Disgraced Co-author of Heritage Foundation Immigration study resigns.

[SanJoaquinSooner]

Co-author of immigration study resigns from Heritage Foundation

By David Nakamura,May 10, 2013


The co-author of a disputed immigration study by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, resigned Friday after questions were raised about racially charged conclusions made in his previous work.

The departure of Jason Richwine, who joined the organization in 2010, came as Heritage sought to move past a barrage of criticism from liberals and conservatives alike over the methodology used in its report that pegged the cost of legalizing 11 million undocumented immigrants at $6.3 trillion.

Heritage spent months preparing for its rollout of the report, which it hoped would reset the immigration debate in Washington and provide a splashy introduction for its new president, Jim DeMint, a former Republican senator from South Carolina.

[FaninAma]

Do you think adding 11 to 33 million new citizens who are under-educated and poorly marketable in the labor force is a great way to improve our economy?

I'll go for immigration reform as soon as they lock down the borders.

[olevetonahill]

Now the Ball is back in Okies court.:sneakiness:

[okie52]

As the articles that I posted by the "American Thinker" point out, these guys are full of sheet.

But they say that with all due respect.

[KantoSooner]

Yeah, I dunno, the idea of every last Messican coming North semed a bit over the top at the time.

[okie52]

Well you didn't read the fine print... according the pro amnesty groups it was 30,000,000 Mexican scientists that were going to add mightily to our GDP and reduce our deficit.

[KantoSooner]

So, guesses as to Richwine's next stop. Heritage is kind of at the top of the heap. He'll no doubt surface with another sinecure somewhere. Still issuing printed babble, still looking like Jim on 'Taxi', still clouding the issues of the day withi numbers that could not in any universe be correct.
How did DeMint let this thing be published? I might not agree with him on a given issue, but damnit, he's more skilled than that.

[okie52]

Please explain your differences with the Heritage report.

[pphilfran]

Do you think adding 11 to 33 million new citizens who are under-educated and poorly marketable in the labor force is a great way to improve our economy?

I'll go for immigration reform as soon as they lock down the borders.

Business would love it...millions of unskilled laborers fighting over a limited amount of jobs...business would never need to give a raise...

[FaninAma]

Yeah, I dunno, the idea of every last Messican coming North semed a bit over the top at the time.
Kanto, I'm not understanding this statement. The population of Mexico is what....about 120 million? It would be very conceivable that there are more than 11 million illegal immigrants in this country. In fact I would be suprised if the number isn't higher.

Again, secure the border and then lets talk about amnesty. It's hard to assimilate a large group of immigrants if you don't stabilize the influx.

[okie52]

Business would love it...millions of unskilled laborers fighting over a limited amount of jobs...business would never need to give a raise...

With the taxpayer picking up the tab for all of their benefits in the future.

[okie52]

Kanto, I'm not understanding this statement. The population of Mexico is what....about 120 million? It would be very conceivable that there are more than 11 million illegal immigrants in this country. In fact I would be suprised if the number isn't higher.

Again, secure the border and then lets talk about amnesty. It's hard to assimilate a large group of immigrants if you don't stabilize the influx.

I believe Kanto is confusing the Heritage Report with the statement by Senator Sessions that 33,000,000 will eventually become citizens through family reunification and another 25,000,000 will immigrate as guest workers through the guest worker program created by the bill. From what I've seen the Heritage report has only used 11,000,000 illegals in its study.

I don't know about the guest worker program or the 25,000,000 number used by Sessions but the 30,000,000 amount Sessions used regarding family reunification is a reality and it will certainly happen if this bill is approved.

As it stands now the US is granting 1,000,000 immigrants per year citizenship. Of those, 75% are family reunification.

[okie52]

Here is why Richwine resigned:


Heritage study co-author opposed letting in immigrants with low IQs
By Dylan Matthews, Published: May 8, 2013 at 9:00 amE-mail the writer


The Heritage Foundation made something of a splash with its study suggesting that immigration reform will cost the public trillions. Past work by one of its co-authors helps put that piece in context.

Jason Richwine is relatively new to the think tank world. He received his PhD in public policy from Harvard in 2009, and joined Heritage after a brief stay at the American Enterprise Institute. 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.

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.”

Toward the end of the thesis, Richwine writes that though he believes racial differences in IQ to be real and persistent, one need not agree with that to accept his case for basing immigration on IQ. Rather than excluding what he judges to be low-IQ races, we can just test each individual’s IQ and exclude those with low scores. “I believe there is a strong case for IQ selection,” he writes, “since it is theoretically a win-win for the U.S. and potential immigrants.” He does caution against referring to it as IQ-based selection, saying that using the term “skill-based” would “blunt the negative reaction.”

