Governors lack humanity on Syrian issue

Stephanie Atchley

perspectives

Millions of Syrian refugees are having to flee their homes in order to attain safety, to get away from violence, and to keep their children safe. President Obama has come up with a plan to relocate 15,000 refugees into the U.S. to help with the cause.

30 state governors have given their opinions and have stated that they refuse to allow any Syrian refugees into their states. There reasoning behind this being that they would like to assure the safety of the citizens in their states.

Due to the fact that they are Muslim, many Americans would like to feel as if a fraction of those refugees might have some sort of involvement with ISIS. While I can agree that background checks should be made on the refugees, the idea to not help these people because maybe six of them have been involved with terrorism is not something I can agree with at all.

That idea is a form of discrimination against the Muslim people. Their actual religion is based on peace, although ISIS has distorted many ideas into evil. Presidential candidate Ben Carson recently visited with some Syrian refugees that were relocated into Jordan. He said that every single refugee that he talked to had the same dream.

“They dream of the day when the violence will stop and they can return to their homeland with their families,” stated Carson.

Understandably, with all of the attacks that have happened recently, people are going to be more cautious. However, fear is not an acceptable reason to allow thousands of people to stay in a world of violence and starvation. If these governors would take a step back and look at what they are actually trying to prevent, helping thousands of innocent people have a better life, they would realize that letting these refugees into the country should not have even been argued over. It is absolutely ridiculous that governors in our country are actually arguing over helping people.

Some are even stating that it could cause economic stress to America. Jordan, a considerably small country, now has 1.4 million Syrian refugees.  One-fifth of Jordan’s population right now is made up of Syrian refugees. They are making huge efforts to help people, while our governors are throwing a tantrum over only 15,000 people.

The governors wanting to refuse refugees into their state are just causing pointless  trouble.  The states have no say in who is actually allowed to enter the country.  By the words of the Constitution, that right is left to the federal government. Legally, the governors can not do anything about the matter.

One problem with this that doesn’t match up is the fact that the majority of the governors that are doing this claim to have Christian faith and values. Governors that claim they have Christian values, which a huge majority of these Governors do, should re-evaluate their opinion.

Doesn’t the Bible say to love your enemy and to help one another? Willingly leaving people, including the children and the elderly, to starve and to live in so much violence is not an opinion that I would say matches up to the Bible. Why would a person with any humanity in them at all want to leave innocent people to die, when there is an opportunity to help them?

Whether they are Christian or not, the decision should be obvious. There should be no doubt in a person’s mind that helping people that really need it is something that should occur.

The U.S. seems to be repeating history. During the Holocaust, the many U.S. citizens did not want to help the Jewish people fleeing from Nazi Germany. Over five million Jewish people were killed during the Holocaust.

After it happened, so many people were exclaiming how much that they wished that they could have helped more, when the whole time that it was happening, nobody wanted to help. It seems as though we are in a similar situation, except now we have the opportunity to not make that mistake again.