The co-author of the Heritage Foundation’s report on the cost of mass legalization has resigned from the conservative think tank.
“Jason Richwine let us know he’s decided to resign from his position. He’s no longer employed by Heritage.” Heritage spokesman Michael Gonzalez said in an emailed statement.
Richwine co-authored the report, which pinned the cost of legalizing the illegal immigrants in America at $6.3 trillion, with Heritage senior fellow Robert Rector.
After the think tank released the report Monday, Richwine came under fire for past arguments about race and IQ. His Harvard doctoral dissertation “IQ and Immigration Policy,” which argued for the veracity of racial IQ differences and an immigration policy based on IQ levels, came under particular scrutiny.
“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 Washington Post quoted the dissertation abstract Wednesday. “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.”
Gonzales told The Post that the paper was not a position held by Heritage.
“This is not a work product of The Heritage Foundation,” he said. “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.”