A co-author of the Heritage Foundation’s new immigration report, which right-wing media have hyped despite even conservative criticism about its methodology, has long promoted inflammatory theories about the relationship between race and IQ in Hispanic immigrants, an unsurprising fact given his ties to extremist anti-immigrant organizations.
Dylan Matthews of The Washington Post‘s Wonkblog reported that Jason Richwine, a co-author of the Heritage report, asserts in his 2009 doctoral dissertation titled “IQ and Immigration Policy” that “there are deep-set differentials in intelligence between races.”
That’s right: according to Mr. Richwine, “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.” For good measure, Richwine adds, “the totality of the evidence suggests a genetic component to group differences in IQ.” Of course, this is overwhelmingly a bunch of pseudo-scientific drivel (hard to say if the guy’s a racist, but it sure doesn’t give me a warm and fuzzy feeling…).
Other than that, of course, the Heritage Foundation report has been blasted for being “so flawed that one cannot take their report’s conclusions seriously,” also “depressingly static, leading to a massive underestimation of the economic benefits of immigration and diminishing estimated tax revenue.” Now, add to that, “depressingly co-authored by someone who believes that some races are inherently smarter than others.” Again, it’s not surprising coming from a “think tank” headed by right-wing nutjob Jim DeMint, and funded by the usual assortment of far-far-right-wing billionaires (including the Koch brothers, the Scaife Foundation, etc.). Still, it’s horrifying to see something like this in 2013 America…decades past when this king of crap was considered in any way acceptable.
P.S. By the way, guess who’s a HUGE hero of the Heritage Foundation? That’s right: our own Ken Cuccinelli, who addressed this fine organization in December 2010 and also in November 2012. I wonder what Cuccinelli thinks of the Heritage Foundation’s immigration study, and specifically the views of its coauthor on Hispanics.
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