05/08/2013
Robert Rector and Jason Richwine weighed in on what amnesty will cost the American taxpayer in The Fiscal Cost of Unlawful Immigrants and Amnesty to the U.S. Taxpayer, May 6, 2013. Today I saw this on Twitter:
We should actually let in MORE low-IQ immigrants. #WonkBlogPitches washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog…
— Sonny Bunch (@SonnyBunch) May 8, 2013
Sonny Bunch is being sarcastic about this, but this was the actual position of the late pro-immigration wonk Richard Nadler. Himself the descendent of high-IQ immigrants, he argued, in NRO that the fact that poor Mexicans cost the American taxpayer money was no reason to not import them. See my posts
In any case, what the Washington Post’s Dylan Matthews is doing here is attacking Richwine for protesting immigration reform. Richwine’s thesis was called “IQ and Immigration Policy”, and points out that the US is getting low-IQ immigrants, who cost money.
The Post is in point-and-splutter mode:
Richwine’s dissertation asserts that there are deep-set differentials in intelligence between races. While it’s clear he thinks it is partly due to genetics — “the totality of the evidence suggests a genetic component to group differences in IQ” — he argues the most important thing is that the differences in group IQs are persistent, for whatever reason. He writes, “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.”
The Post seems to feel that it’s wrong to say that different races have different IQs. My position is that if you think different races have exactly the same IQ, then you have to prove it.
in criticizing Nadler for his belief that modern poor immigrants were America’s future, I wrote that
It’s all part of the fantasy that we're repeating the experience of New York in 1908. In the early 20th century we had Irish, Jewish, Italian,Scandinavian, and Asian immigrants. Most of their descendants are net taxpayers, and the grandsons of the Jewish and Asian immigrants are doctors and engineers. We are not going to get a large number of doctors and engineers out of the children of Mexican immigrants, most of whom don’t graduate high school. We are going to get barrios, colonias, and participants in the Food Stamp Program.
In any case, what the Post is doing is the rhetorical fallacy called "Poisoning the Well". They're saying that no one should listen to Richwine about the cost of legalizing millions of minimum wage, low IQ illegals because his dissertation is evil.
What we can say is that people ought to listen to Richwine, because his dissertation shows he’s an expert.
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