Above: the man at the center of the storm, Jason Richwine, speaks in July 2008: "On The Importance of Race and IQ in the Immigration Debate." Below: an excerpt from Jennifer Rubin's column in the Washington Post.
...[T]he Heritage Foundation is in a tailspin. To Politico and then to me, Heritage’s vice president of of communications, Mike Gonzales, denied that he or Heritage has hired acrisis management firm. If not, Heritage should. More details about the unsavory work of one of its anti-immigration report authors are coming to light. Chris Moody reports: “Heritage Foundation analyst Jason Richwine, the co-author of a study claiming the immigration reform bill pending in the Senate would cost taxpayers $6.3 trillion, wrote two articles in 2010 for a website founded by Richard Spencer, a self-described ‘nationalist’ who writes frequently about race and against “the abstract notion of human equality.”
Another report suggests that “Richwine is not the only scholar conservative immigration opponents in the current debate have relied on and who’ve published eyebrow-raising views in the past. The Heritage Richwine snafu will bring fresh scrutiny to other scholars, immigration advocates said.”
Former vice president of research Burton Pines is also denouncing Heritage’s work. He is quoted as saying; “It’s a new Heritage and it’s one that’s not standing by the principles of Ronald Reagan. I’m puzzled why they came out with this study and I’m more puzzled why they seem to be against immigration.”
In a word, it’s a mess. Only four months on the job, former senator Jim DeMint, who came to Heritage with no scholarly credentials, is caught in a firestorm of Heritage’s own making. A backlash that tarnishes the report and anti-immigrant forces more generally may undermine opponents of the Gang of Eight. But to the extent it raises questions about whether Heritage is still a respected think tank (and not a political oppo center), DeMint will find himself under the gun. A conservative scholar at another think tank emailed me, “I just don’t understand why [former president Ed] Feulner among others did not see this disaster coming.” More conservatives will be asking the same thing, I imagine. [Full article]