The recent attack on Paris by the Islamic State group (ISIS) has resulted in worldwide paranoia that hasn’t forgotten to spread its light on the supposed land of the free, the United States. As of now, 26 state governors have declared that their states will no longer accept new refugees in fear that some might be ISIS members in disguise with the intention of causing Paris-like havoc within our nation’s borders. Some noteworthy examples include Texas and Florida, with an unnoteworthy example being our minuscule, little state of Indiana.

Indiana was recently the first state to officially refuse to allow a family of refugees in since the Paris attack, according to the New York Times. The family of three was rejected after having planned for three years to move from Jordan to Indianapolis. Though Connecticut chose to take in the family after having been denied by Indiana, the fact that we as a society can not only stand by but choose to justify an action like this is despicable and goes against everything America is supposed to stand for.

The argument that I’ve been seeing a lot in support of rejecting refugees is that it is being done for America’s best interest and “safety” and is an act of putting America’s well-being first over anything else. It was after seeing such an ignorant statement that I was inspired to write about just how much I disagree with it.

What are we protecting ourselves from? Innocent people that are looking for better lives in our country? To suggest that the refugees coming to America (who are mostly coming here to escape the grip of ISIS) should be considered anything close to threatening is nothing short of a gross generalization. This is basically saying that every refugee should be looked at as a potential ISIS member, which couldn’t be farther from morally correct.

Let’s get something else straight.  If ISIS really wanted to perform an act of terrorism in America, they could, regardless of these new refugee policies being set in place in over half of the country. It’s certainly a scary thought that most of us would probably prefer to avoid, but it’s just the truth. Any sort of cloudiness regarding ISIS and their capabilities of acting out large scale operations of terror should’ve been cleared up right after what they did in Paris.

Since this is the case, why impose pointless regulations that result in completely decent people getting caught in the crossfire? It’s as if these states assume that a member of ISIS will see these new regulations and say, “Wow, it appears as if I’m not welcomed here, I should probably leave.” Yeah, I’m certain such a thing will happen.

Lastly, America is digging itself a continent-sized grave by acting as scared as it is right now by ISIS. Only one of the Paris attackers has been identified as having been a potential Syrian refugee, one out of the approximately 9 million that have left Syria to escape the civil war that started there in 2011. Some American states have chosen to take that 0.0000001 percentage and blow it so far out of proportion that it has lead to an all-out ban on allowing refugees to settle in them. This is putting America in the exact situation that ISIS would prefer for it to be in, leaving it as a horrified and nervous nation that is so scared that it will resort to extreme measures just to feel a false sense of security– one that puts that 99.9999999 percent of the refuges that aren’t terrorists in an unnecessarily unfair set of circumstances.