Surprise! The co-author of the fantastical Heritage Foundation report that estimated immigration reform would cost taxpayers over $6 trillion dollars has questionable views on race as it relates to intelligence.
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.”
“No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites.”
Mike Gonzales, vice president of communications at Heritage, released a statement this afternoon saying Richwine’s dissertation does not “affect the conclusions of our study on the cost of amnesty to the U.S. taxpayer.”
There’s just one problem with that — it does.
The Heritage report derives its $6 trillion figure from the idea that immigrants will never reach the level of education and income that non-immigrants do even after several generations, and because of that the Heritage report calculates that immigration reform will be a net-drain on the economy.
Personally I don’t see a great deal of difference between that methodology and Richwine’s dissertation that says “no one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites.”
Both are based on the premise that Hispanic people as a race are predisposed to being less intelligent. And Richwine, for his part, seems to be flirting with Eugenics.