LETTER: Refugees, accountability and Missoula

Recent headlines proclaim that the newly arrived refugees brought to Missoula by Soft Landing and the International Rescue Committee have no place to live. How can that be? Both organizations have had months to prepare. The IRC does this for a living and “selected” Missoula because it was an “ideal” place. Yet they bring a family of refugees from the other side of the world and they have no place to stay?

Where is the accountability? Soft Landing dropped the ball. The International Rescue Committee dropped the ball. And where are the mayor, the county commissioners and Missoula City Council? The mayor proclaimed that Missoula was an ideal place for refugees. It seems everyone but Missoula leadership and the IRC knows there’s a housing shortage in Missoula, and if you can find it you can’t afford it.

And where is the accountability of Montana’s newspapers? Where are today’s investigative reporters? I have a daughter living in Missoula, and I know first hand there is no affordable housing there. Why didn’t our papers question the housing problem? Why aren’t the reporters putting the heat on Soft Landing and the IRC about this “mistake”? The IRC is supposed to produce a document known as an R & P Abstract outlining their plans for refugees in Missoula. Why aren’t our reporters chasing down that document and letting the citizens know what their plans are based on?

The tragedy in our current refugee situation falls on the refugees themselves. They didn’t ask to be pawns in the do-gooders’ game. You know where they will find affordable housing? In the 100 mile radius outside Missoula where the do-gooders in Missoula don’t live. Out where there are no jobs, no support and no money to support them. —Ed Kugler, Big Arm