The September 11 terrorist attacks that killed 2,977\npeople and injured more than 6,000 in New York, at the Pentagon, and outside of\nShanksville, Pennsylvania, may have occurred 18 years ago, but terrorism \u2013\nincluding its radical Islamist manifestation \u2013 remains a serious threat to the\nhomeland. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the 9\/11 Commission Report<\/a>,\n\u201cthe 9\/11 attacks revealed four kinds of failures: in imagination, policy,\ncapabilities, and management.\u201d It also revealed a fifth, no less important\nflaw: a failure on the part of our immigration system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The nineteen 9\/11\nhijackers<\/a> took advantage of our dysfunctional legal immigration\nsystem to harm Americans. All were foreign nationals, primarily from Saudi\nArabia, and all \u201centered the country legally on a temporary visa, mostly\ntourist visas with entry permits for six months. Although four of them attended\nflight school in the United States, only one is known to have entered on an\nappropriate visa for such study, and one entered on an F-1 student visa.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Since 9\/11, the U.S. has accepted at least 2\nmillion immigrants and refugees<\/a> from nations with links\nto radical Islamist terror organizations \u2013 such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS. And, as\nthe Pew Research Center shows, anti-Americanism is widespread in the Middle\nEast, even amongst people who are not connected to radical religious factions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The United States remains a target for radical\nelements in the Islamic world, as has been demonstrated by the string of terrorist\nacts that have been perpetrated since the 9\/11 attacks. During the past decade,\nassaults on the American way of life, such as the Boston Marathon bombing\n(April 2013) and the New York City truck attack (October 2017), reveal that many\ncountries in the Middle East, Eurasia, and North Africa pose a clear and\npresent terrorist threat to the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The United States would be foolish to ignore the clear\nconnection between immigration and terrorism. In spite of this, the advocates\nof open borders and mass immigration continually downplay the danger. For\ninstance, the Cato Institute argues that the odds of a person perishing in an\nattack by a foreign-born terrorist are extremely small and that there is \u201cno\nrelationship between stocks of immigrants and terrorism.\u201d This is misleading\nbecause many potential Islamist terrorist attacks \u2013 97<\/a>\nout of 114<\/a>,\naccording to the Heritage Foundation \u2013 were foiled by U.S. authorities. The\nodds argument is also insulting and offensive to the families of the victims of\nsuch attacks and reveals a nonchalant disregard for the safety of our citizenry.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n What can be done to avoid another 9\/11 and reduce the\nthreat of Islamist terrorism? The Trump administration has already implemented\nsome solutions, such as more thorough screening and vetting (so-called \u201cextreme\nvetting\u201d) and preventing people from states that sponsor and harbor terrorist\ngroups from traveling to the U.S. In addition, we must also reduce overall\nannual immigration numbers to a more sustainable level to make vetting more\nmanageable. That is why FAIR advocates bringing annual immigration numbers down\nfrom the current level of over 1 million per year to approximately 300,000. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Another step would be to eliminate the diversity visa\nlottery, which randomly selects up to 50,000 foreign nationals annually to\napply for permanent residency. Terrorists \u2013 including the 2017 New York city\ntruck attacker, Saifullo Saipov of Uzbekistan \u2013 came in via the visa\nlottery<\/a>; others arrived on the basis of family-based<\/a>\n\u201cchain migration,\u201d which should also be reduced. Furthermore, the Trump\nadministration should continue to regulate refugee admissions based on our\ncapacity to thoroughly vet people from terrorist hot spots. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As far as the safety of the American people is\nconcerned, national security must take precedence over the niceties of\npolitical correctness. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The September 11 terrorist attacks that killed 2,977 people and injured more than 6,000 in New York, at the Pentagon, and outside of Shanksville, Pennsylvania, may have occurred 18 years ago, but terrorism \u2013 including its radical Islamist manifestation \u2013 remains a serious threat to the homeland. According to the 9\/11 Commission Report, \u201cthe 9\/11<\/p>\n