Here is just another one of our early podcast segments that we recorded a few weeks ago. In this segment, we interview Manuel Roig-Franzia of The Washington Post. Recently Manuel co-wrote with Peter Wallsten called, “Hispanic consciousness lends weight to Jeb Bush as GOP eyes 2016 presidential race.”
We talk to Manuel about this story.
For other segments, you can check out the #NoMames podcast here and our interview with Fernando Espuelas.
Jason Richwine, who resigned last Friday from The Heritage Foundation over his “IQ and Immigration Policy” dissertation from 2009, went on record today with The Washington Examiner to defend his work and speak about the reaction it received (for example, Google “Jason Richwine racist” and see the millions of entries you will get). Here are just are just some of the excerpts he told the Examiner’s Byron York:
“It seemed like that day lasted forever,” says Jason Richwine of last Wednesday, when he found himself in the middle of a media firestorm over his writings about Hispanic immigrants and intelligence. “I knew that this probably would not end well.”
Richwine knew he was in trouble the minute the first story broke. “The accusation of racism is one of the worst things that anyone can call you in public life,” he says. “Once that word is out there, it’s very difficult to recover from it, even when it is completely untrue.”
“It still amazes me that it would be me who is portrayed this way,” Richwine says. “I have a pretty good educational background, I have a good background in doing very good quantitative work. The idea that I am some sort of foaming-at-the-mouth extremist never even crossed my mind.”
“I am a much better writer than I am a speaker,” he told me. “I probably would have written those things differently than I spoke them. What I emphasized was that ethnic group differences in IQ are scientifically uncontroversial. That being said, there is a nuance that goes along with that: the extent to which IQ scores actually reflect intelligence, the fact that it reflects averages and there is a lot of overlap in any population, and that IQ scores say absolutely nothing about the causes of the differences — environmental, genetic, or some combination of those things.”
“I don’t apologize for any of the things that I said,” Richwine continued. “But I do regret that I couldn’t give more detail. And I also regret that I didn’t think more about how the average lay person would perceive these things, as opposed to an academic audience.”
“I’m not naive about that,” he said. But he wanted to make clear that he defends his work. “I do not apologize for any of my work,” he told me. “I’m proud of it. But I do regret the way it has been used.”
” What remains to be seen is how radioactive people consider me,” he says. “My goal right now is that people understand that I’m not someone who has to be avoided. I’ve always considered myself a mainstream scholar. If people associate me with these three days for the rest of my life, it will be very difficult.”
You can read the entire story here.
Earlier today we posted an article detailing how the family foundations run by Richard M. Scaife, the current Vice Chairman of the Heritage Foundation’s Board of Trustees, had given funds to several organizations associated with John Tanton, an individual whom many believe has created “most influential anti-immigrant network in the country.” These donations coincided during a time when Heritage’s immigration policy began to shift from a moderate stance to a much more extreme position, culminating in one of Heritage’s worst weeks ever: its 2013 immigration report and the controversy surrounding Jason Richwine, the report’s co-author.
Richard M. Scaife (from the Heritage Foundation site)
Further examination of Scaife Foundations’ disclosure statements reveal additional information that we did not include in our first story. Here is what we discovered:
John Tanton
Richard M. Scaife became a member of Heritage’s Board of Trustees in 1985, and according to one listing about his family foundations, has given close to $20 millon to Heritage. In addition, the listing says, donations to Tanton-associated organizations have been occurring at least since 2007.
The largest recipient of Scaife largesse over the decades has been the Heritage Foundation. Since 1985, the Heritage Foundation has received $19.6 million from the Sarah Scaife Foundation and smaller amounts from the Carthage Foundation. The Allegheny Foundation concentrates most of its giving on conventional organizations in western Pennsylvania.
The Sarah Scaife Foundation, formerly the Sarah Mellon Scaife Foundation, has the largest endowment of the three foundations, with assets totaling $305 million according to tax records. In 2005, the foundation awarded $15 million to a variety of organizations, including the Heritage Foundation ($100,000), the American Enterprise Institute ($300,000), Center for Security Policy ($350,000)…
According to the Carthage Foundation’s 2007 annual report, it gave out $2.09 million in grants in 2006, including to the Federation for American Immigration Reform ($300,000), the Counter Terrorism & Security Education and Research Foundation’s Investigative Project ($125,000), and the Institute for Religion and Democracy ($200,000).
