Let's not compound the Syrian tragedy

As sad as we are for the French people, it would be a much greater tragedy if we did not learn from history and allowed potentially hundreds of thousands of Syrian, Libyan, Afghan, and Iraqi refugees to die due to our unwillingness to act.

As the old saying goes, "History doesn't repeat itself; but it does rhyme."

We have seen this story before, numerous times. During the pogroms, millions of Jewish refugees came from Eastern Europe. But after the Bolshevik Revolution and the Red Scare, Congress effectively sealed the borders and the fates of millions more. Before World War II, restrictive U.S. policies made it impossible for most European Jews to enter the country. Our isolationism cost them their lives.

After the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, two refugee crises emerged, both partially caused by our own actions. In Vietnam, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese feared reprisals from the forces of the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong. The United States granted about 125,000 Vietnamese refugees sanctuary. At the time, only 36 percent of Americans favored allowing these immigrants into the country, fearing that they would take American jobs and be a drain on the economy. They also were concerned about their political leanings and what that could mean for the country. When they arrived, they were sent to "assimilation camps" for several months.

Of course, American fears were largely unfounded. These immigrants not only did us absolutely no harm; they also became patriotic and valuable members of our society.

The same fate did not await Cambodian refugees.

Our bombings of Cambodia from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s killed thousands (many military historians would say at least 50,000), and created a power vacuum that motivated some to join the Khmer Rouge. Unfortunately for the innocents of Cambodia, the United States did practically nothing to stop the resulting genocide and save the nearly two million people who were killed. In fact, despite signing the law that allowed Vietnamese refugees to enter, President Gerald Ford never publicly mentioned the genocide in Cambodia, and President Jimmy Carter didn't either until April, 1978.

And, of course, there is always the example of Cuba. In 1980, Fidel Castro sent 125,000 refugees our way. They were vetted, and no acts of terror occurred. Since then, we have continually accepted Cuban emigres (currently more than a million Cuban refugees in the United States).

The United States is in a much safer position than European countries when it comes to terrorism:

We have oceans between us and the Islamic States

We have fewer borders to guard

We invest much more in our security and have better security apparatuses

We have better intelligence services.

Still, we will never be completely safe and every action a nation takes on behalf of others always involves some risk. But, despite what some believe, the United States has an extremely adequate vetting processes. In fact, it will take most Syrian refugees accepted into the United States years before they step foot on American soil. And as for economic concerns, it has been clearly shown that large economies like ours are not negatively affected by influxes of refugees.

According to Amnesty International, 220,000 Syrians have already been killed in the civil war, 12.8 million are in need of humanitarian aid, and more than half of the Syrian population has been displaced. UNICEF says that 7.5 million of those in need are children. These poor people are not dealing in hypotheticals: This is their reality. And, if we do not do something to help, hundreds of thousands of them will die and millions more will remain impoverished.

The truth is, letting in 10,000 refugees as the Obama administration has proposed is not nearly enough. Germany, a country with a quarter of the U.S. population, is probably going to accept more than a million. Are we truly only willing to do just a hundredth of what Germany is willing to do? Has the inscription on the Statue of Liberty been changed to read, "Give me your huddled masses, but only when it's convenient and doesn't burden me in any way?"

Each time the world is presented with a genocide, we claim that we have learned from it and we say never again. How about, just once, we actually mean it?

Ross Rosenfeld of Lynbrook is a former New York City English teacher and the founder of Ross Tutoring. He wrote this for The Hill.