Washington, DC- The DREAM Action Coalition condemns Heritage President Jim Demint’s poor judgment for not firing Jason Richwine for his distasteful and unfounded “research” of Latinos and immigrants. It is not good enough that Mr. Richwine resigned as such decision implicates Mr. Demint agreement with Mr. Richwine’s extreme views.

We are urging Mr. Demint to step down as President of the Heritage foundation if the institution is to stand for principled conservative values rather than an institution that condones racial extreme views.

This attitude, blocking immigration from certain countries to create a more intelligent America, fits into society somewhere between Rep. Young casually dropping “wetback” in an interview and the Eugenics movement: it is a terrible throwback to a time where overt, institutionalized racism was sometimes justified by phrenology or other pseudoscientific means to keep entire races of people down.

It is bad enough that Heritage’s recent report has been found to be based on flawed assumptions and methodology, but now we are seeing a research staff with racial biases towards an issue that requires insight and objectivity. The last time the Heritage Foundation came out with a report in 2007, it was thoroughly debunked as being transparently wrong, or, as the conservative Cato Institute put it, “fatally flawed.”