After the attacks in Paris last week, there have been a lot of conversations about a wide variety of issues and at least for me, plenty of head scratching moments questioning the things people say. One of these issues has been about Syrian refugees and how there are so many people in the US and other countries that don’t want the refugees to settle here, claiming public safety concerns (which is utter bullshit).

There has been an enormous amount of back lash that Syrian refugees have seen around the world, especially in the United States.  There are governors of different states around the US that have openly refused to house Syrian refugees after the attacks, many citing public safety concerns. At this point, more than half of the governors want to reject Syrian refugees, despite the fact that going through the refugee screening is incredibly difficult. There has been talk about whether or not governors can even legally block Syrian refugees from coming to their states.

Even presidential candidates Ben Carson and Donald Trump have weighed in on this situation. Carson likened the refugees to rapid dogs at one point, which is a whole set of ridiculousness itseld, and Trump wants there to be a Muslim database and won’t rule out special IDs for Muslim Americans noting their religion. Both of those ideas are absolutely ridiculous and incredibly racist because you know that racial profiling is going to be a huge part of it, among many other things.

(Although, while I’m not Jewish, I’m really uncomfortable with comparing these special IDs and other things today to Nazi Germany, the yellow stars, and the Holocaust because it rips all of that out of the crucial historical context of the time. I do think that this “plan” that Trump has suggested is incredibly horrific and ripped from any sort of humanity.)

But the thing is about getting to the US as a refugee is that it is incredibly difficult and very long. Arnesa Buljusmic-Kustura tweeted about her own experience going through the process with her family in 2002 and how their four year process was physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausting.

But I’d like you to keep in mind that the process to admit Syrian refugees to the U.S.A is even more complex.

— Arnessa (@Rrrrnessa) November 18, 2015

And that process is really really long, as Jon Levine writes about, because there are so many people and departments that refugees have to go through with the vetting process. There’s Homeland Security, the State Department, and there are even nine nonprofits around the country that help process refugees. Honestly, coming to the US as a refugee is often incredibly difficult and some have argued that it would be the hardest way for would-be terrorists.