Meanwhile, more attention to Tanton-associated organizations have begun to hit the mainstream media, as this opinion piece from USA Today says:
But there is a third element that has inserted itself into the conversation: those who oppose immigration — legal and illegal.
This group is led by three major anti-immigration organizations: Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), NumbersUSA and Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). Their work on immigration has led major news media to often label them “conservative.” Yet the reality is that these groups do not share conservatives’ interest in ending illegal immigration, if doing so might mean more legal immigration.
CIS Executive Director Mark Krikorian openly admits that illegal entries are not the main issue for him. “For too long the Republican story line has been ‘Too Much Lawbreaking,’ when instead the real problem is ‘Too Much Immigration,’” Krikorian wrote in a 2009 National Review article that explained his strategy for GOP immigration reform.
The other organizations agree. According to its website, NumbersUSA President Roy Beck’s “greatest concern” is population growth — that his “grandchildren’s grandchildren” will “live packed in a highly-regimented country approaching a billion people.” In his book The Case Against Immigration, he wrote that America has become “a nation of too many immigrants.”
“Legal immigration could be stopped with a simple majority vote of Congress and a stroke of the president’s pen,” Beck argued. But that argument cuts both ways. Illegal immigration could end just as easily and these groups know it. As Krikorian put it in his 2009 article, “You just legalize the whole thing and the issue goes away — no illegals, no problem.”
But FAIR, CIS and NumbersUSA don’t want this because their interest is not fewer illegal crossings, but fewer people. Like NumbersUSA, FAIR argues, as they did in a 2009 report, that “the United States is already overpopulated.” In his book, The New Case Against Immigration: Both Legal and Illegal, Krikorian called immigration “a government-administered population policy,” that is “just like Communist China and the Soviet Union” (p. 188).
There was a time when the Heritage Foundation was looking at immigration through a more rational lens than its recent immigration report and the hornet’s nest it created for Jason Richwine, the study’s co-author, who last Friday resigned from Heritage after fallout from his 2009 Harvard dissertation about immigrants and IQ went viral.
In 2006, for example, a Heritage piece called “The Real Problem with Immigration… and the Real Solution” said the following about immigration in the 21st century:
An honest assessment acknowledges that illegal immigrants bring real benefits to the supply side of the American economy, which is why the business community is opposed to a simple crackdown. There are economic costs as well, given America’s generous social insurance institutions. The cost of securing the border would logically exist regardless of the number of immigrants.
The argument that immigrants harm the American economy should be dismissed out of hand. The population today includes a far higher percentage (12 percent) of foreign-born Americans than in recent decades, yet the economy is strong, with higher total gross domestic product (GDP), higher GDP per person, higher productivity per worker, and more Americans working than ever before. immigration may not have caused this economic boom, but it is folly to blame immigrants for hurting the economy at a time when the economy is simply not hurting.
Later, the post stated:
A simple example is instructive in terms of both trade and immigration. An imaginary small town has 10 citizens: some farmers, some ranchers, a fisherman, a tailor, a barber, a cook, and a merchant. A new family headed by a young farmer moves to town. His presence is resented by the other farmers, but he also consumes from the other business in town-getting haircuts, eating beef and fish, having his shirts sewn and pressed, and buying supplies at the store, not to mention paying taxes. He undoubtedly boosts the supply side of the economy, but he also boosts the demand side. If he were run out of town for “stealing jobs,” his demand for everyone’s work would leave with him.
The real problem with undocumented immigrant workers is that flouting the law has become the norm, which makes the job of terrorists and drug traffickers infinitely easier. The economic costs of terrorism can be very high and very real, quite apart from the otherwise positive economic impact of immigration. In order to separate the good from the bad, there is no substitute for a nationwide system that identifies all foreign persons present within the U.S. It is not sufficient to identify visitors upon entry and exit; rather, all foreign visitors must be quickly documented.
The essay, co-authored by Tim Kane and Kirk A. Johnson, presented 14 recommendations that would help to improve this country’s immigration, including this one:
Provisions for efficient legal entry will not be amnesty, nor will they “open the floodgates.” Such a system will actually encourage many migrants to exit, knowing that they will be able to return under reasonable regulations. This is in stark contrast to the status quo, in which the difficulty and uncertainty of reentering the U.S. effectively discourage aliens from leaving. Documented migrant workers would enter a new status: not citizen, not illegal, but rather temporary workers.
