Darine Houmani

Niall Clapham Ricardo is a member of Independent Jewish Voices. He was a spokesperson for Independent Jewish Voice in Quebec since 02/2017. Niall Clapham Ricardo holds degrees in sociology and political science, as well as law, from UQAM.

Now he is a candidate with The New Democratic Party NDP. District: Papineau. “So it's, Justin Trudeau's old riding”, he comments.

In one of his speeches, responding to Israeli statments justifying the genocide in Gaza by claiming that they have the “right to self-defense,” Niall Clapham Ricardo says: “There is no ‘right to self-defense’ when one occupies a territory!”

Here is an interview with him about his election campaign, his opinions, and his positions.

As a candidate for NDP and from Independent Jewish Voices, tell us more about your campaign and your goals.

When I decided to run for the federal elections, one of the decisions that was the most important for me, that made me consider running, was because I wanted to give a different perspective, on what is happening in Gaza, the genocide in Gaza, from a Jewish perspective. Because for me, what we've seen in the mainstream media has been, that it's a conflict between Jews and Arabs or Muslims and that is not at all the reality. A lot of Jewish people do not agree with what is happening in Palestine, in Gaza, and a lot of Jewish people don't agree with Israel. And even with the idea of Israel as a concept. I think that was important for me.

The second aspect is making the connections between these different issues. We've seen in Canada recently huge increase in cost of living. A lot of people are struggling to make ends meet.

We've seen a fivefold increase in usage of food banks within the past since COVID, and all of those things, because we have an economic model that is in place that favors the rich, the wealthy, and their interests. And multinational corporations make money off of war. They profit off of war. They profit off of conflict. And that is one of the reasons why I think it's very important to make the connections between the different issues, the affordability issue, the fact that our infrastructure is crumbling, the fact that our public services are crumbling is because we do not have the courage.

We do not have people that represent us truly, that have the courage to stand up against those powerful interests that are also on the side of what is happening in Gaza right now. Every bomb that is sent to Gaza from Canada is money that is not going to health care, is money that is not going to education and public services that we dearly need.

Do you believe that Canada should take more active role in pushing for ceasefire in Gaza?

For me, the ceasefire is the bare minimum. I think that a lot of people now it's kind of it's gotten so bad that we are now always, like, we're delayed, right, in our answers. So, at the beginning of the genocide, a lot of people were saying, well, we have to we have to look beyond October 7. We have to look at what created the conditions for October 7, the ongoing dispossession, apartheid regime, destruction of Palestine and Palestinian lives by Israel, and that since even before the Nakba in 1948.

So I think the bare minimum Canada should be due is a ceasefire. They took three months to call for a ceasefire. Ukraine took less than twenty-four hours. I was flabbergasted as a Canadian citizen to see that Canada didn't even have the ability to call for a ceasefire when normally a ceasefire is the minimum thing we should be doing, calling for a ceasefire.

I think that we have to go a lot further than that. I think that Canada has to support South Africa and the International Court of Justice. They have to support their case. I think that Canada also has to put sanctions on Israeli officials and on Israeli companies that are complicit in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Beyond that, I think we have to also look at what's happening in the West Bank. We have to look at how settlers are now running rapid with guns in the West Bank attacking Palestinian villages, taking Palestinian land, destroying Palestinian, olive groves, and this since time immemorial. So we have to put sanctions on companies that are complicit in the apartheid regime in Israel. That is something that the International Court of Justice has asked us to do. I also think that at this point of the genocide, we have to. and I'm gonna say it openly, cut diplomatic ties with Israel.

Enough is enough? We've had seen an ongoing genocide in Israel happen for eighteen months without end. We are seeing now some of the heaviest bombardments of Gaza after eighteen months.

People do not have anywhere to go. 80% of the structures in Gaza, as of, a few weeks ago, were destroyed. Now probably even more than 80%.  we have egregious attacks against health care workers, fifteen health care workers that were found a common grave, shot by Israeli forces.

