Obama’s ‘American Citizen’ Terrorist Defense Distracts from Problem: Too Much Immigration

By Joe Guzzardi
June 15, 2016
 
President Obama is fuming at his outspoken critics who have concluded, based on ample evidence, that his plan to defeat ISIS isn’t working, either abroad or at home. As Donald Trump said, Obama is madder at him for his “partisan rhetoric” than at Orlando terrorist shooter Omar Mateen.
 
In fact, Obama is apparently too irate at Trump to show sympathy for Orlando’s 49 murdered and 53 wounded. In the days immediately following the slaughter, the President didn’t make a sympathetic phone call to Florida Gov. Rick Scott or Attorney General Pam Bondi. Lack of communication between the Oval Office and Florida is par for the course. Last year, claiming privacy rights, the White House refused to share with Florida law enforcement any information about the Syrian refugees the state was ordered to resettle.
 
Instead of comforting the families and friends of Orlando victims and pledging to support Florida’s leadership, Obama held a petulant press conference. He chastised Americans for what he perceives as their negative attitudes toward Muslims, asked “what difference” using the term “radical Islam” would make and defended his increasingly vulnerable refugee admissions policies that may bring more death and mayhem, not unlike what was unleashed on Americans in Orlando, Boston, Fort Hood and San Bernardino.
 
Nationwide, about 100 Syrian Muslims arrive daily as part of Obama’s accelerated resettlement plan, despite warnings from the Department of Homeland Security, FBI and the National Counterterrorism Force that it’s impossible to properly vet them.
 
To distract from the main argument that resettling 10,000 more Muslim refugees before the 2016 fiscal year end puts Americans at risk, Obama pointed out that Mateen, Nidal Malik Hasan and Syed Farook – the Orlando, Fort Hood and one of the San Bernardino shooters, respectively – had American citizenship. But Obama purposefully misdirects from the main flaw: too many immigrants from too many terrorist-sponsoring nations have been and continue to be admitted, and some of their U.S.-born children become radicalized.
 
According to former CIA director Michael Hayden, immigrants’ second-generation children create “high stress” national security situations because they’re neither anchored in their new culture nor in their parents’ traditional values. As a result, said Hayden, children like Mateen, Hasan and Farook grow up unsuccessfully searching for their identities, and not embracing America’s values. From 2000-2010, the U.S. Muslim population increased significantly. The U.S. Religion Census found that during the last decade, the Muslim population in Orlando and St. Lucie Country, where Mateen lived, increased 200 percent.
 
The first step toward curbing terrorism from within is to adopt an immigration policy that protects Americans. That means not continuing to admit a record number of immigrants, regardless of their country of origin.
 
During 2013-2014, the U.S. accepted 3.1 million legal and illegal immigrants. All legal immigrants, including 3.3 million Muslims already living in the U.S., are granted permanent residency, and the Department of Homeland Security essentially now ignores unlawful aliens. Immigration and Customs Enforcement statistics show that deportations from the interior, defined as aliens arrested by ICE deportation officers and special agents and not those returned from the border, are in steep decline from 236,000 since Obama’s inauguration to 72,000 last year, a 70 percent decline during the seven years of his administration. It would be folly to think that terrorists are not among them.
 
Obama has embarked on a worldwide, legacy-enhancing tour traveling to Cuba, Vietnam and Saudi Arabia. But acknowledging the truth about the failure to contain ISIS, his willingness to allow potential murderers to mingle among the innocent and his lack of a well-defined strategy to defeat the enemy would improve Obama’s public image more than global travels.
 

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Joe Guzzardi is a Senior Writing Fellow with Californians for Population Stabilization. Contact him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @joeguzzardi19.