Camps are not the solution to the Syrian refugee crisis

"I used to live like a king."

This is how Ahmed welcomed our team into his tiny apartment. A Syrian refugee, Ahmed's life began to crumble when the Syrian uprising began. After things turned violent, his business crashed. He was arrested and jailed twice, after which his family joined the refugees fleeing to Jordan. Ahmed and his family are now destitute. As a refugee, he cannot work, and his three children cannot attend school. He cannot pay for the medicine for his wife's enlarging goiter, and beyond his rent subsidy, he has no other source of income. Unable to afford clothes for his children, he has been reduced to combing the local bazaar after hours to provide them with scraps of food.

The Syrian civil war is now lurching into its fifth year. As medical volunteers serving Syrian refugees in Jordan, we work with the sort of refugees who are considered for relocation into our country. Jordan, with a population of 6.5 million, is host to over 630,000 Syrian refugees registered with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, America's referral source for refugee resettlement. (Refugees who are not registered by the UNHCR - such as those whom have fled to Greece and Europe - are not considered for resettlement here.)

Our most recent mission to help refugees like Ahmed started on the same day as the horrific attacks in Paris. Since then, we have noted with alarm the increasing political rhetoric against Syrian refugees. People who have been forced to flee their homes for fear of their lives have now been represented not as victims but as security threats and potential terrorists. This is far from the truth.

Syrian refugees considered for settlement in the U.S. must undergo an 18-step process involving multiple interviews and background checks, a process taking up to two years and which does not carry a guarantee of acceptance. Despite this rigorous evaluation, there are still those who argue that all Syrian refugees must be barred. Most recently, Dr. Ben Carson conducted a whirlwind tour of refugee camps in Jordan, promoting their enlargement in place of giving them asylum here.

While we appreciate Dr. Carson's gesture in coming to Jordan, we strongly disagree with an expansion of refugee camps as any form of a solution. The camps may be safer than Syria, but they are restrictive. Refugees in camps in Syria's neighbors can rarely leave them; those who can cannot work legally or attend outside schools. Furthermore, the total potential space at all of Jordan's camps would accommodate less than half of the need.

We wish that Dr. Carson could have accompanied us on one of our missions to observe what prolonged camp life does to refugees. Over the past year, we have witnessed them losing hope and becoming resigned to their fate. Such families as these are in urgent need of resettlement to a situation where they may work, educate their children, and move forward with their lives. Otherwise, we fear that this generation of Syrian youth will grow up without hope, becoming susceptible to the call of violent extremism.

Dr. Carson is correct when he says that the resettlement of 10,000 Syrian refugees in the U.S. will not solve this catastrophe. This does not mean that we should accept their indefinite internment as a solution. Ultimately, the Syrian crisis can only be solved with an end to the war. Until then, the refugees need opportunities to rebuild their lives, whether in their current countries of refuge or elsewhere - including with us.

By the end of our visit, we helped secure medication for Ahmed's wife. As we turned to leave, he expressed the frustration of a man at the breaking point. "I would rather go back to Syria and be killed by the regime's barrel bombs, or be executed by ISIS, instead of staying in this misery." For the sake of his children and everyone's future, we hope that's a choice he doesn't have to make.

Dr. Jihad Shoshara is a Naperville pediatrician and a medical volunteer for the Syrian American Medical Society. Dr. Majd Isreb is a practicing nephrologist and the chairman of the Jordan Committee for the Syrian American Medical Society.