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On December 9, a Saudi national opened fire at a naval air station in Pensacola, Florida, killing three people and injuring eight others. The shooter, Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, was in the United States as part of a military program that allows some foreign military members to train inside the United States.

Just prior to the attacks, Alshamrani wrote on Twitter that he hated Americans for committing crimes not only against Muslims but also humanity. He also blasted Washington for supporting the State of Israel.

While the case is currently being treated as an act of terrorism, the FBI has yet to officially label it as such. We are looking very hard at uncovering his motive and I would ask for patience so we can get this right, said Rachel Rojas, who is the special agent in charge of the case.

While the FBI is exercisingcaution, mass-immigration proponent and self-proclaimed elitist, AlexNowrasteh, director of Immigration Studies at the Cato Institute, wantsAmericans to believe that this horrific attack is no reason for even mildconcern.

On the day of the shooting, Nowrasteh wrote a blog suggesting that this incident doesnt make a case for stricter immigration measures. In the blog, he promotes a recent study of his that called acts of terrorism in the United States committed by foreign-born individuals a manageable threat given the huge economic benefits of immigration and the relatively smaller costs of terrorism.

Thats right, when three Americansare murdered and eight others wounded, Nowrasteh wants us to remember that itssimply a relatively small cost that should not factor into discussions regardingimmigration reform.

Besides the tone-deaf timing and appallinginsensitivity, his blog and study are fatally flawed as well. In the report,Nowrasteh does several things to make the threat of terrorism look smaller thanit actually is:

The about 1 in 4 million per yearnumber that Nowrasteh pushes is the purported likelihood that a person iskilled in the U.S. by a foreign-born terrorist in a particular year. This isproblematic because it only considers a very limited period of time, not apersons entire life. The lifetime probability that a person might be killed,based on Nowrastehs figures, is actually closer to about 1 in 50,000. Thatnumber is considerably more alarming.

Furthermore, Nowrastehs figuresdont include those who die from conditions developed later in life as a resultof a foreign-born terrorist attack, such as cancer and chronic respiratoryconditions stemming from exposure to toxic rubble and ash produced on 9/11.

According to Dr. Michael Caine, Medical Director of the World Trade Center Health Program at Mount Sinai Hospital, since the attacks, more than 2,000 deaths have been attributed to 9/11 illnesses. These people should be considered victims of terrorism. Nowrasteh also excludes the thousands who suffer non-fatal injuries during attacks committed by foreign-born terrorists on American soil, as well as those who develop non-fatal health conditions later on like asthma or post-traumatic stress.

Trying to predict the exact likelihoodof a person dying in a terrorist attack of any kind is ultimately an impossibleart since the threat of terrorism constantly changes due to a large number offactors. But what we can conclude empirically is that the statistics looselytossed around by the Cato Institute are designed to make the threat of foreign-bornterrorism in the U.S. appear much lower than it actually is.

We owe it to those brave police,firefighters, first responders, and other everyday Americans who have sufferedand/or died due to terrorist attacks to craft immigration policies that preventknown, suspected or potential foreign-born terrorists from entering the UnitedStates. Nothing about the price they have paid is small.

NOTE: This isnt the first time that the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) has called out the Cato Institute for publishing false or misleading statistics regarding immigration. In March of 2019, FAIR noted that Nowrasteh and the Cato Institute vastly underestimated the rate at which illegal aliens commit crimes. As in this case, the incorrect statistics were used to promote irresponsible mass-immigration policies.

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The Cato Institutes Factually Flawed Attitude Toward Terrorism is Disturbing - ImmigrationReform.com