The Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks – which killed nearly 3,000 Americans (and other nationalities) – may seem like yesterday’s news to some, but their impact remains today.
Indeed, 9/11 was a serious warning to America and the entire West of how terrorists and other bad actors wishing us harm can easily exploit our immigration systems.
And if the situation was dire in 2001, the threat of similar bloody terrorist attacks has increased considerably in the past 25 years due to large-scale mass migration into North America and Western Europe.
The unchecked mass migration crisis that has led us to this mess is the result of decades of naïveté, short-sightedness, imprudence, and – yes – outright betrayal of their own nations by the Western political and economic establishment.
In Western Europe, the origins trace back to the time following World War II. Mass migration was foisted upon reluctant Europeans through the now-all-too-familiar “we need workers” narrative, which may have had some merit after the destruction of the war but by now is just a self-serving plea for cheap foreign labor.
There was also the desire to emphasize the multi-ethnic unity of the British, French, Dutch and other empires by opening the doors to colonial subjects. In the 1960s and 1970s, this was reinforced by self-flagellation over colonialism, imperialism, racism, etc.
In the U.S., the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 – and subsequent legislation based upon it – opened the floodgates to unchecked mass migration from the Global South. This includes regions where radical Jihadism and Islamist terrorism – and other anti-Western ideologies which hate us and wish to do are harm – are rife.
The West’s immigration policies over the past several decades appear almost designed to import that which subverts, weakens, and threatens our societies.
As a result, when 9/11 happened – and shortly in its immediate aftermath – America and Western Europe faced a dangerous enemy within: a growing, unassimilated, Islamist-leaning Fifth Column that either supports anti-Western terrorism or finds excuses for it and looks the other way. Thus, when Bat Ye’or’s famous book, Eurabia, came out in 2005, the situation was already dire, with al-Qaeda having perpetrated major terrorist attacks in Europe, such as Madrid train bombings in 2004 and the 2005 London bombings. American and European national security and counter-terrorism services had their hands full, with mass migration having created the ocean in which the radical and terrorist fish swam.
In the short-run, especially when it came to counter-terrorism, Western governments took some lessons away from 9/11. There was even the “War on Terror” – in places like Afghanistan and Iraq – which not only cost a great deal of Western blood and treasure, but, paradoxically, brought many dangerous individuals we were supposed to be “fighting over there” over here.
However, from the 30,000-foot historical view, especially when it came to mass migration, the warning that was 9/11 – and the key takeaway – was largely ignored to our detriment.
The 9/11 terror attacks, and the grave threat posed by radical Jihadism in all its forms, were apparently not enough to implement a moratorium on mass migration from regions where Islamist-terrorist ideology and anti-Western hate are widespread. There were also no large-scale repatriations of radical Islamists who hate us and our civilization. Instead, mass migration from the Global South continued unabated in a business-as-usual fashion as if nothing had happened.
Rather than drawing realistic conclusions, Western political establishments in the years after 9/11 doubled down on a politically correct self-delusion. One which denied that the radical Islam which enables and gives birth to Islamist terrorism has anything at all do with mass migration from Muslim-majority nations.
This was willful blindness, but pro-mass-migration politicians and intellectuals preferred to put their own fellow citizens’ lives and safety at risk rather than jeopardize the sacred cow that is the mass migration agenda.
As a result, Americans and Europeans must now contend with the threat of Islamist terror attacks as a modern-day “new normal.” Attacks in Solingen and Mannheim in Germany in 2024, Boulder, Colorado, and Manchester, U.K., in 2025, as well as the Berlin vehicle attack this July, are only a few recent examples of what mass migration has imported.
This is a slap in the face of the victims of 9/11 – and subsequent terrorist attacks – and a foolish failure to learn from them. But we should not be forced to live this way. We, the citizens of Western nations, refuse to be treated as acceptable collateral damage and sacrificed on the altar of a radical anti-borders globalist agenda.
Pawel Styrna is director of international relations at the Federation for American Immigration Reform. He is a legal immigrant and holds a Ph.D. in history from American University in Washington, D.C.
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