asians and Hispanics in their areas than whites in a dissimilar part of the country, and this is especially true for those who are politically active when they think of the other tribe.

Amy at some point talks about the Jewish love for free speech, which is odd given the group’s massive overrepresentation in communism both at home and abroad throughout the twentieth century. I think smart people in particular are more malleable in their thinking than other groups, so what the descendants of high-skilled immigrants will end up believing in future generations will depend on what the intellectual currents are when they come of age, similar to how Jews have been everything from Marxists to Austrian economists and everything in between.

There are differences in propensities towards certain ideas and outlooks, but she’s way too deterministic about these things. Looking back, I probably should’ve brought up MAGA and how support for Trump demonstrates white people’s incredible love of civility, liberalism, and democratic institutions.

Another idea that just came to me is that when we debate high-skilled immigration, it’s a mistake to compare populations in their entirety. If America lets in Indians with an average IQ of 115, then the question isn’t whether Indians as a whole can assimilate into liberal values. It’s whether the top 10% or so of Indians can. Given that high and more liberal views are positively correlated all over the world, it would be shocking if this wasn’t the case. It’s one thing to say whites have the right norms and values to maintain Western civilization more than Indians do. It’s another to claim that whites with an average IQ of 100 compare favorably on this measure to Indians with an IQ of 115. Again, this really underestimates the degree to which Elite Human Capital is ideologically malleable.

I’m in favor of low-skilled immigration too. But I think on this topic there are somewhat reasonable arguments in opposition. Lately, I’ve been focusing on high-skilled immigration because this is one of the most important issues to get right for humanity. I see the restrictionist position as a reductio ad absurdum of collectivist thinking. Few things are a bigger threat to American culture.

Below is the exchange, which has been lightly edited for spelling, grammar, and clarity.

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Richard Hanania:

Hey Amy, check this out. Conservatives hate merit and markets now.

Amy Wax:

Thanks for sending this tweet thread.

To me, this debate shows that, although merit in the sense of ability/IQ matching people to jobs and roles is VERY important in advanced nations like ours and that there are certain forms of ‘identity politics’ that are toxic (the DIE kind), others are constructive and necessary to healthy national cohesion – eg, our identity as a nation of citizens to whom we have obligations, and the preservation of our European institutions, origins, culture.

This has long been my position and this debate has certainly helped clarify it. I understand that it is not yours, but once again I think you have a (partial) blind spot about cultural difference, the West and the rest. Hordes of non-western newcomers WILL change us, and I don’t think it will be for the better.

It doesn’t help to say that people like me “hate merit.” That’s just a caricature – it’s not accurate. Also, it is extremely destructive and doesn’t advance the debate to hurl around accusations of racism, xenophobia, and “white identity politics” anytime anyone talks about cultural difference (which is REAL! – once again, you see that when talking about the Arab world), cultural preservation, and our European origins. See eg recent post on The Free Press by Joe Nocera. I wish you would acknowledge a more nuanced position – such as mine. I am very far from a “MAGA-nut.” You know that. But I certainly do see the restrictionists’ point.

Best and Happy New Year to you and yours.

Richard Hanania:

“Hordes of non-western newcomers WILL change us, and I don’t think it will be for the better.”