I’m sure you were shocked, but likely not surprised, that Paris suffered another terror attack this year. After all, terrorists won’t stop if given the opportunity to continue their attacks. And unfortunately, the politics of Europe as well as those of the United States afford them plenty of opportunity.

Most European countries are part of what is known as the “Schengen Area” which is a collective of 26 European countries that have decided to eliminate passport and immigration controls at their borders. Within this zone, the people of these 26 European nations are free to travel as if the zone is one single country sharing the same travel rights. This probably sounds like a bad idea to you. Well, it is.

Terrorists have taken advantage of the open borders of Europe to travel to areas where they wish to do harm. Posing as a Syrian refugee, at least one of the Paris bombers travelled through Greece and then made his way to France. Unfortunately for those countries in the Schengen Area, their lack of border controls is a weakness that will continue to be exploited. Immediately after the Paris attacks, the president of France re-instituted border controls as an emergency measure.

Lessons from 9/11 Forgotten
Meanwhile, here in America, our experience on 9/11 seems to have been forgotten by our elected officials. We have porous land and sea borders that see tens of thousands of illegal crossings per year. Who exactly are these people are and where do they come from? What are their reasons for being here?

These are logical questions that any nation seeking to protect itself should ask.

Elizabeth Crowley Votes to protect Illegal Aliens who have committed a crime

Yet, instead of being concerned about this, our elected officials would prefer to protect those coming into and staying in this country illegally. Our City Council, including our own council member, Elizabeth Crowley, voted in favor of a law that prevents the Department of Corrections from sharing immigration status information of those arrested with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This prevents ICE from taking the proper steps of repatriating them or at least getting to the bottom of whether or not they pose a threat to the United States. Withholding information from the people in charge of protecting us provides absolutely no benefit to the American people.

The City Council and the Mayor then took it a step further and offered those here illegally the opportunity to obtain city sanctioned ID cards that provide them with greater access to public buildings.
Has our government gone insane? Have we forgotten that the 9/11 terrorists overstayed their student visas, the government lost track of their whereabouts and then they inflicted the worst terrorist attack in NYC history?

Shouldn’t our elected officials have learned an important lesson from 9/11 and subsequent worldwide terrorist attacks and be imposing stricter identification requirements for entering and staying in this country? Sadly, constituents raising concerns over these policies always seem to evoke the knee-jerk false cry of “You’re anti-immigrant!” from their Democratic overlords when they are simply anti-getting blown up.

Bad guys only have to do everything right once

Continuing down this road will only serve to endanger New Yorkers and all Americans. The bad guys only have to do everything right once in order to inflict mass damage, so it’s imperative that all levels of government be on the same page and work together to prevent terror attacks. We certainly don’t need our local leaders passing legislation that makes it easier for jihadists to invade and kill us. Ultraliberal immigration policies do just that, as Europe recently and unfortunately just discovered. Accepting migrants from ISIS-controlled countries without thoroughly vetting them proved to be disastrous for France. Our elected officials should take a lesson from this mistake and repeal their misguided sanctuary city policies which imperil American lives.