Dear Donald Trump Jr.,

Yesterday you reached a new low that I think many people couldn’t believe. As a teen aged millennial I have heard every speech there is to give about filtering myself on the internet i.e. "what we say online never leaves us" and "the internet is forever." It seems that somehow you, and possibly your whole family, have missed out on these chats. You see, yesterday you tweeted this photo:

I am struggling to find words- which does not often happen to me. You have single-handedly minimized a death toll of 470,000- by conservative estimates. You-- from a high rise office in a glittering gold Trump Tower or private plane, from a smartphone that cost you nothing-- equated 6.6 million displaced people to a Bowl. Of. Skittles. How you manage to believe that this is an accurate comparison is far, far beyond me.

In case you had not heard of it before, the Syrian refugee crisis has been ravaging families and towns for nearly five years. The last five years have not been a problem of “political correctness,” this has been an ongoing violation of human rights and an issue that is at the heart of the record high 59.5 million refugees worldwide. The United Nations High Committee for Refugees, or UNCHR wrote that, “Since early 2011, the main reason for the acceleration has been the war in Syria, now the world’s single-largest driver of displacement. Every day last year on average 42,500 people became refugees, asylum seekers, or internally displaced, a four-fold increase in just four years.” This is not an issue of political correctness and certainly not one of skittles.

Countless people have responded to your tweet with images of the children of this crisis. These children did not grow up like you Mr. Trump, nor did they grow up like me. They did not go to school, walk down the street to play with their friends, or go to the park with their parents on Sundays. These children have known only a world covered in the blood of their mothers and fathers. They have known only a world filled with landmines, bombings and machine guns. These children have seen horrors that you and I could never imagine-- at an age where they can't even understand why these things are happening to them. The children of Aleppo, and so many countless towns like it, have been disfigured, bombed, and murdered everyday for the last five years.

Beyond the humanity of this crisis, you’ve made it sound as if the process of allowing refugees into the country will be a blind selection. If your father can propose “extreme vetting” for immigrants can we not thoroughly check refugees entering our country?

Beyond your rejection of good policies, you claim to be a firm believer that America is the greatest country on earth. If this is the case who are we to cower in fear before the boy from Aleppo staring blankly while covered in blood? More than half of these refugees are children-- not terrorists. We cannot continue aligning the wishes of the evil with he wishes of those they have terrorized. This has been dubbed, “the worst exodus since the Rwandan genocide 20 years ago,” by Mercy Corps. Who are we to be called great when we turn our backs on these mothers, fathers, and children.

Mr. Trump, please understand that these are humans. Please, understand that today we are facing the largest amount of refugees in the world ever recorded and this issue is at the heart of those statistics. Please, understand that refugees are not as easily discarded as candy. Please, understand that this is not a problem of religion, political correctness, race, or business. This is a human problem before anything else.

“I never worry about action, but only inaction.”

-Winston Churchill

References

Boghani, Priyanka. "FRONTLINE." PBS. PBS, 11 Feb. 2016. Web. 21 Sept. 2016.

Syrian Network For Human Rights. "Death Tolls: August 2016." I AM SYRIA. N.p., Aug. 2016 Web. 21 Sept. 2016UNCHR.

"Worldwide Displacement Hits All-time High as War and Persecution Increase." UNHCR News. UNCHR, 18 June 2016. Web. 21 Sept. 2016.

"Quick Facts: What You Need to Know about the Syria Crisis." Mercy Corps. Mercy Corps, 21 Aug. 2016. Web. 21 Sept. 2016.