The Heritage Foundation is disavowing past recommendations regarding race, IQ, and immigration from Jason Richwine, the co-author of a recent study by the group claiming undocumented immigrants would add $6.3 trillion to the deficit if granted legal status.
“This is not a work product of The Heritage Foundation. Its findings in no way reflect the positions of The Heritage Foundation,” Mike Gonzalez, vice president of communications at Heritage, said in a statement. “Nor do the findings affect the conclusions of our study on the cost of amnesty to the U.S. taxpayer.”
Richwine argued in a 2009 paper that immigrants should be barred based on low IQ, which he claimed would have the effect of keeping out many Hispanics in particular, who may have a “genetic” predilection towards lower intelligence.
“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,” Richwine wrote.
He added that it may be advisable to couch these findings in less racially inflammatory terms for political purposes by referring to “skill-based” immigration.
Richwine’s Heritage report claimed immigration reform would balloon the deficit primarily because undocumented immigrants would be unable to improve their education and income levels over several generations.
