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The Canadian Threat to America

John McCallum, Canada’s minister of immigration, refugees and citizenship, announces the country’s plan to resettle 25,000 Syrian refugees.

Donald Trump’s strict opposition to illegal immigration from Mexico and Central America earned him the undying enmity of America’s Leftist elite and the unquestioning allegiance of many working-class Americans. These workers have endured declining economic opportunity in part because illegal immigrants depress wages.

But illegal immigration from south of the border is not the only immigration we should be worried about.

Turns out, the real threat to U.S. prosperity and security emanates from the otherwise bucolic northern border with Canada.

You’re probably skeptical right now. How could the land of maple syrup and elk—a long-time American ally, no less—actually pose a serious threat to America?

The answer lies with the open border policies of Socialist Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Whereas Republicans in the U.S. Congress have prevented President Obama from accepting tens of thousands of Syrian refugees, the Canadian government has abandoned caution and embarked on what the Guardian of London has described as “one of the largest refugee resettlement movements in Canadian history.”

Since the beginning of 2016, the Canadians have dutifully accepted close to 36,000 Syrian refugees (all classified as “children,” even though a large number are neither children nor Syrian) with many more on the way. Meanwhile, FBI Director James Comey testified before Congress that U.S. intelligence agencies had virtually no way to verify who, exactly, these refugees are.

If the Intelligence Community doesn’t know who these people are, how can the Canadians possibly know who they’re letting in their country? Canada, after all, relies heavily on U.S. intelligence.

The answer, of course, is they haven’t the slightest idea. They’ve put their faith in left-wing globalization policies that have done so much damage to the Western world.

The Canadian authorities have embraced these refugees as readily as their counterparts in Germany, France, and Belgium. And to what end? Since accepting the massive influx of purported war refugees, those European countries have experienced a massive increase in terrorism and violent crime. Lawlessness has come to dominate the cradle of Western civilization, as local security forces are too afraid to enforce laws out of fear of being labeled “Islamophobic.” Meanwhile, host governments expand the number of refugees they accept.

Canadian policy toward so-called refugees is similarly blinkered. The same rampant immigration from the Islamic world that is destabilizing much of Europe will soon threaten to destabilize our otherwise amicable neighbor to the north. Since the 1940s, Canada has seen a steady increase in its Muslim population. With that population growth has come a commensurate rise in Islamist ideology. Canada has rapidly become a bastion for Islamist political thought in the Western Hemisphere. Free speech laws designed to protect Canada’s minority populations have been fashioned into a cudgel by Canadian jihadists. Sharia law is also a very real issue that Canadian officials need to worry about. Right now, it is but a hairsbreadth away from being accepted in Canada. Trudeau’s foolish refugee policy will only exacerbate those trends—and that, in turn, will threaten our interests and the safety of our people.

Thus far, the chaos that Europe has largely inflicted upon itself has remained largely confined to that side of the Atlantic. Yet, here come the Canadians to erase that natural barrier between the United States and that other continent.

Truth is, immigration policy is far too lax throughout the West. For instance, refugees flooding across our southern border are not simply fleeing the violence of drug cartels in Mexico (or seeking work). They aren’t primarily seeking refuge from the chaos in Venezuela, or the repressive Cuban regime, either. In many cases, interspersed with these refugees also are thousands of Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, and other people from countries that are home to Islamic extremism.

Now, we can add Canada as another potential source of Islamic radicalism in the Americas.

The United States has thus far managed to avoid Canada and Western Europe’s fate. But as Canada increases its refugee population, it is only a matter of time before that population begins creeping down toward the United States. As we’ve seen in Europe, it is a gross misnomer to refer to many of these groups as “refugees.” In many cases, the people comprising these refugee flows are military-aged males who have questionable connections with radical groups. Indeed, most of the European terror attacks in the last few years have been perpetrated by jihadists posing as refugees.

In 1999, for instance, Ahmed Ressam was arrested by U.S. authorities for his role in the foiled Millennium Plot. Ressam was an asylum seeker who fled from Algeria and ended up living in Montreal (a purported hotbed of Islamism in North America). Later, he flew to Afghanistan and became a member of al Qaeda. Upon the completion of his training, Ressam returned to Canada with plans to launch a devastating attack on Los Angeles International Airport. He crossed the U.S.-Canadian border where he was promptly arrested.

We got lucky that time. But, as 9/11 proved, luck eventually runs out—particularly when no one takes the threat of Islamic radicalism seriously.

After eight years, the federally sanctioned political correctness on border enforcement and terrorism have left us vulnerable once again. For all President-elect Trump’s talk about building a wall and bolstering security along the southern border, he needs to understand that the United States is threatened from the north as well.

Canada may be our friend, but not when it comes to immigration.

All in all, the incoming Trump Administration needs to recognize that it must defend America from bad Canadian immigration policy as vigorously as it seeks to defend America from an adversarial Mexican immigration policy. Indeed, in many respects, whereas illegal immigration from Mexico mostly represents a threat to America’s economy, the possibility of illegal immigration from neighboring Canada represents physical danger to Americans in the form of Islamic terror. We’d better take it seriously, and soon.

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About Brandon J. Weichert

A 19FortyFive Senior Editor, Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at American Greatness and the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life (May 16), and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy (July 23). Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.href="https://twitter.com/WeTheBrandon">@WeTheBrandon.