That rhetorical strategy is reflected in Heritage’s current work on immigration. His and Rector’s report recommends greatly reducing “low-skilled” immigration and increasing “high-skilled” immigration. “The legal immigration system should be altered to greatly reduce the number of low-skill immigrants entering the country and increase the number of new entrants with high levels of education and skills that are in demand by U.S. firms,” they write.

Richwine also invoked skill considerations in arguing against the “diversity visa” program. “A better mix of selection factors would give more emphasis to skill-based immigration, but the diversity lottery involves no selection at all. It does not make the workforce more skilled, reunite families, or further any humanitarian goals,” he writes. On this point, he’s in tune with the rest of Heritage, which has consistently supported expanding high-skilled immigration and limiting low-skilled immigration.

Update: Mike Gonzalez, VP for Communications at Heritage, emails: “This is not a work product of The Heritage Foundation. Its findings in no way reflect the positions of The Heritage Foundation. Nor do the findings affect the conclusions of our study on the cost of amnesty to the U.S. taxpayer.”

Imagine somebody being so heartless as to not want to let stupid people immigrate to the US.

[okie52]

In Defense of Jason Richwine
His resignation is emblematic of a corruption that has spread throughout American intellectual discourse.
By Charles Murray

Charles Murray

On Monday, May 6, Robert Rector and Jason Richwine of the Heritage Foundation published a study of the fiscal effects of immigration amnesty, arguing that the costs would amount to $6.3 trillion. Controversy greeted the report, but of the normal kind, with critics making specific allegations that the costs were calculated using unrealistic assumptions.

On Wednesday, the Washington Post revealed that Richwine’s 2009 Ph.D. dissertation at Harvard’s Kennedy School had said that, on average, Latinos have lower IQs than do non-Latino white Americans and the nation should consider incorporating IQ into immigration decisions. The blogosphere and some elements of the mainstream media erupted in denunciations.

On Friday, the Heritage Foundation announced that Richwine had resigned.

I have a personal interest in this story because Jason Richwine was awarded a fellowship from my employer, the American Enterprise Institute, in 2008–09, and I reviewed the draft of his dissertation. A rereading of the dissertation last weekend confirmed my recollection that Richwine had meticulously assembled and analyzed the test-score data, which showed exactly what he said they showed: mean IQ-score differences between Latinos and non-Latino whites, found consistently across many datasets and across time after taking factors such as language proficiency and cultural bias into account. I had disagreements then and now about his policy recommendations, but not about the empirical accuracy of his research or the scholarly integrity of the interpretations with which I disagreed.

In resigning, Dr. Richwine joins distinguished company. The most famous biologist in the world, James D. Watson, was forced to retire from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 2007 because of a factually accurate remark to a British journalist about low IQ scores among African blacks. In 2006, Larry Summers, president of Harvard, had to resign after a series of attacks that began with his empirically well-informed remarks about gender differences. These are just the most visible examples of a corruption that has spread throughout American intellectual discourse: If you take certain positions, you will be cast into outer darkness. Whether your statements are empirically accurate is irrelevant.

In academia, only the tenured can safely write on these topics. Assistant professors know that their chances of getting tenure will be close to zero if they publish politically incorrect findings on climate change, homosexuality, race differences, gender differences, or renewable energy. Their chances will not be much higher if they have published anything with a distinctly conservative perspective of any sort. To borrow George Orwell’s word, they will have proved themselves to be guilty of crimethink.

Everybody who does research in the social sciences or biology is aware how treacherous the environment has become, and so scholars take defensive measures. They bury important findings in obscurely worded technical articles lest they be discovered by reporters and lead to disastrous publicity. A few years ago, a brilliant young evolutionary geneticist publicly announced he would not pursue his work on the evolution of brain size after his preliminary results were attacked as crimethink. Others have deliberately refrained from discussing race or gender differences in works that ordinarily would have called for treating those topics. When I chided the author of a successful book for avoiding some obvious issues involving race, he quite rightly replied that if he had included anything about race, everything else in the book would have been ignored.

These examples are only the visible tip of a much broader problem of self-censorship in the questions that scholars are willing to ask. I am not referring just to scholars who might otherwise engage the taboo topics directly. We can have no idea of the full extent to which important avenues of inquiry in economics, sociology, genetics, and neuroscience that indirectly touch on the taboo topics are also self-censored by scholars who fear becoming pariahs.

