Do you not realize these Syrians are fleeing for their lives? While the entire world fears Daesh’s capabilities, this refugee population has personally and regularly experienced such violence. They have witnessed indescribable scenes of cruelty that neither you nor I could possibly imagine. I’ve read stories of fathers coming home to find their family members’ heads laying on the floor. These asylum seekers have crossed seas in makeshift boats and have watched their own children drown. They have been beaten, scammed, imprisoned, and abused along the way. Should they survive this perilous journey, many feel forced to practice European languages for hours on end to meet immigration requirements instead of focusing their efforts on acquiring adequate living arrangements. Although it is uncontested that Muslims are the population most affected by Daesh, you and other shortsighted governors only seem to notice these atrocities when they occur too close to home. On October 10th when two explosions killed over 100 people in Ankara, I did not read a statement in which you penalized refugees. Less than a month earlier, 25 people perished inside a Mosque in Yemen. While I certainly don’t mean to compare the graveness of each attack, you only seemed to panic after a major western city was terrorized. Did those Muslim lives matter less to you? While our security is undoubtedly a legitimate concern, we cannot determine who should be offered refuge based on religion or nationality alone.

Circulating throughout social media following the Paris attacks was a very sweet video of a father attempting to explain such gruesome violence to his young son. His son expressed distress over moving homes in fear of terrorists, but his dad reassured him that flowers (symbolizing community support and solidarity) far outweighed the power of violence. This interaction offered such a hopeful message of justice, but for too many children in Syria, this violence is their norm— attacks in these proportions happen every single day. For the French child, such bloodshed was beyond comprehension; but for Syrian children of the same age, imagining long term peace is more difficult than facing regular violence.

Engraved into the Statue of Liberty is a poem by Emma Lazarus:

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses, yearning to breath free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,

Send these, the homeless, tempest tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

We are a nation of acceptance, freedom, compassion, and bravery. By pausing refugee resettlement, we are denying freedom to others simply because they were born inside arbitrarily-drawn borders. We will be cowards. No one seems to complain about causing daily civilian casualties with drone attacks, but when the threat of violence arrives at our own shores, we want none of it. Put up the walls, and ship out every foreigner. That doesn't sound like the America our founding fathers envisioned, or the America I feel proud pledging allegiance to. I beg of you, sir, show compassion.

Olivia Reader is a senior studying Comparative Cultures and Politics.