Smearing CIS

I've been following the work of the Center for Immigration Studies since the mid-1990s. They regularly publish empirical research on immigration, and I happen to be friends with both the head of the center, Mark Krikorian, and its research director, Steve Camarota. So it is with bizarre fascination that I watch from afar as the Southern Poverty Law Center attempts to tarnish what CIS does.

In fact, CIS has made it possible for me to disseminate my technical research to a much wider audience. At least two or three times, I have taken some of my technical work, rewritten it in English, and this readable version has been distributed as a CIS backgrounder. It seems to me that the smearing effort's objective is simply to silence a group that has been an influential critic of current immigration policy.

A labor economist friend--who is very well known in the profession--was once doing some research and asked me if I knew of any other credible data on a particular topic aside from the one that had been published in a backgrounder authored by Steve Camarota. He then added that he trusted the factual evidence that CIS publishes in its internally produced backgrounders. Why, I asked. For a very simple reason, he said: there were tons of people out there trying to discredit CIS and it would really help their cause if CIS was sloppy in its empirical work. So he was pretty sure that the empirical evidence went through far more layers of check and double-check than the stuff that regularly comes out in academic journals.

Even if one disagrees with how CIS interprets the evidence, their research is credible, reliable, and in no way anti-Hispanic. In fact, I think it helps to inform the immigration debate. What's wrong with letting a thousand flowers bloom?

Comments

[Robert Oak]

I see this smear constantly in order to repress anyone from trying to read the actual CIS research papers. Of course most people cannot read research papers, so this name calling works.

The tactic goes like this:

1. you show the graph, data, equation which illustrates Post Docs, for example, are being wage repressed.

2. In response, you get this bizarre "history" (in your link), trying to connect up CIS to some hate group, never addressing at all the actual study findings.

3. You point to the research again. Point #2 is the response with more name calling and shouting and usually a personal attack. It's like a tautology or circular argument system which then degrades into some name calling black hole and the data or study results are buried in a blaze of insults and accusation, never to see the light of day.

I find it a sad, sad thing and almost an assault on scientific methodology, objectivity.

[MS]

I think it comes from the clear agenda of CIS and the fact that all research papers support it. Just like the clear agenda of La Raza and their "research" would support it.

The only difference being that CIS actually gathers factual/provable data and anaylzes it objectively...

[Continuous Ink Systems]

Given the huge interest in this topic I`ll be cranking up some more pointers on how to tackle this issue.

[Financece]

God spare us all from tikkun olam Jews. The rural white poor in this country, they despise. They no longer particularly like blacks because their self-loathing love was not requited. Right now they think they can patronize hispanics

[runescape gold]

Two thumbs up, well done!