Is Obama Smarter than a 5th Grader?

At a recent campaign stop in Iowa, presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) was quizzed on the relationship between immigration and terrorism by a lone 5th grader named Beau Bowman. The kid should be commended as this is a subject the media has barely breached. Obama's troubling response, available on video, clearly illustrates that he fails to grasp how directly tied immigration and terrorism truly are. Here's the exchange:

Bowman: "The troops are coming home from Iraq, and they're still waiting for boats and planes to take them back to America, and, what if, like, the illegal immigrants start to take action and start bombing buildings and stuff?"

Obama: "WOW!"

(audience ignorantly breaks into laughter, indicating that none of their loved ones were aboard the planes flown into buildings by immigrants on 9/11)

Obama: "Well, what's your name?"

Bowman: "Beau Bowman."

Obama: "Beau? Well, thanks, Beau. I appreciate the question. What grade are you in, Beau?"

Bowman: "Fifth."

Obama: "You're in 5th grade? Lemme, lemme talk to you a little bit about immigrants. And, um... Because I think your question shows... um... part of what's going on in politics. And I don't want to be too complicated on this answer, but, we've got a problem with terrorists, who are trying to kill us. The handful -- maybe 20,000... 30,000 terrorists -- all around the globe, and, they're the ones who blew up the Twin Towers in New York, on 9/11. That's a separate problem from immigrants. We've got illegal immigrants who are coming into this country and they're not blowing things up, they're usually working in meatpacking plants, or they're working in restaurants, or they're working in agricultural, they're picking up vegetables... (audience member interrupts) Excuse me? Yeah, they're mowing Mitt Romney's yard."

(audience laughs, again)

Obama: "That was the best line of the night. I forgot about old Mitt. Who's got the gall to run all these ads about illegal immigrants? You know? So that's... People are coming here, and they don't have papers, they haven't gotten a visa, so they're not supposed to come in without us knowing why they're coming in, and they're just basically coming in to work. Now that's a problem. We need to stop the flow of illegal immigrants into the country. We gotta make sure that stops. But we shouldn't confuse that with terrorism. They're not here to blow us up. And, most of them are just coming here to work. And what we need to do is we need to have strong borders so that terrorists can't come in, and illegal immigrants can't come in. But those immigrants, even if they came here illegally, once we have our borders secure, if they've been here for 10 or 12 years, some of them have children who are your classmates, or were born here and are U.S. citizens, we've got to give them some sort of path so that they can become legal over time, by paying a fine, learning English, doing some other things, so that they can earn citizenship. Okay? But in the meantime, I don't want you to think that they're going to be blowing us up anytime soon. Alright? And my job as president will be to make sure that doesn't happen."

One hardly knows where to begin. Obama -- along with apparently most Dems in Iowa -- clearly fails to understand the relationship between immigration and terrorism. He claims that terrorism is a "separate problem" from immigration; he couldn't be more wrong. Although it never got much press, the 9/11 Commission actually produced two 9/11 reports: one was the report that we've seen a thousand times and the other was an equally-long report devoted entirely to the relationship between immigration and terrorism. For a great analysis of the obvious relationship between terrorism and immigration, read the report from the Center for Immigration Studies called, "The Open Door: How Militant Islamic Terrorists Entered and Remained in the United States, 1993-2001." It is available online, here. Among the report's amazing findings:

• Foreign-born militant Islamic terrorists have used almost every conceivable means of entering the country. They have come as students, tourists, and business visitors. They have also been Lawful Permanent Residents and naturalized U.S. citizens. They have snuck across the border illegally, arrived as stowaways on ships, used false passports, and have been granted amnesty. Terrorists have even used America's humanitarian tradition of welcoming those seeking asylum.
  

Obama claims that there are 20-30,000 terrorists around the globe who want to kill us. This is likely quite a low-ball figure. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) estimates that there are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world. If only 10% of that population wants to kill us all, that means there are over 100 million terrorists waiting to kill your family. That's a population equivalent to a 1/3 of the total U.S. population of 300 million.

Regardless of the exact number, these "terrorists around the globe" are going to have to come to the United States in order to kill us.... they're going to have to "immigrate" here. That's something even a 5th grader can understand.

Obama is correct in noting that illegal aliens are "not supposed to come in without us knowing why they're coming in." Unfortunately, in the same breath Obama states, "They're not here to blow us up." Really? Is Obama going to be our first psychic president? It's well documented that immigrants have come here with the goal of killing Americans "without us knowing why they're coming in." Again, read the report linked above. Obama, we have no idea what intentions illegal aliens have in entering the country; they could be busboys, they could be terrorists. But one thing's for sure: if an uneducated, poor Mexican janitor can successfully evade our Border Patrol, then surely a trained al-Qaeda operative can do the same.

On the positive side, Obama seems to understand that border security is a necessity. But since he is still bent on supporting the Bush Amnesty, it's clear he doesn't understand how amnesties help terrorism. In 1986, two illegal alien N.Y.C. taxi drivers applied for that failed amnesty -- Mahmud Abouhalima and Mohammed Salameh. One of them, Abouhalima, was granted amnesty. His new status allowed him to travel freely around the globe without fear of being stopped by law enforcement upon reentry to the United States. He used his new status to travel to the Pakistan border where he received terrorist training. He put those new skills to work as the ringleader of the 1993 WTC attack. But guess what else? The other illegal alien, Salameh, had his amnesty application denied. But he was never deported. Instead, he remained in the United States and also helped with the 1993 WTC attack. The end result: the amnesty actually aided terrorism and did absolutely nothing to eliminate the threat. That amnesty involved only about 4 million applicants. Today, we're looking at more than 12 million applicants. How many terrorists will benefit from a new amnesty is unknown. And this is something that little Beau Bowman seems to understand.

Obama, you are not smarter than a 5th grader.

And although we should thank ABC for covering this story, their headline illustrates that, like Obama, the media thinks the relationship between immigration and terrorism is imaginary. The title ABC gave to their article -- "Did Immigration Ads Spark Link to Terror?" -- is ridiculous. No, ABC: Immigrants flying planes into buildings a few years ago "sparked" the link to terror.

"My name's Obama, and I am not smarter than a 5th grader."

FOLLOW UP: The producers of the game show "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader" actually asked Obama, Hillary, and Giuliani to appear on the show. All three said, "No."