As for opening the floodgates, the reality is that they are already open. More to the point, labor markets operate effectively to balance supply and demand, and those markets are currently in balance. Creating a new category of legal migrants would not change that equilibrium, provide unfair benefits to undocumented aliens over others, or be tied to citizenship, but it would enhance security.
Finally, the authors offered this conclusion:
The century of globalization will see America either descend into timid isolation or affirm its openness. Throughout history, great nations have declined because they built up walls of insularity, but America has been the exception for over a century. It would be a tragedy if America were to turn toward a false sense of security just when China is ascending with openness, Western Europe is declining into isolation, and the real solution is so obvious from our own American heritage.
This 2006 Heritage piece is a far cry from its 2013 study, “The Fiscal Cost of Unlawful Immigrants and Amnesty to the U.S. Taxpayer,” as well as its 2007 cousin, “Amnesty Will Cost U.S. Taxpayers at Least $2.6 Trillion.”
Both of these studies have been roundly criticized by the right and the left, thus raising these questions: Why did Heritage change its views so dramatically? Why did it go from a moderate stance on immigration to a more extreme one?
The answer could lie with one of the Heritage Foundation’s Board of Trustees and current Vice Chairman, whose three family foundations have recently been funding several anti-immigration organizations connected to John Tanton, the founder of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. The creation of FAIR eventually led to the formation of other Tanton-associated organizations, including the Californians for Population Stabilization, the Immigration Reform Law Institute, the Center for Immigration Studies, NumbersUSA, Progressives for Immigration Reform, VDARE, Negative Population Growth, and U.S., Inc.
The current Heritage Vice Chairman is Richard Mellon Scaife, once called in a 1999 Washington Post profile as “the most generous donor to conservative causes in American history.” Scaife’s mother was Sarah Mellon Scaife, who died in 1965, and his sister was Cordelia Scaife May, who died in 2005. As the 1999 Post profile said, Sarah “would pass a fortune on to the son everyone called Dickie.”
According to the foundation’s 2011 disclosure statement, the Sarah Scaife Foundation (whose chairman is Richard M. Scaife) gave $1.2 million to the Heritage Foundation, $125,000 to the Center for Immigration Studies, $275,000 to FAIR, $37,500 to NumbersUSA. (the foundation’s 2011 disclosure can be downloaded here.) In 2010, the foundation gave the same amount to the same three organizations, except that Heritage got $600,000 and NumbersUSA did not get any funding (2010 disclosure). In 2009, the foundation gave $600,000 to Heritage, $125,000 to CIS, $100,00 to FAIR, and $37,500 to NumbersUSA. (2009 disclosure). One 2011 white paper from NewComm.org said the following: “The Sarah Scaife Foundation and the Scaife Family Foundation provided over $1.3 million to Tanton Network groups from 2008 through 2010. These organizations include Center for Immigration Studies, NumbersUSA, ProEnglish and Federation for American Immigration Reform.”
As for Cordelia Scaife May, she was the founder of the Colcom Foundation. Here is what NewComm said about Colcom:
The Colcom Foundation provided over $25 million dollars in funding to Tanton Network groups from 2008 through 2010. These organizations include Federation for American Immigration Reform, Californians for Population Stabilization, Immigration Reform Law Institute, Center for Immigration Studies, NumbersUSA, Progressives for Immigration Reform, VDARE, Negative Population Growth, and U.S., Inc.
The connections go even deeper than million dollar grants. The Colcom Foundation’s vice president, John Rohe, worked for John Tanton at his foundation, U.S., Inc. And the late Cordelia Scaife May, who founded Colcom in 1996, was a close friend of John Tanton. In 2005, the year of her death, Scaife May left $404 million in cash and property to the Colcom Foundation and other charitable organizations.
Part of Colcom’s mission statement states that “The Foundation supports efforts to significantly reduce immigration levels in the U.S., recognizing that population growth in America is fueled primarily by mass immigration.* (* Based on U.S. Census Bureau data, immigrants and their children account for 75% of the nation’s population growth.)”
NewComm’s Imagine 2050 blog also made the following observations this week as to why organizations such as FAIR, CIS, and NumbersUSA were prominently highlighting the 2013 Heritage amnesty study, but saying very little of the Richwine controversy after the fact:
On Monday, the Heritage Foundation released its much maligned study on the costs of immigration reform. The study, a re-working of a widely panned 2007 effort, was predictably lauded by the anti-immigrant movement’s representatives in the Beltway. The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and NumbersUSA, two of the three most influential of such groups, offered the report ample space on their respective websites. The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), the other in the aforementioned triumvirate of influential groups, is presently pretending the study simply doesn’t exist.
