Supreme Court's “public charge” ruling again aids and abets not on its "merits" but the Trump administration’s well-established racist motivations, influenced by known purveyors of hate—like Jason Richwine

The latest asinine claim by the “Stop Bernie” movement is that while he may be able to beat Donald Trump, Sander's ideas are too “radical” to be converted into actual policy. Let me remind voters that since 2010, both Barack Obama and Trump have been promulgating policy via executive order—and as long we have divided government, that is the way things are going to be regardless of who is elected in 2020. The difference in electing any Democrat over Trump is that the executive branch will (presumably) practice more humane policies. That includes overturning the U.S. Supreme Court’s vote along ideological lines to allow the Trump administration’s denial of visas and Green cards to individuals based on the administration’s “definition” of who qualifies as being a  “public charge.” Bernie Sanders immediately denounced the ruling, pointing out that his own immigrant forebears, like that of the vast majority of white Americans, arrived in this country without a red cent to their names or immediate job prospects—and no “papers.” Even after the 1924 immigration law, millions of immigrants from Europe (especially from Italy) who still came into the country illegally benefited from a 1929  amnesty program  that continued for more than 20 years, only ended because the flow of immigration from Europe had at that time slowed to a trickle. 

I think it is a fairly safe bet that amongst Sander’s first batch of executive orders if he is elected president is to overturn this “rule,” which has nothing to do with “merit,” but wealth and racial and ethnic prejudice. We know this because of the public pronouncements of Trump and the well-established white nationalism and unabashed racist attitudes of the rule’s principle architect, Stephen Miller. It is ironic that Miller as a Jew would invoke the “public charge” shibboleth, given its infamous history during the FDR administration; in order to stop a “tide” of immigrants fleeing the horrors of Nazi Europe, it used the “liable to be a public charge” policy to prevent mostly Jews trying to escape death from reaching our shores, based on Anglo prejudice and stereotypes. It is interesting to note that while the heads of the major motion picture studios at the time were Jewish, they were reluctant to call attention to the plight of the Jews in Nazi Europe on screen, because they did not want to stir-up “resentment” from the public at large (even in the film The Life of Emile Zola, which focused on the French author’s fight for justice on behalf of Alfred Dreyfus, there was only one  easily missed reference to the fact that Dreyfus was Jewish).

The infamy of the “public charge” rule after the full horrors of the Nazism were revealed led to a certain amount of shame and guilt that would lessen its use on determining immigration status. People come to this country with the expectation of finding something “better” than in the place they left, and that hasn’t changed. That includes Latin Americans, especially Central Americans whose countries and people were, as Gen. Smedley Butler candidly admitted back in 1935, beaten into submission to be more “pliable” for American corporate interests; when those corporations were done squeezing whatever profit they could, they left those countries even more impoverished than they were before. Today, under the CAFTA trade agreement—which Trump doesn’t attack because the U.S. has a large trade surplus from it, little has changed. Despite the fact that altogether the Central American countries have a much smaller consumer base than the U.S., they import more than the U.S. does from them, which of course means that CAFTA has provided far fewer jobs for Central Americans than promised—let alone living wage jobs. In fact, the “banana republic” days have only been “reborn” under CAFTA, in which American companies operating in those countries have been permitted to establish virtual fiefdoms under their own rules encompassing large swaths of territory, where those countries own labor laws have no effect. Rather than providing living wages, U.S. companies operating in Central America have only entrenched poverty in those countries—and given life to violent drug gangs.

There are white nationalist types who avoid the question by asserting that all migrants have to do  to come to this country is to do it the “right way.” In reality, under the Trump administration, it is all but impossible for Central American immigrants to come to this country “legally.” It isn’t just that the wait time could take decades longer that immigrants from what Trump would call “non-shithole” countries, but those seeking asylum were at first only allowed to apply two or three at time daily from holding camps to make their claims before an immigration judge, and few have gotten past that hurdle. Now, the Trump administration has stopped even that with the “agreement”—or rather, economic blackmail—of Central American countries to serve as asylum destinations. What has happened is that asylum seekers in the U.S. have flown to any one of these countries that all have the same issues of violence and poverty—providing a false “choice” for asylum seekers. 

But let’s go back to why the Trump administration has gone all-out to prevent a single Hispanic immigrant to legally enter the country. We know that the chief architect of its policy is Stephen Miller, and we know from his Breitbart emails that he has a particular hatred toward Hispanics, not just immigrants but generally. Those whose information he requires to justify to himself his race hate are organizations and persons who have a well-established reputation for disseminating racial and anti-immigrant hate. One of those people that Miller is especially fond of is one Prof. Jason Richwine, who traffics in the kind of eugenics and scientific racism theories that the Nazis used to “justify” the “purification” of Europe and create a playground for the “master race.” 

Richwine first gained notoriety when the Heritage Foundation fired him after the news media uncovered  his Harvard dissertation. The dissertation was entitled “IQ and Immigration Policy” and is available as a PDF download for your “edification.” First off, Richwine is an avowed white nationalist and it is clear that his intention with the paper was to reinforce his own racist beliefs. You know when someone focuses their entire attention on one group to demonize, the only explanation is an in-bred bigotry against that group. Richwine’s dissertation was from first to last a justification to stop all immigration from Latin America, using as a "rationalization"  his belief on their alleged "low IQ.” First, IQ tests are in many ways fraudulent since they don’t really measure “intelligence,” but rote memory. I remember a line from a song by the 70s funk group War: “Sometimes I don’t speak right, but yet I know what I’m talking about.” You don’t need a 180 IQ to build the offices or homes that “high IQ” people work or live in, or put food on their table, which such people are too “big” to do themselves. 

