20 years have passed since the devastating 9/11 terror attacks and the US still doesn’t seem to have learned the principal lesson behind these attacks.
According to John Binder of Breitbart News, “The United States has awarded green cards to nearly 300,000 foreign nationals from countries where the September 11, 2001 hijackers came from since 2002.”
For those with short-term memory, 19 Islamic terrorists killed almost 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001. 15 of the hijackers came to the US legally with Saudi Arabian visas while the other hijackers were nationals from Lebanon, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates.
According to data from the Department of Homeland Security, ever since the 9/11 attacks, approximately 283,000 nationals from the countries of the hijackers have received green cards that would put them on the path to naturalized American citizenship.
Binder highlighted how little the government has done to curtail migration from a region that is notorious for its terrorist activity:
For instance, in the year after 9/11, about 10,300 foreign nationals from Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates were given green cards to permanently resettle in the U.S. By 2006, that number had grown to more than 17,100 foreign nationals given green cards.
In 2019, the last year from which data is available, more than 16,100 foreign nationals from 9/11 hijacker countries were awarded green cards.
Seven of the 9/11 hijackers came to the US on visas or became visa overstays prior or during the time of the terrorist attacks. On paper, these hijackers should have been detained or deported after overstaying their visas, but they never ended up having to go through such procedures.
Sadly, 9/11 was the intersection of two terrible sets of policies — mass immigration and foreign policy interventionism — that produced one of the worst tragedies in American history. For America to be truly secure, it should have a restrained foreign policy that limits blowback and a secure border to keep potential terrorists and subversives from penetrating the country.