It's time for Canada to take a stance and to cut diplomatic ties with Israel. And the last thing I would say is Canadian citizens that are dual citizens that participated in the genocide in Israel should be taken to court, should be taken to justice.  We have dispositions within the Canadian law to anybody. It's called the universal competence of Canada. Anybody who has committed cry crimes against humanity anywhere in the world in Canada should be judged, and those citizens of Canada or people that are coming into Canada that have committed those crimes should be arrested in Canada and put on trial in Canada.

So, if you are elected, you will support restricting arms out exports to Israel..

There should be no arms sent to Israel. There should be a complete embargo of arms sent to Israel, but there should be also be a complete embargo of Israeli, military equipment used here in Canada, Israeli Spy equipment used here in Canada.  Pegasus was spy equipment used by Israel and developed by Israeli intelligence. And we know that companies such as Google, and Apple are using AI and other systems that have been developed by Israel, the Israeli military and intelligence complex.

We have to a very clear stance against that. We have to impose a complete embargo on any Israeli tools. And Canadian companies should be banned. No export permits, should be sent to Israel.

Beyond that, I do not believe that Canada should be exporting weapons and bombs anywhere. We see Canadian weapons being used because of the supply chain, it's difficult. You don't have a whole bomb that is necessarily built in one place anymore.

You have parts of weapons, for example, the parts of the F 35 fighter jets are built in Canada, and then they are shipped through United States or they are shipped to The Netherlands and then assembled there.

So we have to, as a society, ask ourselves, do we want to invest in war, or do we want invest in justice, solidarity, and peace? And for me, the answer is we want just to invest in justice, solidarity, and peace. And so that means, obviously, full embargo on Israel, but it also means Canada should not be participating in arming and weapons that are sent to dictators and dictatorships across the world. We have to really, as a society, decide, that we want to be in favor of peace and on favor of the military industrial complex.

There are number of Canadians who object to the demonstrations calling for an end to the war in Gaza. What do you say to them?

First and foremost, I think it's a duty of Canadians to oppose genocide. I would hope that everybody would agree with that. Unfortunately, some people do not agree with that. Honestly, I am at loss of words to explain after eighteen months of what we have seen on all of our phones, how people can still support what Israel is doing or try to find a justification to support what Israel is doing.

For me, I think that it is important for us to understand that we don't live in a vacuum. Canada is not immune to what is happening anywhere else in the world, and there can be peace in Canada if the Canadian government is supporting genocide, if the Canadian government is silent about genocide and complete and complicit in this genocide and gas. And so, for me, one of the important things is that we don't want the conflicts elsewhere in the world to be become part of Canada, and have an impact on Canadian society, but they are having an impact on Canadian society. Palestinian Canadians are seeing their family members decimated and die.

Also, Lebanese Canadians have seen their families decimated and die. So there is an impact here in Montreal, in Quebec and in Canada.

And so for people to say, well, we don't want that violence to come here. The violence is here, and we're exporting the violence through the weapons. When we're talking about weapons, we are exporting violence through the weapons. So we have to understand that if we want peace in Canada, we have to fight for peace all over the world.

If we want peace in our neighborhoods, in our city, a city like Montreal, we need peace all throughout the world. We need peace to be an actor for peace and an actor for justice throughout the world. As long as we are an actor for injustice and we are an actor for war, there will be no peace in Canada. And I think that is very important for us to understand that the protest against genocide is the bare minimum and I would have hoped that the Canadian government would listen to the protesters instead of repressing, peaceful protest.

Given the increasing, political influence on of The US on Canada, do you believe Canada needs to take a stronger stance in the differentiating itself from American policies, especially regarding foreign affairs?

100% I believe that. I believe that Canada and certain aspects has historically been able to charter a different course from The United States, and that has been very important. One of the important moments for me was the embargo on Cuba. Canada decided not to participate in the embargo in Cuba, and Canada also decided not to participate in the war in Iraq. I think those are very important things, and those are important moments that Canadians are proud of where Canada took a different stance from United States.

Now what we are seeing happen to Canada is something that has been happening to countries within the third world, we call it the third world, the global south, for decades, which is American interventionism, American threats, American pressure, and those countries. We've seen it with Cuba. We've seen it in Venezuela. And I could list a bunch of Latin American countries that have been targeted by The United States when they elected leaders that said such simple things as we should redistribute wealth, so that everybody can live   equally with justice. So Canada has to chart a different route.

