Open letter to Congress

Dear Members of Congress,

Imagine if you were forced to get up and leave your life behind only taking what you could carry, left to wonder when the next time you are going to eat or drink clean water will be. Imagine you saw your whole country become completely desolated due to civil war and our government was so weak that they could no longer help you out. Now to you this is just a hypothetical but to the 13.5 million people in need of assistance in Syria this is their scary and unfortunate reality. These people need our help and to do that we should allow more refugees to enter the United States.

Obama has decided to let only 10,000 refugees, which is less than every European Union country. Though 4.7 million Syrians have been able to find solace in the surrounding countries, they are not living well. Countries like Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan and Turkey have taken on so many refugees they are building camps the size of cities while the US is only taking 10,000. Even though some refugees are lucky enough to make it into camps, conditions in the refugee camps are far from good. People are forced to live in tarp shelters, tents, shipping containers, or concrete buildings with no heat or in most cases no running water. Some of these overly cramped camps hold more refugees than the total number of refugees in the US.

If the United states is able to stay functional with 11.3 million unauthorized immigrants, another 100,000 Syrian refugees will not effect us. Instead of leaving the Syrian surrounded countries crippled we should lessen their burden since it wouldn’t make a noticeable effect on how we live our lives. We have already sent $4.1 billion on humanitarian aid over to Lebanon and Jordan even though we can make the money go farther over here. If we accept more refugees we can make sure that the money is being allocated correctly and isn’t spent irresponsibly by third party organizations.

If you want to make a difference for these people then you need to allow for more refugees. The United states is more than capable of taking far more than we have. Not only are we capable they will be safer here since Islamic terrorist are running around the Middle East trying to complete their Jihad or Holy War. It is up to you guys to make a difference for these innocent kids and families who are stuck in between this nasty civil war.

Sincerely,

Patrick Ippolito