3 October 2016

Chet Billi knows beans about refugees — and very little more

Nineteen-year-old Chet Billi, the Republican candidate for Montana’s House District 5 (map), is misinformed about refugees. Badly misinformed.

False assertion A. In his platform, Billi claims “The United States harbors approximately 70% of the world’s refugees….” Wrong. According to the United Nations 2015 global trends report, the U.S. accepted approximately 66,500 (60 percent) of the world’s refugees for resettlement. That’s a very small subset of the world’s 21.3 million refugees. Billi apparently does not know the differences between refugees, refugees for resettlement, and displaced persons.

False assertion B. In his 6 September letter to the Whitefish Pilot, Billi claimed:

Wrong. These refugees are not from Syria. They’re Swahili and French speakers from the Democratic Republic of the Congo who could neither return to their native country nor continue to live in the East Africa nation where they were refugees. That’s why they’re being resettled in Missoula, where there are former Peace Corps workers who speak Swahili. This is not obscure information, inaccessible to mere legislative candidates: it was published in the Missoulian in stories in July, August, and September.

Billi is running against Democrat David Fern. His best argument against Fern might be that as a school board member, Fern didn’t do enough to ensure that Whitefish High School, from which Billi graduated, taught its students how to distinguish fact from fiction and instill in them sufficient respect for the truth.