But let’s not pretend that the problem is confined to academia or intellectuals. It infects the culture more broadly..

[FaninAma]

Here is why Richwine resigned:



Imagine somebody being so heartless as to not want to let stupid people immigrate to the US.

The authors of the The Bell Curve also received a tremendous amount of flak for their research.

[RUSH LIMBAUGH is my clone!]

Business would love it...millions of unskilled laborers fighting over a limited amount of jobs...business would never need to give a raise...the US treasury won't be overburdened though, will it? haha

[SanJoaquinSooner]

This IQ deal is brilliant. Maybe the pubs should limit themselves to MENSA members. Their average IQ will be so high, there is no way they'll lose another election.

[SanJoaquinSooner]

Immigration reform would increase GDP by $1.2 trillion over ten years. The economic benefits would out weigh the costs -plus there would be superior tracking of those in the country.

http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-journal/2012/1/cj32n1-12.pdf

[SanJoaquinSooner]

As the articles that I posted by the "American Thinker" point out, these guys are full of sheet.

But they say that with all due respect.

Your "articles" from "American Thinker" hardly rate as peer-reviewed journal articles.

[SanJoaquinSooner]

the US treasury won't be overburdened though, will it? haha

GDP will increase $1.2 trillion over ten years, so the treasury should love it.

[SanJoaquinSooner]

Here is why Richwine resigned:



Imagine somebody being so heartless as to not want to let stupid people immigrate to the US.

How about the same minimum IQ as one needs to fight for the country? Does the army have a cut-off score?

[okie52]

Co-author of immigration study resigns from Heritage Foundation

By David Nakamura,May 10, 2013


The co-author of a disputed immigration study by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, resigned Friday after questions were raised about racially charged conclusions made in his previous work.

The departure of Jason Richwine, who joined the organization in 2010, came as Heritage sought to move past a barrage of criticism from liberals and conservatives alike over the methodology used in its report that pegged the cost of legalizing 11 million undocumented immigrants at $6.3 trillion.

Heritage spent months preparing for its rollout of the report, which it hoped would reset the immigration debate in Washington and provide a splashy introduction for its new president, Jim DeMint, a former Republican senator from South Carolina.


Your "articles" from "American Thinker" hardly rate as peer-reviewed journal articles.

Peer reviewed by who...the open borders Cato institute? Just point out the flaws in their argument juan

[okie52]

Co-author of immigration study resigns from Heritage Foundation

By David Nakamura,May 10, 2013


The co-author of a disputed immigration study by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, resigned Friday after questions were raised about racially charged conclusions made in his previous work.

The departure of Jason Richwine, who joined the organization in 2010, came as Heritage sought to move past a barrage of criticism from liberals and conservatives alike over the methodology used in its report that pegged the cost of legalizing 11 million undocumented immigrants at $6.3 trillion.

Heritage spent months preparing for its rollout of the report, which it hoped would reset the immigration debate in Washington and provide a splashy introduction for its new president, Jim DeMint, a former Republican senator from South Carolina.


How about the same minimum IQ as one needs to fight for the country? Does the army have a cut-off score?


We need stupid illegals for the military?

[RUSH LIMBAUGH is my clone!]

We need stupid illegals for the military?Our US military guys are so stewpig that they don't even know they could be placing their lives in danger. That's why the Libs who won't join the military impune them. (Who in his right mind would fight for his country. especially keeping in mind that who in his right mind could love this country?)

[SanJoaquinSooner]

We need stupid illegals for the military?

who said that?

[KantoSooner]

You are correct that I conflated the Heritage report on costs (the $6.3 trillion number) with Sessions equally aberrant 55~80,000,000 new migrants in the event we reform immigration laws.

On the one hand, the Heritage report assumed that all immigrants would be eligible for all possible beneifts and would all apply for and recieve 100% of them. That is obviously not possible as nothing is ever 100% one way or the other. Thus the number will be less, quite likely massively less.

On the other, I found Sessions estimates of increased immigraition to be ludicrous for the simple reason that, the vast majority of our illegals are Mexican and Mexico has only a 112,000,000 population (source: CIA website). Whether the 11,000,000 illegals here are counted in that 112 or not, it is simply impossible that another 55,000,000 or so would move to this country. Believe it or not, many people around the world like living in their own countries and wouldn't move even if they could.

Sorry for the confusion.

