Over the past couple of weeks, the American people have begun to debate and express their opinions on a very tough subject: the refugee crisis.

While Syria remains a war-torn country with no real signs of recovery, its people are leaving in droves — with the only thing in mind being the safety of themselves and their families. As you can imagine, the neighboring countries are nowhere near prepared for such an unprecedented surge in refugees, and have begun frantically trying to deal with the situation as swiftly as possible. Germany alone is expected to receive over a million applications for asylum in just the next year.

The United States, in order to try and alleviate some of the pressure, announced it would be taking in 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next year. According to the United Nations, there are around three million refugees coming from Syria and a little over six million people total who have been misplaced by the wars in Syria.

Now that we’ve established a little about the overall refugee crisis, I’d like to analyze the fear of some of the leaders of the United States, especially the 30 governors who decided they would not allow Syrian refugees in their states. The sentiments of the anti-refugee movement can be surmised with this quote from my very own Governor Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, when he said, “As governor, I oppose any facility or installation in Arkansas being used as a Syrian refugee center. Many of the Syrian refugees are fleeing violence in their own country, but Europe, Asia or Africa are logically the best places for resettlement or for temporary asylum.”

He goes on to say that he will not support the refugees at the risk of putting Arkansans in danger. While this sounds like a noble justification for turning away people in need, I’d like to submit that these types of statements are unfounded and are nothing more than fear under the guise of well-meaning security measures.

Since September 11th 2001, America has taken in 784,395 refugees. Now, if you listen to people who are against giving protection to refugees on American soil, you’d think that hundreds — if not thousands — of these people are now convicted for being major terrorists. According to the State Department’s Migration Policy Institute, three of those almost 800,000 people have been convicted terrorists. It’s statistics like this one that make the 30 governors remarks so surprising and confusing.

With such a low risk of terrorism, there must be another angle that I am not catching. Perhaps these refugees are going to be mostly men around the age of the ISIS fighters they are fleeing and that can somehow justify this extreme (and so far what looks to be an over-) reaction? Well, there are quite a few examples of people worried about the possibility of young Syrian males making their way into our country as that seems to be the demographic most likely to be involved in terrorist plots.

These worries are summed up fairly well by Republican candidate and famed neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson when he said, “We don’t know who these people are and the majority are young males,” on CNN’s “The Lead.” Once again, we need to go to the best available data we have to see what exactly we should be worried about and to what extent.

Looking at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, we see that women make up 50.5 percent of the over 4 million refugees while men aged 18-59 make up 21.8 percent of the refugees. Once again, the data seems to be remarkably different than what most people who are against the relocation of refugees would have you believe. It’s time that America takes a stand as the force of good in the world and fully takes on that responsibility.

As a young American I’ve grown up watching politicians on television tell me that America is the greatest country on earth, and uses its power for good throughout the globe. I say it’s time we step out from behind the glowing screens that controls our drones and extend the torch of lady liberty to our fellow humans who are in dire need of our help and prove not only to the world, but to ourselves, that we truly are a force for good.