During a week when both sides of the immigration debate have been occupied with either countering or supporting Heritage, CIS, at the time of writing, neither mentions the study on its website nor does its director, Mark Krikorian, offer an opinion about the piece in his regular blog-column forNational Review Online.
In keeping with what appears to be a strategy rooted in a fantasy of avoidance, CIS’s Director of Research, Steven Camarota, also didn’t touch Heritage’s study during his testimony before the Senate’s Joint Economic Committee on Wednesday. Perhaps CIS simply disagrees with Heritage’s findings, and wishes not to start a war of words with a group that has long been recognized as standard-bearer of all things Conservative. Or, perhaps, Krikorian recalled back to 2008, when he sat on a panel with Jason Richwine, one of the two authors of Heritage’s study. The panel focused on debating points presented in what at the time was Krikorian’s new book, The Case Against Immigration. During the panel, Richwine argued that ”races differ in all sorts of ways, and probably the most important way is in IQ,” also asserting a number of other racist claims beyond this.
In the meantime, NewComm also provided a 2011 description of Tanton’s history:
In 1979, a Michigan ophthalmologist named John Tanton founded the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). Citing dubious “conservation” motives, but more often revealing his white nationalist sympathies, Tanton created the most influential anti-immigrant network in the country. Though lacking public renown, Tanton and FAIR have waged a campaign of impressive breadth and longevity, spawning over a dozen groups with the same goal: to malign the presence of immigrants in the United States.
Early contributions from the notorious Pioneer Fund, reputed for its devotion to eugenics and “scientific” declarations of racism, helped Tanton’s once modest organization expand into a multi-million dollar network. Early ties to population control groups steeped this network in controversy from its inception.
More than thirty years later, in April of 2011, John Tanton vanished from the board of FAIR after a front page exposé in a Sunday edition of The New York Times underscored his extensive ties to the larger white nationalist movement in the United States. In July 2011, Tanton’s name resurfaced on FAIR’s advisory board, but his less vital role within the Network means little. Given the dedicated cadre within the Network, the primary agenda of nativism that both binds and drives the contemporary anti-immigrant movement will certainly survive and spread if left unchecked.
The groups that he founded and funded, groups that owe their existence to his early efforts, now deny his ideology as part of their own. Yet they share sustained ties to extremist political elements like the white nationalist Council of Conservative Citizens and the compulsively nativist VDARE.com; with figures tied to movements as extreme as neo-Nazism, like Arizona’s Russell Pearce; and with population control advocates like Virginia Abernethy, a self-proclaimed white separatist.
The Tanton Network insists that it is not anti-immigrant; FAIR, the Center for Immigration Studies, NumbersUSA and remaining members increasingly position themselves as non-partisan and unbiased sources for reporters and academics. As students, activists, and journalists we have a responsibility to identify the bigotry endemic to the anti-immigrant movement, and to challenge its agenda in mainstream America.
Here is the on-the-scene report submitted yesterday May 10 by NISGUA, the Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala. For all other posts of the Efraín Ríos Montt genocide trial, visit NISGUA here. NISGUA gave Latino Rebels permission to republish their posts from the trial.
Today in Guatemala, Judge Yazmin Barrios found former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity. The court ratified all the elements of genocide described by witness and expert testimony, concluding that Ríos Montt had both command authority and “full knowledge of what was happening and did nothing to stop it.” Ríos Montt was sentenced of 80 years in prison and is now in police custody. Former intelligence director Rodriguez Sánchez was acquitted of all charges.
The historic sentence was greeted by cries of “Justice!”, the singing of hymns, and emotional displays of appreciation by Ixil witnesses and other members of the public. “After so much struggle, we’ve finally achieved our goal,” said a member of the Association for Justice and Reconciliation.
Although the court’s ruling is sure to be subjected to ongoing challenges, now is not the moment for doubt. Now is a moment to fill our hearts in celebration of the years of dedication and toil that have led to this victory. It is a time for solemn remembrance of the many who have not lived to see justice, but in whose names this struggle has been carried forward.
Today proves that the bonds of solidarity and memory can triumph over violence and forgetting, that the humblest commitment to truth and justice can in time tear down the wall of impunity.
