New Yorkers learned a hard lesson on Sept. 11, 2001.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed on that fateful day 14 years ago for many reasons – not the least of which was allowing our ideology of open borders to blind us to the fact that there are people who want to do harm to Americans. One would think New York state, having been the site of an attack by foreign terrorists, would understand the risks associated with accepting Syrian refugees. One would also think that the stunning attacks in Paris would remind New Yorkers to be even more vigilant in paying attention to ISIS, which has made no attempt to conceal its desire to carry out attacks inside the United States’ borders.

The problem with our government is that it doesn’t think and is too often blinded by ideology.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, speaking last week at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, said the federal government has vowed to screen the refugees for links to terrorism and that refusing the refugees would mean Americans were losing their soul. Nearly 50 Syrian refugees have settled in New York so far this year, according to a federal database.

“We have to protect Americans and not lose our soul as America in the process, right? The day America says, ‘Close the gates, build the wall,’ then I say take down the Statue of Liberty because you’ve gone to a different place,” he said. “I won’t let them win by conceding defeat of the American Dream.”

Do we trust President Barack Obama’s federal government to adequately screen the refugees, particularly when one of the Paris attackers was in France using a fake passport and posing as a refugee? Obama himself recently called ISIS the “JV team” and said ISIS had been “contained.” The Paris attacks prove the president was wrong on both accounts. Is it really a stretch to doubt that the federal government can adequately screen these refugees?

We agree with state Sen. Catharine Young, R-C-I-Olean, when she calls for caution in accepting Syrian refugees. Syria currently lacks the infrastructure to do proper background checks, and until that problem is remedied New York should not put itself at risk by accepting refugees. It is true of any refugee that we have no way of knowing their true identity, political or religious ideology. That lack of knowledge becomes a safety risk for everyone when they’re coming from a part of the world where using homemade bombs to carry out plans of destruction and where anti-American sentiment are the norm.

Cuomo’s stance on refugees relies on a sense of innocence that Americans lost on Sept. 11, 2001. We live in a different world now. While no single policy can guarantee America won’t be targeted by terrorists, our leaders shouldn’t make it any easier to allow those who wish to do us harm access to our borders.

We should help when we can, but that is trumped by doing what is necessary to keep New Yorkers safe.