This Monday, David Miliband—president of the International Rescue Committee—reminded us that the United States continues to retreat from the principles that have long made our country a global beacon. Miliband cautioned that if current refugee resettlement trends continue, the United States may have no resettlement program at the end of this administration. He reminded us that the likelihood of an American dying in a terrorist attack caused by a refugee is 1 in 3.64 billion per year. Yet the resettlement program continues to be “slowly and silently strangled” in the name of national security.

President Trump argues that the “travel ban”—which the Supreme Court will review next week—is necessary because our vetting of immigrants has not been “extreme” enough to keep radicalized offenders out of the United States. David Bier of the Cato Institute independently completed a study that can help counter these misconceptions. The study found that vetting failures are extremely rare. “The 65 vetting failures over the past three decades came from 20 different countries—only one of which made the president’s travel ban.”

On Wednesday night, a family from Afghanistan was finally reunited with their son, Aleem Akrami, after three long years of separation and waiting. Aleem—who served alongside American forces in Afghanistan—has been living in Rochester since 2015. But the joyful reunion was not free of heartache. The Akrami family was forced to leave another son behind in Afghanistan. “They applied for their visas when the son was 19 years old. And he unfortunately “aged out of the system” according to the State Department.

Twelve years after beginning his work with American troops, Ali, an Iraqi man, remains stranded and continues to face death threats. Ali’s father was killed because of his son’s choice to serve alongside U.S. forces. Ali first applied to come to the United States in 2009. But at current resettlement rates, it would take this brave Iraqi interpreter and U.S. wartime ally more than 200 years to be resettled in the United States.

A nonprofit, Institute of International Education (IIE), is calling for the global higher education sector around the world to take in more refugee students and academics. Allan Goodman, discussing Syria, said: “25 percent of the youth [between 18 and 24 years old] were in higher education when the war started. When we had other refugee crises, there’s never been that large of a cohort disconnected from higher education. So first is getting higher education institutions everywhere to say: “[The] refugee challenge is our challenge, too.”