Immigration Reform News 2013: Immigrants Have Lower IQ Than 'White Natives' Writes Author of Heritage Foundation Report

The author of the controversial and largely discredited Heritage Foundation study claiming the immigration reform bill will be too costly also authored a dissertation in 2009 claiming immigrants have lower IQ scores than "white natives."

For his Ph.D. in Public Policy at Harvard University, Jason Richwine wrote a paper entitled "IQ and Immigration Policy" which asserted that lower scores by immigrants on IQ tests should prevent their admission to the United States. Richwine also wrote that those low scores would persist for several generations after immigrants arrived in this country.

No reputable studies have found a link between race and IQ, but socioeconomic status has consistently been shown to affect scores. Many immigrants come from difficult financial circumstances with less educational opportunity, so Richwine's thesis runs counter to the vast majority of responsible science.

The abstract to his dissertation lays out his premise. "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," he wrote.

While Richwine claims his proposals also benefit immigrants with high IQs, he does not expect that group to include many Latinos. "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," he wrote. "From the perspective of Americans alive today, the low average I.Q. of Hispanics is effectively permanent."

Heritage was quick to disavow the earlier work, though they stand by the new one, insisting there is no link between the shoddy dissertation written four years ago and the shoddy report written recently. "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," said Mike Gonzalez, vice president for communications at the Heritage Foundation.