From the bottom of our hearts we thank you for your constant vigilance and accompaniment of the survivors, witnesses, and human rights defenders that have made today possible. We ask you to deepen your support in the coming weeks, months, and years as struggles for justice and self-determination in Guatemala continue in the face of threats both new and old.
Above all, we ask that you join us in celebration, in raising our voices worldwide in a chorus of justice.
In enduring and grateful solidarity, the entire NISGUA team, now and over three decades in solidarity with the people of Guatemala.
The Rev. Sam Rodríguez, who has led the charge for immigration reform among Latino evangelicals, went on air this week to clarify that recent gay rights amendments being considered for the bipartisan current immigration reform bill in the Senate could seriously jeopardize the current alliance in favor of the reform bill, if gay rights were to be included.
Here is a clip of what Rodríguez said:
At the end of the clip, Rodríguez does not believe that these additions will even pass muster. The amendments were added by Vermont senator Patrick Leahy (D), as CNN reports:
Vermont Sen. Patrick’s Leahy’s amendments would recognize same-sex marriages in which one spouse is an American, and also would allow U.S. citizens to sponsor foreign-born same-sex partners for green cards as long as there’s proof of a committed relationship.
They were among dozens of amendments filed with the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday as the panel prepares to take up the legislation later this week.
“For immigration reform to be truly comprehensive, it must include protections for all families,” Leahy said. “We must end the discrimination that gay and lesbian families face in our immigration law.”
This one is so so bad, we are actually going to start the WITH No Mames Gollum instead of leaving him for the end of the post.
So here goes: Jason Richwine, the Heritage Foundation’s Senior Policy Analyst of Empirical Studies and the co-author of the foundation’s much-maligned 2013 immigration study being slammed by prominent conservative groups, wrote a 2009 Harvard dissertation where he offered the following insight, according to a story in today’s Washington Post:
And so on and so on.
Jason Richwine
Here is Richwine’s abstract:
The statistical construct known as IQ can reliably estimate general mental ability, or intelligence. 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 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.
Maybe no one has told Richwine that “Hispanic” is not a race, meaning that his entire conclusion is already on a slippery slope. But what does that matter? Ignorance knows no bounds, even those with a Harvard degree.
Meanwhile Heritage is trying to distance itself from what Richwine wrote just four years ago. Here is what Heritage VP of Communications Mike Gonzalez (ironic) said in a statement:
This is not a work product of The Heritage Foundation. 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.
Right, there’s no bias at all. Our bad. Maybe we need to end the post with No Mames Gollum as well. Ok, why not.
UPDATE, 4:48 PM EST: Heritage has now expanded its original statement:
Our vision at The Heritage Foundation is to build an America where freedom, opportunity, prosperity and civil society flourish. We believe that every person is created equal and that everyone should have equal opportunity to reach the ladder of success and climb as high as they can dream.
On Monday, The Heritage Foundation released its long-awaited study on the costs of amnesty to U.S. taxpayers. That study found that amnesty for unlawful immigrants would cost $6.3 trillion. The methodology was developed by the study’s lead researcher and author Robert Rector, one of the nation’s foremost experts on welfare reform. Rector’s methodology uses an approach developed by the National Academy of Sciences and is an update of his research on the same subject from 2007.
We welcome a rigorous, fact-based debate on the data, methodology, and conclusions of the Heritage study on the cost of amnesty. Instead, some have pointed to a Harvard dissertation written by Dr. Jason Richwine. Dr. Richwine did not shape the methodology or the policy recommendations in the Heritage paper; he provided quantitative support to lead author Robert Rector. The dissertation was written while Dr. Richwine was a student at Harvard, supervised and approved by a committee of respected scholars.
The Harvard paper is not a work product of The Heritage Foundation. Its findings do not reflect the positions of The Heritage Foundation or the conclusions of our study on the cost of amnesty to U.S. taxpayers, as race and ethnicity are not part of Heritage immigration policy recommendations.
Immigration reform is a critical discussion for the future of our nation, and it should focus on what is in the best interest of all Americans and those who aspire to be Americans.
As expected, several U.S. senators opposed to the bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill are beginning to submit hundreds of amendments to the bill. We won’t get into the details here, but of all the amendments submitted, this one by Senator Ted Cruz easily wins the Washington #NoMames award for this week.
