Heritage Foundation Author of Report Suggesting (Erroneously) That Cost of Immigration Reform Would be $6 Trillion over the Next 50 Years Quits

A Bigoted Author of Prejudicial Research

This Forum has refrained from commenting on the anti-immigrant Heritage Foundation’s report that between now and 2063 the immigration reform laws being considered in the Senate would cost $6+ trillion because this Forum does not review fiction.   The report is phony. 

How can this Forum say that without having examined the report?  Simple, no report, no projection, no analysis of what will happen financially over the next 50 years from a piece of legislation can be correct.  There are simply too many variables, too many unknowns and too much variation to reach any conclusion.  A report that says the impact might be between a plus $120 trillion and a minus $125 trillion might be valid, but meaningless. 

Now it turns out that one of the authors of the report has resigned from the Heritage Foundation.  Here’s why.

Mr. Richwine was also the co-author of a Heritage Foundation study that criticized legislation in the Senate to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws, citing high economic costs. The analysis found that the legislation would cost taxpayers roughly $6.3 trillion over the next 50 years.

But reports this week about the content of Mr. Richwine’s 2009 doctorate dissertation, in which he said the lower I.Q.’s of immigrants should be considered when crafting public policy, set off a furor, with some immigration advocates decrying his writing as racist.

So what’s the surprise here?  It’s not that the Heritage Foundation employed an openly prejudiced person to do research.  That is to be expected, the surprise would be if the Heritage Foundation employed actual competent and objective researchers.  No the question here, how did this dissertation get past a dissertation committee and at what school did this happen. We don’t think there is a University of the KKK, but we could be wrong.

Well further research has revealed that the dissertation was for a Ph. D. at Harvard.  Ok, that’s not the University of the KKK, but given the adventures of Harvard people like Niall Ferguson, Ted Cruz and the flaws in the research of Reinhart and Rogoff maybe it is time to start referring to Harvard as the University of Hooterville.

Want to read some racist propaganda disguised as academic quality work, here it is.

Richwine’s doctoral dissertation is titled “IQ and Immigration Policy”; the contents are well summarized in the dissertation abstract:

The statistical construct known as IQ can reliably estimate general mental ability, or intelligence. The average IQ of immigrants in the United States is substantially lower than that of the white native population, and the difference is likely to persist over several generations. The consequences are a lack of socioeconomic assimilation among low-IQ immigrant groups, more underclass behavior, less social trust, and an increase in the proportion of unskilled workers in the American labor market. Selecting high-IQ immigrants would ameliorate these problems in the U.S., while at the same time benefiting smart potential immigrants who lack educational access in their home countries.

And yes, he is referring to the Hispanic community.  

Richwine’s dissertation asserts that there are deep-set differentials in intelligence between races. While it’s clear he thinks it is partly due to genetics — “the totality of the evidence suggests a genetic component to group differences in IQ” — he argues the most important thing is that the differences in group IQs are persistent, for whatever reason. He writes, “No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against.”

Actually what is difficult to argue against is that Mr. and Mrs. Richwine have a low IQ son.