Starbucks senior vice president of global communications John Kelly is slamming a fake, malicious Starbucks ad directed at undocumented immigrant youth as “completely false” and “one hundred percent fake.”
The ad, created and promulgated by internet trolls, promotes a “Starbucks Dreamer Day” on August 11 and reads that “all undocumented Americans will receive any item on the Starbucks menu 40 percent off.” But this is totally fake. Instead, the intent is to single immigrant youth out for harassment. As Think Progress notes, “internet trolls seized on the opportunity to market Starbucks to immigrants because the company is known for its progressive hiring practices”:
The origin of the ad appears to come from the website 4chan. The point of the ad, as the creator pointed out on 4chan, is to get undocumented immigrants to go to Starbucks to ask for “free stuff,” a claim that perpetuates the myth that these people are freeloaders on U.S. society. Users have also suggested calling the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency to target Starbucks on Friday the 11th so that immigrants can be detained and potentially deported at the shops.
The ad is insulting in large part because it hypes up the rhetoric that undocumented immigrants are takers and not makers in the United States. The myth works exceedingly well because undocumented immigrants are already viewed as “criminals” despite violating civil and not criminal offenses when they enter the country illegally. This view presents a very black-and-white portrayal that disregards the reasons why people, and their ancestors, come to the United States in the first place like fleeing violence in their home countries.
“The ad is also appalling,” notes immigration reporter Esther Yu Hsi Yee, “because internet trolls hope to scare immigrants with the threat of deportation, an unsettling reality that is already taking place at a rapid clip under the Trump administration.”
Last June, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser condemned fake flyers featuring instructions to report undocumented immigrants to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or risk jail time. The signs, which featured official-looking text and federal government information, were posted all over a Washington, D.C. neighborhood. “If you see something, say something. If you would like to report illegal aliens, please call Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” it read.
“DC is a sanctuary city,” Mayor Bower said in response to public outrage. “Clearly the flyer is meant to scare and divide our residents. We won't stand for it.”
More from Think Progress:
Internet trolls, who likely benefit from immigrant labor in their everyday meals, have tried to intimidate this population before. Last October before Trump was elected as president, trolls widely shared a photoshopped image of an U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent arresting a Latino man in the back of a voter line in an effort to dissuade Latinos from voting on Election Day.