[okie52]

Most illegals will qualify for government benefits as they will be low wage earners. However, the report only concerned itself with the 11,000,000 current illegals and did not include the additional 20,000,000 that will be added through family reunification which will also likely be low wage earners...hence the negative impact of immigration reform was probably massively understated by Heritage.


The illegal immigrant population of the United States in 2008 was estimated by the Center for Immigration Studies to be about 11 million people, down from 12.5 million people in 2007.[1] Other estimates range from 7 to 20 million.[2] According to a Pew Hispanic Center report, in 2005, 56% of illegal immigrants were from Mexico; 22% were from other Latin American countries, primarily from Central America;[3] 13% were from Asia; 6% were from Europe and Canada; and 3% were from Africa and the rest of the world.[3]

56% were from Mexico or 6,160,000 while another 22% or 2,420,000 were from Latin/Central America so it wouldn't require 1/2 of Mexico's population to supply the US with temporary labor. You can roughly multiply the illegals by 3 to get their final numbers under family reunification. The guest worker program is supposed to be global, not just for low skilled workers but also highly educated, High skilled workers which obviously wouldn't be dipping much into the Mexican market.

[KantoSooner]

Why is it that you ellide over the fact that the proposed bill removes the family reunification grounds for immigration and replaces it with a point system that emphasizes things like education, ability and desire to invest, etc.?

[okie52]

Please point that out in the bill as I have not seen anything restricting family reunification nor, apparently, have many others.

Our cold hearted dems are going to allow a bill to be passed that excludes family members from being reunited with their families? Hell, they are trying to even get the gay partners included (which I really hope they put in the bill).

[okie52]

Immigration reform: When is family reunification also 'chain migration'?

Immigration reform legislation promises expedited reunification for millions of families awaiting visas, but critics caution that the overhaul could also produce uncontrolled 'chain migration.'

.

http://news.yahoo.com/immigration-reform-family-reunification-chain-migration-130841745.html


The proposed Senate bill offers several avenues for families who have been separated to be brought back together.

It allows all US citizens and permanent residents to petition for their spouses, children, or parents who have been deported or barred from the US to reenter the country under a more-generous standard of hardship, for example.

It would also allow young undocumented people, known as DREAMers for the bill that would give them a special path to citizenship, who have been deported in recent years to apply for a similar waiver, allowing them to return to the US.

The bill also would wipe out the 4.5 million people waiting in family-based immigration backlogs over the next decade, bringing those who could have lingered as long as 20 years into the country over the next decade.

Another provision ensures that some families aren’t split apart in the first place. Legal permanent residents, also known as green card holders, will be allowed to bring spouses and children into the US with them immediately. It would also allow some temporary workers to enter the US with their children and spouses.



Now I do see where the bill was going to restrict US Citizens ability to bring their siblings into the country and restricts adult children to be under 31 but that is about it...most of it seems to expedite and expand family reunification.

[KantoSooner]

Glad I clicked on the link. The article indicates we're talking about somewhere in the neighborhood of 4-5 million people and the furher 'chain migration' was from a quote from Sessions without any supporting evidence from the bill.

But you just go on. Any day now you'll wake up with the entire population of Communist China perched on your chest. Because 'liberals' want to destroy America.

[okie52]

You seem a bit testy Kanto...

Glad you clicked on the link but unfortunately you didn't comprehend the meaning. The 4.5 million are currently awaiting visas and are already in the system...this isn't the illegal's families as they have no rights to family reunification...these are ones they are going to expedite that have already been waiting for years.


The groups of people with expedited tracks to US permanent residency under the Senate legislation – 4.5 million people in family backlogs, an estimated 1 million to 2 million DREAMers, and 800,000 farm workers, along with new petitions from current US citizens and permanent residents – add up to millions of new immigrants, and especially lesser-skilled immigrants, over the next decade.


The bill also would wipe out the 4.5 million people waiting in family-based immigration backlogs over the next decade, bringing those who could have lingered as long as 20 years into the country over the next decade.

11,000,000 illegals would have the right under legal residency or citizenship to have their children (under 31), parents, and spouses "reunified" with them. The math isn't really that hard to follow.

Well I certainly hope we don't have the population of China in the future. But, according to some, all people are assets so China must be the richest country in the world with India gaining on them rapidly.

The old "Because liberals want to destroy America" refrain? Heh, heh...I can see you are getting a bit desperate which is surprising given your "neutrality" on the issue. But bad policy doesn't really matter whether it comes from a lib or a conservative it will still be bad policy. And there are plenty of libs and so called "conservatives" that are pushing this bad policy.

