Starbucks: We're Hiring 10K Refugees

Starbucks says it will hire 10,000 refugees over the next five years, a response to President Trump's indefinite suspension of Syrian refugees and temporary travel bans that apply to six other Muslim-majority nations. Howard Schultz, the coffee retailer's chairman and CEO, said in a letter to employees Sunday that the hiring would apply to stores worldwide and the effort would start in the United States, where the focus would be on hiring immigrants "who have served with US troops as interpreters and support personnel," the AP reports.

Schultz took aim at other parts of a Trump agenda focused on immigration, repealing ObamaCare, and restructuring trade with Mexico. The letter said that Starbucks would help support coffee growers in Mexico, provide health insurance to eligible workers if the health care law is repealed, and back an Obama-era immigration program that allows young immigrants who were brought to the country as children to apply for a two-year reprieve from deportation and a work permit. Schultz added that Starbucks would aim to communicate with workers more frequently, saying: "I am hearing the alarm you all are sounding that the civility and human rights we have all taken for granted for so long are under attack." (More Starbucks stories.)