Austin Bay

It’s simple, and everybody with common sense gets it.

A national border isn’t a line on a map. A border is a door — a door to your nation. Your nation is your home in the broader sense of the term, especially if you respect your state and national laws.

The door to your home, in commonsense terms, means you — the homeowner with loved ones and property deserving protection — means you get to determine who or what enters your home.

Suddenly, a Venezuelan thug with a carbine bangs at your door? And you live in Colorado? Or San Antonio?

OK. The point is obvious. A well-protected border — with cops, walls, barbed wire, national leaders demanding national policies forbidding and penalizing illegal entry — these elements are very basic components of national and commonsense human security.

Think of it as national security at the in-your-face level of security and you suddenly see the genius of the Second Amendment.

The geniuses who wrote the U.S. Constitution understood in-your-face defense. In the 21st century, the gabblers focus on guns. But the Second Amendment is about personal and home defense.

When the thugs bang the door, break through the door, you can submit or resist. The Second Amendment says you can resist with weapons.

But common sense says far better if the thugs never entered the U.S.

Alas, a lot of thugs have entered.

From my Jan. 5, 2024, annual column on strategic challenges facing the U.S., Challenge No. 6: America’s Southern Front. In 2023, “flailing states” (states immersed in anarchic violence that spills over political borders or states unable to control their own borders) were challenge No. 2. America’s southern border crisis has created a hybrid war front — California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas are a hybrid-war frontline.

Yes. The Southern Front was evident in late 2021 but undeniable in 2023. Here’s why: In fiscal year 2023, U.S. Customs and Border Protection apprehended 736 known or suspected terrorists (KSTs in bureaucrat jargon) on terror watch lists along the southern and northern U.S. borders. Fact: There were 1.7 million illegal alien gotaways. If two or three out of 1,000 gotaways are KSTs, that’s 3,000 to 5,000 violent enemies infiltrating America’s home front.

Five thousand violent enemies are the equivalent of an enemy combat brigade.

Or it could be if a foreign adversary (“adversary” being bureaucrat and liberal media lingo for enemy) paid them and directed them.

Am I sketching a mass terror attack on the home front?

Yes.

It’s a legit national security concern, and most mature American citizens understand it in their individual gut.

To stop it takes aggressive deterrence — by smart and courageous leaders.

Why do we face this threat? In January 2021, Biden reversed dozens of Trump-era executive decisions — and the tsunami began. Biden’s policy reversals have allowed over 12 million illegal aliens to enter the U.S. — by some estimates, over 20 million. The president doesn’t need congressional legislation to defend the border. As commander in chief, he/she has the executive muscle to order strict enforcement of U.S. immigration, anti-smuggling, anti-drug, anti-terror laws, etc.

A strong national defense requires a strong economy — to finance it. Illegal aliens exact enormous economic costs. They sap the social safety net created to help needy U.S. citizens. They also drive down wages. Little wonder why blue-collar Americans reject the policy results of the Biden administration border policy.

Illegal immigration is criminal immigration.

In spring 2024, every major U.S. national poll I scanned rated border security — meaning lawless insecurity along the continental 48 states’ southern and northern borders — as the No. 1 national issue for American voters. Inflation and economic decline may top it in October 2024, but the polls tell me commonsense Americans have realized protecting America’s land borders is a critical national defense issue.

Austin Bay is a syndicated columnist and author.