Jason Richwine, the co-author of a study by the Heritage Foundation claiming immigration reform would add $6.3 trillion to the deficit, has resigned from his position at the conservative think tank.
Heritage had already sought to distance itself from Richwine amid reports that he suggested in a Harvard thesis and a panel at the American Enterprise Institute that the United States discourage various non-white groups from immigrating because they have lower IQs. He also wrote articles on Hispanic incarceration rates for a white nationalist website.
“Race is different in all sorts of ways, and probably the most important way is in IQ,” Richwine said at the 2008 AEI panel. “Decades of psychometric testing has indicated that at least in America, you have Jews with the highest average IQ, usually followed by East Asians, then you have non-Jewish whites, Hispanics, and then blacks. These are real differences, and they’re not going to go away tomorrow, and for that reason we have to address them in our immigration discussions and our debates.”
A spokesman for Heritage, Mike Gonzalez, confirmed his departure to The Washington Examiner shortly after Slate’s Dave Weigel first reported he was leaving.
“It is our long-standing policy not to discuss internal personnel matters,” Gonzalez told the Examiner.
