“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

In the wake of the recent attacks in France, Lebanon and other places around the world, our nation has understandably become more fearful of accepting refugees from war-torn countries like Syria. 

Candidates for higher office have used this fear to try to convince Americans that only one option now lays before us: we cannot offer aid any of the refugees attempting to escape the murderous regime of Bashar al-Assad and the terrorist organization known as ISIS lest we put ourselves in grave and imminent danger.

The facts tell a different story — something acknowledged in recent opinion articles published by both of Michigan’s major newspapers: the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press. 

The United States relies on the most stringent refugee acceptance processes in the world — procedures that over 250,000 refugees have gone through since 9/11. This 18 to 24 month process is complete with health screenings, background checks, and multiple face-to-face interviews conducted by the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI. 

Without question, we must continue to provide law enforcement with the tools they need to ensure that they can fulfill our foremost responsibility: keeping Americans safe.

This vetting process, for all its rigor, is often times even longer for Syrian applications. Since civil war broke out in Syria in the spring of 2011, the United States has admitted around 2,200 Syrian refugees to our country. According to senior officials, only around two percent of these people are males of what we considered in the Marine Corps as “military-aged” traveling with no companions. 

The vast majority of refugees are women, children and the elderly. But what about the screening process itself? Does it work?

Roughly 50 percent of those who have applied for refugee status in the United States have not gained acceptance because of flags or concerns that have been raised throughout the screening process or because screeners were not able to properly vet them with the information they had available. These law enforcement officials have and must be allowed to continue to do their jobs while keeping Americans safe.

These are the numbers and the factual reasons why we should not let fear motivate our decision making when it comes to accepting Syrian refugees. But there’s far more to it than that. Inscribed on the Statue of Liberty are the words “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

These refugees are attempting to escape a hell that few of us, thank God, will ever know. Their homes have been destroyed, their loved ones murdered, maimed and raped at the hands of either a brutal dictatorial regime desperately trying to hold onto power or a medieval religious cult spreading its hateful doctrine through the countryside by the sword. 

We have a responsibility to humanity to care for and provide refuge to those searching for the shores of a free land.

President Reagan often referred to this nation as a “City upon a Hill,” a beacon of light and hope for a weary world. In his farewell speech in the Oval Office he stated, “And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I saw it, and see it still.” 

President Reagan was borrowing from John Winthrop, an early settler who came to the New World seeking refuge and a place where he and his companions could live and worship free from oppression. These refugees are seeking the very thing that Winthrop and our ancestors have sought from the earliest days of our great country. To turn our backs now would be decidedly un-American way.

While some politicians want to boil this down to a wedge issue that can advance their own political agenda, there is so much more at stake. This is a test of our courage and our desire to keep the American Spirit alive and to keep inclusiveness at the heart of all that we do. 

Have we lost that spirit? I hope not.

-State Sen. David Knezek (D-Dearborn Heights), a Marine veteran, is Michigan’s youngest senator.