Foreground: Refugees flee from Ukraine to Moldova after the Russian offensive in Ukraine in early 2022. (Photo by UN Women / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED)  Background: A new anti-immigrant billboard has appeared on Eau Claire's west side. (Photo by Sawyer Hoff)

The City of Eau Claire’s top elected official has acted swiftly to condemn what she called a “xenophobic” billboard that questions plans to help refugees settle in the Chippewa Valley.

The billboard, which appeared recently on Truax Boulevard on Eau Claire’s west side, encourages the public to “ask your questions” about the refugee proposal and provides the phone numbers of both City Council President Emily Berge and City Manager Stephanie Hirsch.

In recent weeks, city leaders have come under public criticism for working with World Relief, a Christian humanitarian nonprofit that hopes to bring roughly 75 refugees to the Eau Claire area during the coming year. “Why were they hiding their plan for months?” the billboard asks.

Earlier this year, Hirsch sent a letter in support of opening a World Relief satellite office in Eau Claire. Later, after World Relief publicly announced its plans this fall, some residents spoke out against the plan at public meetings and in demonstrations. (For example, on Thursday, Dec. 19, the Eau Claire County Board rejected a resolution that would have called on World Relief to conduct an “independent economic impact study regarding costs to taxpayers” of the potential resettlement.)

Berge released a public statement on Thursday, Dec. 14, about the new billboard.

“Eau Claire strives to be welcoming to all, no matter where you are from,” Berge wrote. “I am saddened that a few area extremists continue to spread disinformation that only harms our community. I am concerned about how this xenophobic message impacts our immigrants, refugees, and city as a whole. I encourage Eau Claire to unite around compassion and stand together against this fear-mongering and extremism.”

”

I am saddened that a few area extremists continue to spread disinformation that only harms our community.

EMILY BERGE

eau claire city council president

The billboard claims without evidence that an “NGO” – or non-governmental organization, in this case World Relief – is trying to “traffic Somali refugees.” However, World Relief is one of 10 nonprofit agencies that work with the U.S. State Department to help refugees settle in the United States. Rather than being “trafficked,” such refugees are extensively vetted overseas by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and other agencies, a process that sometimes takes years.

This billboard was recently put up on Truax Boulevard in Eau Claire.

In addition, while World Relief says it doesn’t yet know where the refugees will come from, Somalia is an unlikely point of origin: Of the roughly 25,000 refugees allowed into the United States during fiscal year 2022, fewer than 500 were from Somalia. The most common countries of origin for refugees that year were the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burma. These were also the top two countries for refugees who arrived in Wisconsin last year, World Relief says.

Overall, the Biden administration has capped the number of refugees that will be allowed into the U.S. in fiscal year 2024 to 125,000. This is less than one-third of 1% of the more than 35 million refugees worldwide, according to the United Nations.

The group named on the billboard – “C.M.B. Burton Citizen Fund Me” – also sponsored a billboard in Eau Claire in 2021 that criticized the Eau Claire school district’s masking-wearing requirement amid the COVID-19 pandemic.