[KantoSooner]

Not truly testy, just getting bored.
The old argument is tiresome these days. You're not going to accept that Mexico exists and won't conveniently cast itself adrift from the continent and that, therefore, we need an immigration fix. And that demanding a 'dome of isolation' be placed over the US ain't a starter.
Luckily, it would appear that a growing number of people in this country are moving in the direction of a 'fix' and that we'll get a bill.
And, oh, yeah, it'll ruin this country. Just like the Germans did, the Irish, the Italians, the blacks and every other group who've seen their numbers increase. We've been around this bush for so long I forget if you're chasing me or I'm chasing you.

have fun fulminating, pal. The days of isolation are long done. We live in an international world; you can embrace it or you can fall behind. Your call.

[pphilfran]

Not truly testy, just getting bored.
The old argument is tiresome these days. You're not going to accept that Mexico exists and won't conveniently cast itself adrift from the continent and that, therefore, we need an immigration fix. And that demanding a 'dome of isolation' be placed over the US ain't a starter.
Luckily, it would appear that a growing number of people in this country are moving in the direction of a 'fix' and that we'll get a bill.
And, oh, yeah, it'll ruin this country. Just like the Germans did, the Irish, the Italians, the blacks and every other group who've seen their numbers increase. We've been around this bush for so long I forget if you're chasing me or I'm chasing you.

have fun fulminating, pal. The days of isolation are long done. We live in an international world; you can embrace it or you can fall behind. Your call.

what other countries can I move to and find employment without going through their immigration procedure?

[okie52]

I wish it was my call. But, unfortunately, there are those like yourself that are poorly informed on the issue and prefer to regurgitate some babble rather than analyzing the issue...kinda of "pass it before we read it" logic.

Following your logic we are obligated to accept Mexico on their terms. We owe their citizens work and citizenship whenever they desire and **** whatever laws we have in the US if they disagree. Evidently we have no choice in the matter and to support immigration laws labels you as an isolationist. God Forbid!!! We'll let Mexico determine what our laws need to be.

You just stopped short of saying we are a nation of immigrants....surprised you didn't invoke ellis Island and the statue of liberty. When most of the "immigrants" like the Germans, Italians, Irish, Chinese, et al, came over they either had skills or were on a relatively equal footing with the rest of the US population as we were still primarily agrarian at that time. The Blacks? Well I hardly think they would consider themselves "immigrants". These 11,000,000 illegals aren't skilled, are poorly educated and will be low wage earners for decades to come. To not recognize the economic consequences of the proposed "reform" puts you in with the ostrich crowd.

There is nothing isolationist about granting citizenship to 1,000,000 people per year as we do now...legally. If there was any immigration reform it would hopefully be directed towards recruiting highly educated, highly skilled, high wage earning and high tax revenue generating immigrants rather than ones that will be an economic burden to American taxpayers. But that is really draconian to people like you as we "owe it" to our neighbors down south to allow them to immigrate regardless of what they offer the country...but we can at least call ourselves "international".

[KantoSooner]

I wish it was my call.

Following your logic we are obligated to accept Mexico on their terms. We owe their citizens work and citizenship whenever they desire and **** whatever laws we have in the US if they disagree. Evidently we have no choice in the matter and to support immigration laws labels you as an isolationist. God Forbid!!! We'll let Mexico determine what our laws need to be.
.

I'm glad it's not.

and, noi, that's not what I'm saying. But, then you don't care what I or anyone else is saying. Thus I will quit trying to reason with you.

Buhbye.

[okie52]

I'm going to miss your unerring grasp of the facts and keen understanding of the issue.

Adios.

[Midtowner]

Business would love it...millions of unskilled laborers fighting over a limited amount of jobs...business would never need to give a raise...

It provides businesses who would otherwise be shipping jobs overseas with a way to utilize local labor and grow our own economy and tax base, even if that's with unskilled laborers in minimum wage jobs.

[SoonerorLater]

It provides businesses who would otherwise be shipping jobs overseas with a way to utilize local labor and grow our own economy and tax base, even if that's with unskilled laborers in minimum wage jobs.

uh, it's illegal though.

[okie52]

It provides businesses who would otherwise be shipping jobs overseas with a way to utilize local labor and grow our own economy and tax base, even if that's with unskilled laborers in minimum wage jobs.

You mean all of the agricultural, lawn care, landscaping, hotel & residential maids, restaurant workers, poultry, pork and beef labor, etc... will be shipped overseas?