The conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, which helped kill comprehensive immigration reform under George W. Bush, released their much-anticipated follow-up study on Monday which has been met with accusations of bad scholarship — including the revelation that one of the study’s authors once wrote what many saw as a racist study on immigration.
One of the co-author’s PhD dissertation was referred to by the chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus as “ugly racism and xenophobia dressed up in economic hyperbole.”
In 2009, co-author of the study Jason Richwine wrote that Hispanics have inherently lower IQs than ”the white native population,” going on to wonder if “Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites.” The discovery of the dissertation was a huge blow to Heritage, forcing the think tank to release a statement saying that Richwine’s previous writings “do not reflect the positions of The Heritage Foundation.”
Heritage has run into trouble before. There was their questionable accounting of Paul Ryan’s budget which later had to be adjusted, along with a 2010 study against the legalization of marijuana that made the bizarre claim that “consumption of alcohol carries few health risks and even offers some significant benefits.”
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