9/11 + 10: Time to Keep Extremists Out

By James R. Edwards, Jr. on September 11, 2011

Ten years after 9/11, there are still plenty of threats to America's security stemming directly from mass immigration. And there is still plenty of room for better ways for fighting the threat from ideologically dangerous foreigners.

Most prominently, al Qaeda is suspected of targeting New York and Washington around the September 11th 10-year remembrance ceremonies. Reported the New York Times, "the initial intelligence report described how at least three suspects, one of them an American citizen, had left Afghanistan and entered this country by air last month." As of this writing, these foreign terrorists remain at large.

From reports of this intelligence lead, we gather that most of these foreign terrorists have some kind of visa enabling them to enter the United States. This means some U.S. visa official okayed visas for terrorists. Thus, 10 years after 9/11 and seven years after the 9/11 Commission reported, the visa system remains terribly leaky and vulnerable to exploitation.

Also, one of the terrorists apparently has U.S. citizenship, making him or her guilty of treason. If this person holds dual citizenship, this exemplifies how allowing such divided loyalty facilitates dangerous consequences. Only in the mind of the politically correct would dual citizenship make any kind of sense.

This 9/11 plot is only the latest such exploitation of our immigration system by foreigners determined to use it against us. A Washington suburb harbored a Pakistani immigrant, 24-year-old Jubair Ahmad. He faces terrorism-related charges for allegedly making a jihadist recruitment video. Ahmad benefited from chain migration. His father's relative became a U.S. citizen and sponsored distant relatives in the chain migration visa categories. They arrived here well after 9/11, coming in 2007. Evidently, patriotic assimilation and old-fashioned Americanization weren't a top priority for the Ahmads.

Earlier this year, a Saudi Arabian on a student visa was nabbed in Texas for his Islamist-motivated bomb plot. Last year, a Somali Muslim extremist who'd naturalized as an American citizen had his terrorist bombing foiled in Oregon. Don't forget the foreign-born, radical Islamist Times Square bomber. Lax immigration laws enabled these and other security threats to get onto American soil.

Before our politicians' spines turned to jelly, we used to keep foreigners who hate America out of the country or, if they did get in, deport them. The long-standing policy is known as ideological exclusion. It was modestly revisited after 9/11, but not restored to its Cold War vigor. In an age of immigrants trying to force shariah on the Land of the Free, it's time we not worry so much about offending people who hate this country.

Because policymakers opted for politically correct security measures, all Americans – including grandmas and small children, native-born U.S. citizens in wheelchairs and in feeble condition – have to go through the cattle-prodding, one-size-fits-all charade that passes for "homeland security."

We now have to shed shoes and half our clothing, then pose for obscene X-ray undressing machines if we want to take a commercial flight. Millions of Americans have to go through groping and other indignities – in the name of homeland security – by strangers, despite the fact these victims don't fit any kind of criminal or terror suspect profile. Such faux-security measures cost millions of innocent Americans billions of wasted minutes and hours, not to mention the billions of wasted taxpayer dollars. (You know what TSA stands for? Thousands Standing Around.) This is insane.

Then there's the Ground Zero mosque proposal, which became a symbolic cause celebre, but it too exemplifies the lunacy we have allowed to gain steam post-9/11. There is good reason Americans consider Ground Zero hallowed ground and its lower Manhattan site exactly the wrong location for a mosque. The Muslim immigrant-inspired "build a mosque on Ground Zero" mentality represents just what's wrong with our politicians and with the overly generous immigration system that admits more than a million legal immigrants and a net half-million illegal aliens each year.

Clearly, 9/11 changed things in America. On that tragic date, we rediscovered our patriotic pride and a unity that had seemed absent for a good while. We witnessed the worst face of human evil and glowing examples of the minuteman ethic. Americans from all over and from all walks of life stepped up, doing what they personally could in that grim situation. While we all shared a fact-based fear, we weren't in terror, but adopted a firm resolve to conquer the foreign enemy who drew first blood.

We must join those recalling the sacrifice that happened on and since September 11, 2001. We must vow that such a heinous act of war shall never happen here again. Part of the solution and an essential precaution must necessarily be controlling immigration and putting the scrutiny on whom it belongs.