10,000 out of 4.3 million. That’s approximately 0.2% of the total number of Syrian refugees who will be allowed into the United States after passing rigorous background checks and interviews.

0.2% is not enough.

The Syrian War began in 2011, during the time known as the Arab Spring. People all over the Middle East and North Africa were rising up against their governments in order to regain their freedom from tyrannical dictators such as Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia.

In Syria, the people came together to try to overthrow the president, Bashar al-Assad, who has been in power since 2000. Their efforts failed, and at this point about 300,000 Syrians have been killed, 130,000 captured, 7 million displaced within Syria and 4.3 million forced to flee their country.

I first became interested in the Syrian Civil War when only 523,150 refugees had fled the country. This was in late 2012, when I chose to study the crisis for my freshman history class final. The following January I began volunteering at an organization called RefugeeOne.

RefugeeOne is a Chicago-based nonprofit that provides resettlement assistance to refugees from countries like Syria, Burma, Eritrea, and Iraq. I work in their afterschool program as a tutor for kids who range from 1st grade all the way to high school.

Each week I’m surrounded by kids of all different nationalities and ages who have one thing in common: their refugee status.

All of these children and their families have fled conflicts in their home countries to find sanctuary in America. In some cases they were escaping religious persecution from their government. In others their homes grew too unsafe to live in.

I have a problem with certain people (such as Donald Trump) objecting to allowing refugees, specifically Syrian refugees, into our country: It’s un-American.

Now, I’m not someone who is particularly patriotic. The 4th of July is near the bottom of my list of favorite holidays, and I don’t own any clothing emblazoned with the American flag. Yet I respect the values upon which our country was founded.

The whole reason the Founding Fathers created America was to escape the tyranny of the British–and the King.

Syrian refugees are doing the exact same thing. Assad has ruled for the past 15 years and ever since 2011, he’s committed crimes against his people, whether that means the chemical weapons he’s used against them or the barrel bombs his military frequently drops.

To deny them entry into our country would be hypocritical. The arguments against allowing refugees to resettle in our country are, moreover, relatively weak.

During a rally in Birmingham, Alabama, in mid-November, Trump gave his view on Syrian refugees.

“I want surveillance of these people that are coming in, the Trojan horse,” Trump said. “I want to know who the hell they are. I don’t want the people from Syria coming in, because we don’t know who they are. We don’t know who they are. And I don’t want them coming in.”

This is false. To think that the United States does not screen refugees before coming to America is idiotic. Even becoming a refugee is extremely difficult. One must go through a lengthy legal process to be considered a refugee versus simply an asylum seeker.

In order to come to America, refugees enter into a long interview process, a medical examination, and a deep security screening. It can take anywhere from 18 to 24 months for a refugee to be accepted by the United States, and even longer for a Syrian refugee, due to the threat of ISIS and other terrorist organizations.

I feel so strongly about this because I know refugees personally. They’re not the monsters Trump and other politicians make them out to to be—they’re people, just like us. Many are children who have come here for the chance to grow up safely, and hold only vague memories of their past.

One day recently I had time to play with the kids at RefugeeOne before helping them with their homework. A first grader I’ve worked with in the past with doe eyes and short, dark brown, curly hair, traced his finger across the wall-sized map in the basement of Unity Lutheran Church, where the RefugeeOne afterschool program is located. He was looking for Malawi, where he grew up. I found it cradled between Mozambique, Tanzania, and Zambia and pointed it out to him.

“Where’s Chicago?” he asked.

I dragged my finger across the Sahara Desert, through the Atlantic Ocean, and across the United States until it reached the corner of a Great Lake. He followed suit, tracing the path back and forth.

“Wow,” he said. “I’ve gone from here to here. That’s far.”

He turned away from the map looked back at me, and said “I want to take you to my home country one day.”