“We want everyone here to stay in New York,” comedian and counterprotester Walter Masterson was saying at an anti-Islamification demonstration Saturday when a Muslim man who pledged allegiance to ISIS allegedly chucked a bomb over his head into the crowd.
But that close call wasn’t enough to shake Masterson’s open-borders convictions. Within hours he doubled down on the same mass-migration position that helped enable the situation he found himself in.
“As a born and raised in New Yorker, everyone is welcome,” Masterson said. “Everyone except chief goatf-cker Jake Lang.”
In subsequent posts, Masterson went even further when asked if he was OK with “the terrorist who threw a bomb over your shoulder.”
“A terrorist jumped over my shoulder to throw an explosive at a pardoned terrorist from January 6th,” he stated, equating Balat’s alleged attack with Lang’s protest.
Masterson’s exchange captures the left’s brand of suicidal empathy perfectly. The logic that “everyone is welcome” is one of the most influential drivers of decades-long U.S. immigration policy that has left Americans vulnerable to terror attacks within the borders of the United States.
The alleged bomber, 18-year-old Emir Balat, faces multiple charges, including use of a weapon of mass destruction, as does 19-year-old Ibrahim Nikk Kayumi. Balat’s parents are reportedly from Turkey and became naturalized in 2017. Kayumi’s parents are naturalized citizens who came from Afghanistan, according to the New York Post.
Both suspects appear to have been born on American soil, but their alleged actions are a reminder that assimilation is not automatic. The fact that the suspects’ parents came from countries with histories of hostility to the West should be taken into account when deciding immigration policy. That’s not to say their parents indoctrinated them or harbor the same terrorist beliefs. But ignoring the cultural and ideological environments that immigrants leave behind physically — and potentially bring with them ideologically — risks importing immigrants who are wholly incompatible with the American way of life.
Even a cursory knowledge of Turkey and Afghanistan commends a standard of heightened review, if not a blanket ban, on any type of immigration from these countries. Despite their vast differences, both countries sit under Islamic authoritarian governments. Afghanistan is a perennial hub of terrorism, and Turkey has its own internal terrorist organizations. The Taliban, Afghanistan’s longstanding rulers, gave refuge to al-Qaida and refused to hand over Osama bin Laden after the 1998 embassy bombings. In the 1990’s, Turkish Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan led an open Islamist government that railed against American “imperialism” and proposed an Islamic economic bloc to rival NATO. Current Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan “has long championed Islamist causes.” These cultures do not inculcate foundational American values, such as freedom of speech and religion, to say the least.
Pretending that those histories and realities are irrelevant when determining our immigration policy is delusional.
Yet U.S. immigration policy has operated with these blinders in place for decades. Policymakers overlooked differences in cultures, believing, in spite of the evidence, that anyone can become an American and support and embrace our Western political traditions. There was a complete failure to show curiosity about what kind of society and culture these immigrants are leaving behind, what ideas they may bring with them, and whether those ideas are compatible with the society they’re about to enter.
Saturday’s alleged terrorist attack highlights the dangers of an unnuanced immigration policy that fails to discern between immigrants who are likely to assimilate and those whose cultural backgrounds are likely to render them (and their children) indifferent or hostile to the values on which the U.S. republic rests.
Still, some — like Masterson — are determined to ignore the realities underlined by the attack. A man with stated allegiance to ISIS allegedly tossed a bomb over his head and later reportedly told authorities that Islam “isn’t a religion that just stands when people talk about the blessed name of the prophet.” But Masterson’s instinct wasn’t to question the broader pattern of Islamist extremism that has repeatedly surfaced in the West or reconsider the wisdom of an indiscriminate immigration policy. Instead, Masterson painted a Jan. 6 defendant as the real villain.
That level of denial is dangerous because open-borders absolutism is not a consequence-free ideology. Americans have already tasted its fruits. The deadly assault on our National Guardsmen in Washington, D.C., was allegedly carried out by an Afghan national. An Egyptian national who previously lived in Kuwait allegedly perpetrated the Boulder, Colorado, attack that happened in June of last year. An Afghan national was one of the conspirators in the planned — and foiled — Election Day terrorist massacre.
These attacks or attempts happen when our country has spent years insisting immigration policy should ignore very important, relevant details and favor emotion over deliberation. And these attacks will continue to happen as long as people like Masterson refuse to acknowledge reality — even when a bomb is literally flying over his head.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
