How's That Republican Rebranding Coming Along? (Cont.)

Let's take a look at what's going on in Washington, DC, as the Rethugs try to "rebrand" their New Confederate/ Stupid party:

Utah Rethuglican Sen. Mike Lee has proposed an amendment to the immigration reform legislation currently being marked up.  His helpful proposal

... would allow undocumented immigrants to be lawfully employed -- but only only as domestic workers.

Lee's amendment would exempt undocumented immigrants working as "cooks, waiters, butlers, housekeepers, governessess, maids, valets, baby sitters, janitors, laundresses, furnacemen, care-takers, handymen, gardeners, footmen, grooms, and chauffeurs of automobiles for family use" from prohibitions against "unlawful employment" for undocumented immigrants. [our emphasis]

You've o.k. if you cut my lawn or wash the dishes!  Es muy blanco de ustedes!

Of course, that's only one of the egregious, insulting anti-immigrant amendments offered by Senate Rethuglicans;  check 'em all out!

But they aren't the only Rethuglicans out a-courtin' the Hispanic voters, no siree!  They've got the assembled brainpower of the right-wing Heritage Foundation to help them (and it's new president, former Senator and continuing crackpot Jim "Demented" DeMint).  Heritage recently put out a pile of shit report claiming immigration reform would be unacceptably costly.  Come to find one of the report's authors has some racist highly dubious ideas about intelligence:

The Heritage Foundation’s analysis of the economic consequences of immigration reform uses absurd methodology to come to conclusions entirely at odds with the organization’s own findings in 2006. Perhaps one explanation for this incoherence is that one of the paper’s coauthors, a new hire, opposes Hispanic immigration because he thinks Latinos are stupid.

Jason Richwine joined Heritage in 2010, after finishing his PhD in Public Policy in 2009. The Washington Post’s Dylan Matthews dug up Richwine’s dissertation, which was titled “IQ And Immigration.” In it, Richwine argues that Hispanics have and will always have lower IQs than whites. Matthews summarizes:

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.‘

Oh, Pancho!  Oh, Cisco!  Tambien es muy blanca!

Of course, Heritage and some other right-wingers are back-pedaling from Mr. Richwine.  But, as the bill is marked up in the Senate, it's hard to ignore the inherent racism and inhumanity of the Rethuglican proposals.  They seem to be in accord with Mr. Richwine's "thesis" in more than just a casual way.

UPDATE:  Mr. Richwine is now updating up his resume.