Basically, Cruz is saying this:
TED CRUZ files amendment barring anyone who has been in US illegally from becoming a citizen EVER judiciary.senate.gov/legislation/im… @latinorebels
— CHICASAW(@TawniVixen) May 8, 2013
This is coming from a Canadian-born politician whose dad fled Cuba in the late 1950s. Incredibly sad to see. Our prediction: Ted Cruz’s 15 minutes of fame is starting to flicker. By 2018, when he is up for re-election, Texas will be purple. We hope he enjoys his only term in the Senate.
Let’s be real for just a moment. Why do politicians have to question Latino politicians’ “Latinidad?” It happened last year when conservatives claimed that San Antonio mayor Julián Castro didn’t fit the Latino bill because he didn’t speak Spanish well, and now it is happening again with former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson (D) and Texas Senator Ted Cruz (R).
This Sunday Richardson said that Texas Senator Ted Cruz (R) “should not be defined as a Hispanic.” Here is the clip.
QUESTION: What does [Bill Richardson] think of Ted Cruz.
BILL RICHARDSON: I’m not a fan. I know [Ted Cruz is] sort of the Republican latest flavor. He’s articulate. He seems to be charismatic, but I don’t like his politics. I think he introduces a measure of incivility in the political process. Insulting people is not the way to go. But I guess he’s a force in the Republican political system, but I’m not a fan.
QUESTION: Do you think he represents most Hispanics with his politics?
RICHARDSON: No, no. He’s anti-immigration. Almost every Hispanic in the country wants to see immigration reform. No, I don’t think he should be defined as a Hispanic. He’s a politician from Texas. A conservative state. And I respect Texas’ choice. But what I don’t like is… when you try to get things done, it’s okay to be strong and state your views, your ideology. But I’ve seen him demean the office, be rude to other senators, not be part of, I think, the civility that is really needed in Washington.
Granted, Cruz has his issues, one of his biggest being the fact that he was born in Canada to a Cuban dad and an American mom, but he is still sounds like a nativist tool when it comes to the immigration debate. But did Richardson have to go after the guy’s identity? Was it too far? We think so.
The political reaction, as you can imagine, has not been good for Richardson, and the next day, he had to clarify his comments. Here is what FOX News Latino reported:
On Fox News Channel’s “Studio B w/ Shepard Smith,” the former presidential candidate was asked about the remarks at the end of an interview involving foreign policy.
“That was a misunderstanding,” Richardson told Smith. “I said he shouldn’t be defined as a Hispanic. I’m a Hispanic. I don’t define myself as just Hispanic.”
He said his comments were “misinterpreted.”
Smith followed up by noting that the political ideologies of the former New Mexico governor and the Texas senator vary starkly.
“We disagree on immigration but all I was saying was I don’t consider myself just a Hispanic and he shouldn’t be defined as just a Hispanic,” said Richardson. “We’re other things, that’s what I said.”
In the meantime, Cruz responded to Richardson.
Hard to argue against someone when he passionately defends his family.
Say what you will about Cruz. In this case, he has every right to defend his identity. Yet Richardson’s point about Cruz not favoring what most U.S. Latino voters support when it comes to immigration reform is also correct. Richardson’s mistake was that he took it too far. He should have known better.
PS And before you all comment on the irony of Richardson’s last name, his dad was half-Anglo and half-Mexican, while his mom was born in Mexico to a Spanish dad and a Mexican mother.
Talk about a resounding #NoMames rejection of today’s Heritage Foundation report, entitled “The Fiscal Cost of Unlawful Immigrants and Amnesty to the U.S. Taxpayer.” We’re talking the Cato Institute, Americans for Tax Reform, the Kemp Foundation, and the American Action Forum, to name a few.
In short, the entire premise of the report from Heritage was this: more immigrants mean more entitlement spending, which means more burdens on taxpayers. The fear-mongering theory is so defeatist that it is laughable. It makes the assumption that people in other parts of the world would be willing to leave their home countries so they can get U.S. government handouts. Forget the idea of trying to work hard and make it in the U.S. It is also assumes that the estimated 11 million undocumented individuals in this country will immediately be added to the welfare rolls.
First up is ATR’s Josh Culling:
The Heritage Foundation is a treasured ally in the conservative movement and a pillar of the conservative policy community. However, this study is every bit as flawed as its 2007 iteration.
