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 for National 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.
Also, this week at Imagine 2050:
Despite a major defeat in Florida last week, David Yerushalmi has emerged as the Kris Kobach of the Islamophobia movement, drafting anti-Sharia legislation all over the country.
Strengthening ties between the Tanton Network – leaders in the anti-immigrant movement – and white nationalism, KC McAlpin shares immigration “facts” with white nationalist publication, American Free Press.
Polls show that Americans are nearly evenly split on the matter of gun control.
A closer look at how journalists and pundits politicized the Boston Bombings, using it as a platform to promote bigotry and misinformation