While the immigration debate was raging on Capitol Hill last month, Business Report Editor Stephanie Riegel notes nearly 100 people gathered at Light House Coffee on Lee Drive to observe World Refugee Day, which was created by the United Nations in 2000 to raise awareness about the plight of refugees around the world.
Those who gathered for the event were “filled with compassion and a heartfelt willingness to help,” Riegel says.
“It is touching to see genuine goodness in a community that hypocritically wears its Christianity on its sleeve, welcoming newcomers to town along Interstate 10 with three oversized crosses, while electing lawmakers and a president who push to cut health care benefits to the poor and disabled,” she writes in her latest column.
The shop’s staff is made up of refugees, and some of them shared their stories about how they came to the United States at the World Refugee Day event, Riegel writes.
“If you can remember how displaced you felt when you had to stay at a relative’s house or a motel after hurricanes Katrina or Gustav, or following the August 2016 flood, try to imagine spending five years in a tent in a muddy refugee camp then traveling thousands of miles around the world and plopping down in a country where you knew no one and couldn’t speak the language,” she writes.
There are an estimated 68.5 million refugees who are part of the worst refugee displacement crisis since World War II. And that’s not counting the thousands of migrants fleeing Latin America because of gang violence and hunger, Riegel writes.
“Certainly, no one in state or local government is talking about how we can try to address some of the global issues leading to these crises,” she writes. “Fortunately there are people like those at Light House Coffee who give us all hope.”
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