Opinion

The Immigration Debate Needs To Take Into Account All The Numbers On Terror

REUTERS/Francois Mori/Pool

Katie Frates Editor-in-chief of The Daily Walkthrough
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Immigrants are the “promise of America,” and as long as they only kill foreigners, Democrats are happy to welcome them to the U.S.

Trump signed an executive order Jan. 27 limiting immigration from seven Middle Eastern countries and indefinitely suspending Syrian refugees from entering the country. Protesters quickly gathered at airports across to protest Trump’s executive order, which he defended Jan. 29 as “not a Muslim ban.” Protesters described it as an attack on American values, tradition, the Constitution and Christianity.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied Trump’s appeal to overturn a district court ruling that temporarily halts enforcement of certain parts of his executive order. It argued that, “The Government has pointed to no evidence that any alien from any of the countries named in the Order has perpetrated a terrorist attack in the United States.”

That’s great news for the left, who urgently pointed out that none of the countries Trump paused immigration from — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen — have carried out fatal terrorist attacks in America.

The Atlantic’s Uri Friedman wrote, “Nationals of the seven countries singled out by Trump have killed zero people in terrorist attacks on U.S. soil between 1975 and 2015. Zero.”

“There have been zero fatal terror attacks on U.S. soil since 1975 by immigrants from the seven Muslim-majority countries President Donald Trump targeted with immigration bans on Friday, further highlighting the needlessness and cruelty of the president’s executive order,” The Huffington Post’s Christopher Mathlas wrote.

Thank goodness Somali refugee Abdul Razak Ali Artan didn’t manage to stab anyone to death when he carried out a terrorist attack at Ohio State University in November. If he had, it would make it a terrorist attack the left is forced to acknowledge.

God bless Somali terrorist Dahir Ahmed Adan‘s terrible aim, too. He went on a stabbing spree in St. Cloud, Minn., Sept. 9 and was killed by an off-duty police officer. He failed to kill anyone.

The FBI charged 10 Somali Americans in 2016 for allegedly conspiring to join Islamic State — before they had a chance to execute a terror attack.

People from these countries have, however, done a good job of harming and killing outside the U.S. Syria is home to Islamic State and Al-Nusra Front, and has some trouble stopping terrorists from blowing up car bombs in its capital. ISIS hangs out in Libya, too, along with at least three other foreign terrorist organizations designated by the secretary of state. A car bomb blew up a Libyan police training center in 2016, killing 65. Somalia has to deal with Al-Shabaab, which slaughtered 67 and injured upwards of 175 at Westgate mall in Kenya in 2013. Twenty died and 17 were wounded when the group attacked a restaurant in Somalia’s capital of Mogadishu. ISIS committed a terror attack that killed 43 in Yemen.

A Libyan terrorist helped blow up Pan Am 103 in 1988, an attack that killed 270, 189 of whom were American. That didn’t happen in America or after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, though, so their deaths don’t count.

Seventy-two individuals that came to the U.S. as either immigrants or refugees from those seven countries are convicted terrorists since after 9/11, the Center for Immigration Studies explained. Three were convicted of using weapons of mass destruction, and 25 of the 72 eventually became American citizens.

Twenty are from Somalia, 19 from Yemen, 19 from Iraq, seven from Syria, four from Iran, two from Libya and one from Sudan.

And don’t forget that Iran is the biggest state sponsor of terrorism, followed by Sudan and Syria.

The message this sends is that Democrats don’t care if immigrants commit terrorism overseas, they just can’t murder anyone once they’re welcomed into America. The logic goes like this: Terrorism in other countries doesn’t mean there’ll be terrorism in America. People from these countries commit terrorism around the world, sure, but they don’t commit terrorism in America, so it’s OK to bring them in. That logic relies heavily on the assumption of “if, not when.”

Perhaps there aren’t more attacks in American, in part, because we’ve got a big ocean between us and them.

Well, what happens once they’re let in? There’s this idea that behavior and mentality are going to change once someone steps on American soil, as if our culture, values and beliefs will override everything a person has been taught to believe since infancy.

There’s another idea that any terror attacks that do occur are worth it for the net benefit the rest of the immigrants and refugees bring. “Foreign-born terrorism is a hazard,” Cato immigration expert Alex Nowrasteh reasoned to Friedman, “but it is manageable given the huge economic benefits of immigration and the small costs of terrorism.”

The “small costs” are actually in the billions, according to the Institute of Economics and Peace. It estimated that terrorism cost us $52 billion in short-term costs in 2014. When looking at long-term costs, that number shoots up into the trillions.

Liberals are continuing to hammer the identity politics that lost them the presidency in the first place. They push the narrative of a civil rights battle that places the priority on non-Americans over Americans, and it’s all based on a gamble that there will never be a fatal terror attack in America committed by someone from one of those seven countries. (RELATED: Democrats Have Already Forgotten The People That Cost Them The Election)

Democrats say all people should be treated like Americans and afforded our same rights. If they treated actual Americans half as well as the foreigners they want to bring in, maybe they’d start winning elections.

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