Amy Wax on Limiting Asian Immigration

U Penn law professor Amy Wax has tenure, survived previous woke cancelation attempts, and is at retirement age anyway, so she is one of the last Americans who can speak her mind. Here is her email opinion, on the site of a non-woke Black professor:

I have great respect for George Lee and his efforts to preserve the admissions requirements for exam high schools in New York City, and I have joined him in this cause. But I think he is too optimistic about the influence of Asians and Asian immigrants on our polity and culture. Although Lee is right that Asians vary in their political views, as do all groups, the important and often overlooked question is “how many?” Enoch Powell asked that question about third-world immigration to Britain decades ago and was excoriated and ostracized for it, but the importance and wisdom of the question prove themselves over and over.

Numbers matter, a lot! In the case of Asians in the U.S., the overwhelming majority vote Democratic. In my opinion, the Democratic Party is a pernicious influence and force in our country today. It advocates for “wokeness,” demands equal outcomes despite clear individual and group differences in talent, ability, and drive, mindlessly valorizes blacks (the group most responsible for anti-Asian violence) regardless of behavior or self-inflicted wounds, sneers at traditional family forms, undermines and disparages the advantages of personal responsibility, hard work, and accountability, and attacks the meritocracy.

I confess I find Asian support for these policies mystifying, as I fail to see how they are in Asians’ interest. We can speculate (and, yes, generalize) about Asians’ desire to please the elite, single-minded focus on self-advancement, conformity and obsequiousness, lack of deep post-Enlightenment conviction, timidity toward centralized authority (however unreasoned), indifference to liberty, lack of thoughtful and audacious individualism, and excessive tolerance for bossy, mindless social engineering, etc.

Maybe it’s just that Democrats love open borders, and Asians want more Asians here. Perhaps they (and especially their distaff element) are just mesmerized by the feel-good cult of “diversity.” I don’t know the answer. But as long as most Asians support Democrats and help to advance their positions, I think the United States is better off with fewer Asians and less Asian immigration. There needs to be more focus on people who are already here, and especially the core (and neglected) “legacy” population, and a push to return to traditional concepts and institutions and Charles Murray’s “American Creed.”

Wow, this is both innocuous and offensive at the same time.

Razib is an Asian who objects to her lumping all Asians together. Some Asians vote Republican, he says.

The explanation could be simpler. Maybe most Asians do not pay much attention to politics. Someone explained to them that USA has a White and an anti-White party, so they just vote with the anti-White party.

We could import 100 million Asians a year, if we wanted to. Or we could take zero. It is all a matter of policy, as carried out by elected official. By some measures Asian immigrants are the best, but there are still good reasons not to take them.

Update: Wax's dean is out to get her:

Professor Amy Wax has repeatedly made derogatory public statements about the characteristics, attitudes, and abilities of a majority of those who study, teach, and work here. ...

The complaints assert that it is impossible for students to take classes from her without a reasonable belief that they are being treated with discriminatory animus.

These are absurd. If students have such prejudiced beliefs, it is their problem.