Like Miller and other white nationalists, Richwine believes that Hispanics are the principle “threat” to white hegemony (they are not—east Asians and Indians are), and in order to combat this, he needed to apply racial and ethnic stereotypes which he hoped to prove  by employing debunked pseudo-science and eugenics theories. He asserts that Hispanics as a group (not as individuals) will “never” achieve IQ gains sufficient to “compete” with whites, even though they are not necessarily “competing” for the same jobs—and take it from me, you have can have a university degree and people still only wish to believe that you are only capable of doing the most menial labor based on “appearance.”  Richwine even asserts that second and third generation Hispanics are “less” intelligent than their immigrant forbears; this is an absurd thesis, although the next logical assumption is that this is proof that environmental and “nurturing” factors (like racial prejudice and indifference by teachers) is a factor in how “intelligence” should be evaluated.

I was particularly “amused” by Richwine’s obvious ignorance about military aptitude tests, which took up a great deal of space in his dissertation.  I have taken the tests on three different occasions during my time in the military, so I know something about them.  Richwine attempted to make his table of comparisons between “native whites” and Hispanic immigrants as obtuse as possible, employing nonsense “standard differentials” that no lay person (like Stephen Miller) or even the three faculty members who signed off on the dissertation could understand, but the admitted “looked” impressive. Richwine clearly was unaware of what the AFQT “score” actually is, likening it to an “IQ” test, which it is not. On the ASVAB test the closest approximation of an “IQ” score is the GT, or “general technical” test score. The AFQT “score” is actually a percentile rank among all test-takers during a particular time period; if your percentile rank is 80, that means you scored higher that 79 percent of the other test-takers. My AFQT “scores,” went from 86 when I first enlisted out of high school, to 94 on the third test after I graduated from college. Interestingly, my highest GT score—135—came on the second test I took when I reenlisted, with an AFQT score of 88. Richwine makes some rather tortured claims about how the AFQT “fits” in the intelligence evaluation game that make no sense whatever. 

Like all white racists, Richwine will “elevate” Asians against other minority groups if it suits a racist end, even if they don’t really accept that Asians are “superior” to whites. We can surmise that certain Asian “ethnicities” have elevated abilities at rote memory, but it is well-established that in east Asian countries the quality of schooling is superior than in most countries. This is probably true of European education compared to this country’s as well. It is ironic that Hispanics who speak both Spanish and English and regarded as less “intelligent” than the vast majority of whites in this country who can only speak one language. Europeans are far more likely to be bilingual than whites; does that mean that white Americans are less intelligent than white Europeans?  How many languages does Trump know? How about Miller? If they only know English, what makes them any “smarter” than people who speak two languages, as most Hispanics immigrants do? 

Richwine ignores such questions, and he never stops to consider that many occupations that some groups fill that others refuse to do, do not require IQs of 150, whatever such a “score” actually means in real life. He also doesn’t even bother to consider that a substantial percentage of white people are not “high IQ,” and not all Hispanics (or blacks, for that matter who actually rate even lower on his scale) are “low IQ.” Like any white nationalist and racist, he lumped racial groups in his preconceived notions of “worth,” and his final “evaluation” is that Hispanics should not be allowed into the country because they are, well, not “intelligent” enough. 

Of course, given the racist nature of his dissertation is a fair question to ask who approved it for his doctoral degree. To begin with, he “earned” this degree from the Harvard’s Kennedy School of Public Policy. Yes, this is the same Harvard University that recently denied tenure to Prof. Lorgia Garcia-Pena, because of what many believe is Harvard’s belief that her “ethnic studies” courses were not important enough to suit the university’s elevated vision of itself. Yet the three committee members who approved his dissertation as acceptable to receive a doctoral degree seemed either blind to or otherwise not particularly disturbed by its blatantly racist nature. One member of the committee, George Borjas, admitted that he “didn’t find IQ academic work all that interesting,” but that didn’t stop him from signing off on it, probably because he approved of its call to limit immigration, a subject he frequently wrote about for the National Review. 

Another  was Richard Zeckhauser’s area of expertise is in investing, but he was “impressed” by the “empirical” work that he clearly did not understand, but looked like it had to mean “something.” One thing that he missed that others did not was that in evaluating the “intelligence” of Hispanic immigrants, Richwine used small, clearly cherry-picked for “low intelligence” sample groups. Zeckhauser did note that he was somewhat disturbed by Richwine’s eagerness to “extrapolate his empirical results to inferences for policy.” The third person to sign-off on Richwine’s dissertation was an alleged “social liberal” named Christopher Jencks. His only excuse for himself was that he came on late in the proceedings, was not there to approve of his thesis, and was “satisfied” that Richwine had made minor word changes that he had suggested.

Richwine went on to blame “low IQ” for breeding “societal mistrust.” What exactly he meant by that is unclear. Was he saying that the belief that Hispanics are “dumb” and thus more prone to “car prowling” breeds “distrust” in them by whites? Makes you wonder who the “dumb” people really are. A UK study, on the other hand, showed that a bigger problem was that racism is most prevalent among “low IQ” white people, and it is ironic that in the end, the chief “audience” for Richwine’s “thesis” are either those policy makers with a white nationalist agenda, or “low IQ” whites. Richwine concluded his dissertation by declaring that “From the perspective of Americans alive today, the low average IQ of Hispanics is effectively permanent.” And Harvard saw fit to “approve” a Ph. D for this disgusting, despicable creature? And someone who is one of the principle influences not just on Stephen Miller’s racist immigration policies, but his racist beliefs generally?

We need someone in the White House who has a record of common human decency. I don’t think that person is Joe Biden, and I don’t think it is someone who passes herself off as a “minority” to take jobs from real minorities.