SPLC's Latest Shockeroo: Stephen Miller Cited Harvard Researcher George Borjas!
11/15/2019
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Emails Detail Miller’s Ties to Group That Touted White Nationalist Writers
November 14, 2019

White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller demonstrates a connection to an anti-immigrant think tank that promoted white nationalist writers, according to emails acquired by Hatewatch.

On Nov. 12, Hatewatch reported that Miller showed an affinity for white nationalist and other extremist thought in more than 900 previously private emails he sent to Breitbart News in the run-up to the 2016 election. At the time, Miller was an aide to then-U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama.

In those same correspondences, Miller shows ties to the think tank Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). CIS researchers say the White House has invited them into policymaking discussions. …

The SPLC began listing CIS as an anti-immigrant hate group in 2016. …

In 2017, McHugh was fired from Breitbart reportedly for posting anti-Muslim tweets amid backlash to that site’s connections to extremism. She has since renounced far-right politics. She shared the entire volume of her correspondences with Miller to Hatewatch, which span from March 2015 to June 2016, out of what she said was opposition to the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

In a keynote speech at a May 2015 CIS event, Miller credited the group for illuminating “a debate that far too often operates, like illegal immigrants, in the shadows.” …

Later that day, Miller sent McHugh an email with the subject line, “Camarota cell,” referring to Steven A. Camarota, CIS director of research. Camarota confirmed to Hatewatch that the cell phone number was his.

Miller cited writer behind controversial IQ study

The SPLC added CIS to its list of hate groups nearly three years ago, responding in part to the group’s willingness to associate with white nationalist writers. CIS bills itself as a “non-partisan, non-profit, research organization” that is “low-immigration, pro-immigrant,” but the SPLC and others have criticized it for using data to portray immigrants unfavorably.

Those haters use data.

… The late John Tanton, the father of the modern anti-immigrant movement, played a significant role in helping found CIS. In a 1985 grant prospectus, Tanton bemoaned the advances of what he called “pro-immigration” forces.

… In the following years, CIS frequently looked to the far right to help achieve its goals. A 2017 investigation by Hatewatch and civil rights group the Center for New Community determined the group sent white nationalist content to readers more than 2,000 times across nearly 10 years as a part of its weekly email blasts. The total included more than 1,700 links from the white nationalist website VDARE and at least three links from another white nationalist site, American Renaissance. VDARE and American Renaissance are also two white nationalist sources Miller recommended to Breitbart in the lead-up to the 2016 election.

CIS also published dozens of reports authored or co-authored by Jason Richwine, an anti-immigration author who was forced to resign from the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation in 2013 after the discovery of his controversial Harvard University dissertation. In his 2009 dissertation, “IQ and Immigration Policy,” Richwine argued that Hispanic people have lower IQs than whites, a finding that immigration advocates dismissed as racist. …

As recently as October, Richwine participated in a panel discussion hosted by CIS in which he and others discussed “the cost of granting health care benefits to illegal immigrants.”

On at least eight occasions in his emails to McHugh, Miller also referred to the work of Harvard economist George Borjas, a former CIS board member, who was Richwine’s primary adviser while writing his dissertation on race and IQ.

For example, Miller sent a link to Borjas’ study on the 1980 Mariel Boatlift of Cubans into Florida to McHugh in a Jan. 11, 2016, email marked with the subject line, “Harvard Professor Borjas: Mariel Boatlift Crashed Wages.” Some economists have criticized the professor’s research, which purported to show that migrant workers from poorer countries hurt native populations through the example of Cuban immigration in Florida.

The email is notable because on Aug. 2, 2017, now as an adviser to President Donald Trump, Miller cited Borjas’ study in the White House press room as an example of how immigration harms American workers.

“I think the most recent study I would point to is the study from George Borjas that he just did about the Mariel Boatlift,” Miller told reporters

[Comment at Unz.com]
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