Canada has to look to our neighbors in the South, not just United States. Mexico, Brazil, they have to we have a big ally in Mexico, somebody who is Jewish too, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo and has taken a very unequivocal stance in solidarity with the Palestinian people and has stood up to Donald Trump on the tariffs. If I was prime minister, the first thing I would do to go to Mexico City to meet with our allies in Mexico, and to say that we create a common front to oppose Trump and to oppose his tariffs. I also think that there are leaders, like Gustavo Petro in Colombia.

There are leaders like Lula da Silva in Brazil.  There are leaders in Chile, that are allies of Canada that want to work together with Canada, throughout The Americas, to create closer ties with Canada. That's something that we should be working towards to, collectively be able to stop our dependency on United States. I think that, obviously, we have to work with countries outside of the Americas too, with Europe, for sure, but also with countries across the world, that are open. We have a lot of communities here in Canada from across the world, and there are a lot of countries that want to work with Canada.

And we have to be able to have a foreign policy that is not just a copy paste of the foreign policy of The United States. So on that, one of the things that I think is very important is that we can't be following United States who wants to have a commercial war with China. I don't believe that we should be part of that commercial war with China. But to the contrary, I think that we have to work with partners throughout the world, and we have to be inactive for peace, as I said before, in the world. And so we have to be able to have a different way of envisioning our foreign policy, which allows us to have more independence from The United States.

Many Canadians have been accused of anti-Semitism for criticizing Israel's actions. Do you think that there should be a distinction between antisemitism and criticism of Israel?

100 % I think that there has to be a distinction between antisemitism and criticism of Israel. I do think that there can be criticism of Israel that can sometimes be anti-Semitic. For example, when certain people, use Israel, to mean all Jews, then that can be anti-Semitic because not all Jews support Israel.

But what we're seeing is organizations like CJA, like the Ny Brit, use antisemitism and anti-Zionist in exchange. So I could be considered anti-Semitic because I criticize Israel, but I'm a Jewish person.

I have the right to criticize Israel just like anybody has the right to criticize any government across the world, and anybody has the right to criticize their own government. Right?  Israel is not my government. I have nothing to do with Israel. It's not because I'm Jewish that I have any ties to Israel.

But the reality is that we are creating a conflation that is very dangerous. Because we're saying that all Jews support the genocide in Gaza right now, and that's not true. All Jews do not support the genocide in Gaza. All Jews do not think that Israel should be above international legal standards.

All Jews do not think that that Israel has the right to do what they're doing right now in Gaza. And beyond that, Israel has, and Netanyahu have alliances with people that are anti-Semitic. Donald Trump, Stephen Bannon, who's Donald Trump's biggest strategist, up until recently.

Now they say that they're not together anymore! But the reality is that people like Stephen Bannon, they are anti-Semitic. They said literally that Jews disagree with Israel should be targeted.  So, what we're seeing is this unholy alliance, within institutional Jewish communities where, you can be anti-Semitic as long as you support Israel.

You can be anti-Semitic and white supremacists as long as you say you don't dare criticize Netanyahu or Netanyahu's actions or Israel's actions, Israeli apartheid, Israeli genocide. And so that is sending a message that is a very wrong message, which is the idea that Israel is untouchable, and that, being anti-Semitic is fine as long as you support israeli goals.

I'm talking about the ADL in The United States. I'm talking about CJA here in Canada. I'm talking about B’nai Brit. One of the things that is interesting is that B’nai Brit and CJA not do not agree on this. But there was a commission, now in parliament recently up until these elections that was asking for the divulgation of the Nazi war criminals that came to Canada in the nineteen fifties, '19 sixties.

There was a program of Nazi war criminals that were brought to Canada. Criminals that were part of the concentration camps, that were part of the gas chambers that 6,000,000 Jews died in, and CJA has nothing to say about that. CJA has nothing to say about white supremacy. CJA has nothing to say about the fact that in Canada, we welcome Nazis. CJA has nothing to say about people within the political, conservative party of Pierre Poivier, high up ranking figures of that party.

