Pew has an interesting report showing again why limiting immigration is one of the most important preconditions for restraining government. The survey focused on religion among people of Asian descent in the U.S., both immigrant and native. While I find that sort of thing fascinating (did you know that 22 percent of Chinese in the U.S. are Protestant?), the policy implications come from a section on social and political attitudes. Asian Americans identified or leaned Democrat 52–32 (as opposed to 49–45 nationally) and skewed liberal vs. conservative 31–24 (as opposed to 34–24 in favor of conservatives for the public as a whole). They favored bigger government by 55–36 (public: smaller government 48–41) and were more likely to say they voted for Obama than the general public (though the results for the general public don’t match the actual electoral results). As for the fairy tale of immigrants being natural social conservatives, the respondents were indeed (slightly) less likely to accept homosexuality than the general public but were slightly more likely to support abortion; but in neither case was there much difference.
As the report summarizes, “Asian Americans, as a whole, are more politically liberal than the general public and tilt more toward the Democratic party than toward the Republican party.” This isn’t a sin, certainly, nor is it reason for the GOP not to reach out and get as many votes from Asian Americans as possible, and it has a shot at getting a fair number of those votes. But ongoing mass immigration inevitably moves the body politic to the left. The left openly rejoices at how the federal immigration program promotes its political goals; conservatives had also better start looking at the same question. Because if mass immigration continues, the Republican party will be forced to return to the Rockefellerite, me-too stance of decades past, dooming the cause of limited government and social traditionalism.