This static analysis takes into account none of the universally-accepted economic benefits of immigration, choosing only to focus on costs. But the costs estimates are unfairly inflated. The authors count overall household costs, which often includes benefits paid to native-born, low-income American spouses and children of immigrants. Those costs would exist regardless of the immigration status of one’s partner; this is an indictment of our current welfare state, not proposed immigration reforms.
ATR has worked tirelessly to reform our unsustainable entitlements, and will continue to do so. We should not put a pro-growth reform of our broken immigration system on hold while we do so. In fact, America should welcome more legal immigrants to pay into the system without receiving benefits and boost the economy while we work toward sustainable reform.
Lawmakers and the American public should rely on an accurate accounting of immigration reform’s costs and benefits. Unfortunately, this study inaccurately reflects only one side of the ledger. Even the establishment Congressional Budget Office, which Heritage, ATR, and others have excoriated for employing only static models, will take economic growth into account when it scores the bill. I had hoped the same of the conservative movement’s happy warrior for dynamic scoring, the Heritage Foundation.
Next up is Cato’s Alex Nowrasteh, who predicted a month ago that Heritage’s 2013 report would be flawed and basically said the same thing two days before the 2013 report was released:
The key flaw in Heritage’s 2007 study is its use of static fiscal scoring, rather than dynamic fiscal scoring, to evaluate that year’s immigration reform bill. “Scoring” a bill means predicting its impact on the U.S. budget in the future by estimating how it will affect future spending and tax revenue. A statically scored prediction assumes the bill will not affect the rest of the economy – which is highly unrealistic.
A dynamically scored prediction, on the other hand, assumes that the bill will affect the rest of the economy, also changing tax revenue and government spending. Since increased immigration will increase the size of the economy, it will also increase tax revenue and some government spending. It’s important to factor those increases into any scoring model. Heritage’s 2007 study did not.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has adopted dynamic scoring for the coming immigration bill for reasons they explain here.
Jimmy Kemp, Jack Kemp’s son, said the following, according to the Washington Post:
“My dad was a significant supporter of immigration reform.” Objecting strenuously to the idea that immigration reform weakens the economy by adding workers, he exclaimed, “People are not a drain on society.” Saying it was “surprising they took a static approach,” he said bluntly, “You can’t lead from a place of fear.”
And then there is this infographic from the American Action Forum:
The AAF’s Douglas Holtz-Eakin was also pretty blunt today in response to the Heritage study. As the Post article states:
The prize for candor, though, went to American Action Forum’s Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who stated flatly, “It really misleads.” Without dynamic scoring, H1-B visas, a guest worker program, and the other economic pluses from immigration reform and with a load of ludicrous assumptions (e.g. everyone would qualify for government benefits and take them) Heritage, he said, “gets a really big number.” He continued in describing the Heritage view of immigrants, “There is no American dream. They start in poverty. They end in poverty. Their kids are in poverty.”
Finally, the Post also got a reaction from Mario López of Hispanic Leadership Fund:
Why are these conservative heavyweights so exercised? It is not merely about immigration. Mario Lopez from the Hispanic Leadership Fund said, “There is a reason why dynamic scoring is important. In a word, it’s capitalism.” Citing former Heritage chief Ed Feulner and Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman he bemoaned Heritage for setting a bad precedent and succumbing to a view that more people mean only costs, poverty, government benefits and higher unemployment.
So the criticism has been extremely consistent, yet reports like Heritage’s are just part of a narrative that has been around for decades: that all immigrants put an economic strain on a government. However, this time around, many influential conservatives are speaking out, even one of the authors of the 2007 Heritage study. He basically slams the 2013 report with pure wonkiness:
A new Special Report from the Heritage Foundation has come to my attention, and I am disappointed in its poor quality. Heritage.org asserts on its main page in the biggest font I have ever seen (and I worked there for years) “The COST of Amnesty TO YOU > $6.3 Trillion.” Here we go.
It must be remembered that the same analysis was done by the same author in 2007, then warning the cost of amnesty was $2.6 Trillion (HT Andrew Stiles). But the current report indicates that the status quo cost of unlawful immigrant households is roughly half of the amnesty cost, which means YOU are already paying $3.15 Trillion. By this logic, the status quo (thanks to inaction six years ago) is more expensive than if reform had passed in 2007, to the tune of half a trillion dollars. The pileup of outlandish Heritage estimates presents a credibility hurdle.
One is left to wonder who will still stand by Heritage on this issue, because they just got schooled by their own family today.
