I agree with Starbucks’ plan to hire 10,000 refugees

Starbucks recently announced that it will hire 10,000 refugees worldwide over the next five years.

I agree with Starbucks.

It is extremely important for refugees to be assimilated into their new home. Besides learning the language of their new home, obtaining a job is the most important part of this assimilation.

Refugees – real refugees, that is – are fleeing from horrifying atrocities that most of us cannot comprehend.

A real refugee is someone who is very much opposed to the policies of the country from which they fled. A real refugee does not try to turn their new home into the same kind of hellhole from which they fled.

For example, consider this story of real refugee Brigitte Gabriel:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigitte_Gabriel

Brigitte Gabriel

Brigitte Gabriel, born October 21, 1964, is a conservative American journalist, author, political lecturer, anti-Islamic activist, and founder of two non-profit political organizations, the American Congress For Truth and ACT! for America. She has given hundreds of lectures and frequently speaks at American conservative organizations such as The Heritage Foundation, Christians United for Israel, Evangelicals, and Jewish groups.

Her sometimes controversial statements include that Islam keeps countries backward and that it teaches terrorism.

Brigitte Gabriel was born in the Marjeyoun District of Lebanon to a Maronite Christian couple, a first and only child after over twenty years of marriage. She recalls that during the Lebanese Civil War, Islamic militants launched an assault on a Lebanese military base near her family’s house and destroyed her home. Gabriel, who was ten years old at the time, was injured by shrapnel in the attack. She says that she and her parents were forced to live underground in all that remained, an 8-by-10-foot (2.4 by 3.0 m) bomb shelter for seven years, with only a small kerosene heater, no sanitary systems, no electricity or running water, and little food. She says she had to crawl in a roadside ditch to a spring for water to evade Muslim snipers.

According to Gabriel, at one point in the spring of 1978, a bomb explosion caused her and her parents to become trapped in the shelter for two days. They were eventually rescued by three Christian militia fighters, one of whom befriended Gabriel but was later killed by a land mine.

Gabriel wrote that in 1978 a stranger warned her family of an impending attack by the Islamic militias on all Christians. She says that her life was saved when the Israeli army invaded Lebanon in Operation Litani. Later, when her mother was seriously injured and taken to an Israeli hospital, Gabriel was surprised by the humanity shown by the Israelis, in contrast to the constant propaganda against the Jews she saw as a child. She says of the experience:

“I was amazed that the Israelis were providing medical treatment to Palestinian and Muslim gunmen…These Palestinians and Muslims were sworn, mortal enemies, dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the slaughter of Jews. Yet, Israeli doctors and nurses worked feverishly to save their lives. Each patient was treated solely according to the nature of his or her injury. The doctor treated my mother before he treated an Israeli soldier lying next to her because her injury was more severe than his. The Israelis did not see religion, political affiliation, or nationality. They saw only people in need, and they helped.”

Brigitte Gabriel is a real refugee. She has assimilated very well. She has not tried to turn the U.S. into the same kind of hellhole form which she fled. I support letting real refugees like her into the U.S.

I will gladly support the U.S. taking in one million real refugees like her each and every year.

By comparison, a fake refugee is someone who refuses to assimilate, and instead, tries to turn their new home into the same kind of hellhole from which they fled.

There are plenty of fake refugees living in the city of Hamtramck, Michigan. The reason that I call them fake refugees instead of real refugees is because instead of assimilating into their new home, they are passing laws that force their way of life on to the long term residents of their new home.

According to this article from the Washington Post, Hamtramck is the first Muslim majority city in the U.S., and Muslims make up the majority of its city council. So far, this Muslim majority city council has done at least two things to force the rest of the city to adopt the Muslim way of life.

First, the city council banned business owners within 500 feet of any of the city’s mosques from obtaining a liquor license.

Secondly, the city gave all of these mosques an exemption from the city’s noise ordinance, so they can use electronic amplification to loudly broadcast the Muslim call to prayer five times a day, every day. Residents who live near these mosques have complained that this wakes them up at 6 a.m.

It is because of these two things – things where the Muslims have used the government to force their way of life on to unwilling participants – that I refer to them as fake refugees instead of real refugees.

If liberals want U.S. citizens to be more tolerant of refugees, then I suggest that liberals put an end to this kind of nonsense, instead of supporting it, as they currently do.

I support taking in real refugees – the kind who want to assimilate, and who would never try to turn their new home into the kind of hellhole from which they have fled.

I have nothing against real refugees who want to practice Islam on their own, without forcing it on to unwilling participants.

But when fake refugees use the government to force their way of life onto the long term residents of their new home, such as by banning liquor licenses in their new home, and by using electronic amplification to loudly force their call to prayer into the homes of unwilling participants who are trying to sleep, then no, I don’t want them – these fake refugees – in our country.

If liberals want people to be more welcoming to refugees, then liberals need to acknowledge this distinction between real refugees and fake refugees.