That met with anti-Semites in the ADL, the ADF, which is the alternative for Germany, extreme right wing party in Germany. They met with them here in Canada, and they were they were kept in caucus. We have a member of the Conservative Party of Canada who was posed in front of a Nazi flag during the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa because there was Nazi flags in the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa. And that person is still in caucus. That person is going to be reelected in this election.

So for me, Antisemitism is real. But antisemitism is always and has, majorly speaking, always been the antisemitism of the white supremacist movement that is that equally targets Muslims, targets brown people, targets black people, targets Jews because we are not part of what they deem to be the Canadian nation. And that is what we have to target.

With the growing concerns about Islamophobia, how do you plan to tackle these issues while ensuring freedom of speech and protecting minority rights?

I think that Islamophobia and the other issue of anti-Palestinian racism are very important. Ever since 09/11, we have seen with the war on terror, quote, unquote, the huge instrumentalization of  racist policies against Muslim populations, against Arab,  and Muslim populations,  to advance security state, security apparatus, that has taken huge swaths of our privacy away, has taken our democratic rights away, has taken our right to protest away, and it has been used as a Trojan horse, targeting  Muslims, obviously, primarily, but also targeting everybody else because these are rights that are then brittle.

These are rights that are then fragileized by these tactics, and these rights are taken away from us through the Patriot Act in The United States, the equivalent of those surveillance laws here in Canada. And so that is one of the things that we have to do. We have to identify that there is much more than just racism. There's a political agenda behind Islamophobia, and that political agenda behind Islamophobia is to take our rights away from us.

Beyond that, there is racism, and playing on racism. Because when political parties have no answer to the economic crisis, when political parties have no answer for the housing crisis, they have no answer for that cost of living crisis, what do they do? They go and they try to find a scapegoat. And the scapegoat within the last few years, ever since nine eleven, has been Muslim communities, has been Arab Muslim communities across the Western world..

Here in Quebec, we've heard about how there was Islamist groups, in our schools, that were convincing children to become fundamentalists. We have had unassisted debates in this province about the woman's right to wear a hijab, not to work certain legal professions, legal public professions, if they wear a headscarf, a hijab. These are things that affect people's lives in a very direct manner and have made a lot of Muslims, sprayed. I went door to door, I was talking to people about that, and that's one of their biggest concerns is that if my daughters decide to wear the hijab, going to be able to practice the profession in the way that they want. Nobody should be asking themselves these questions in Canada and Quebec.

Nobody should be asking themselves, do I have to follow my religion, or do I have to give up my profession, give up the life I want to live? Nobody should be asking themselves that. And this is because people do not understand secularism. This is very important.

People do not understand here in Quebec what secularism actually means. They think that secularism is the secularism of the individual. Secularism has never been about the individual because secularism, if it's only about the individual, means nothing at all. Secularism is about the state.

And when secularism first came in to part of the state apparatus, after the French Revolution, at least in Western context, it was because before, if you were Jewish, if you were somebody who was not part of the majority at the time, Catholic majority, for example, in France, you were Protestant, whatever, you didn't have access to jobs. You had to convert to be able to go into public profession. Secularism came in to say, you have the right regardless of your religion to practice the profession that you want. The state should have no religion. Individuals can have the religion that they want.

Now we have used secularism in this province as a Trojan horse just like in France with the right wing, taking this idea of secularism, which was supposed to be a left wing idea to say, no matter what you your religion is, you will have full citizenship rights to take away rights from citizens. And that is absolutely abhorrent. That is absolutely the wrong way that we should be going about with secularism because secularism is supposed to guarantee rights for all regardless of their religion.

 So what we're seeing now with the last iteration of Islamophobia coming from Quebec City is that they are now saying that young girls are not going to be able to wear in school the hijab and all of that. At what point are we as a society going to say “enough is enough”? Because we have tried Islamophobia, collectively, the West, for the past twenty-five years almost. Even before.

Has that made lives better? Has that made groceries cheaper? Has that made our societies more welcoming? Has that made our bills go down?

Had that made our societies more equal, our services, our education, and our health care better? No. Everything's gotten worse. Everything's gotten worse. And while we put up this mirage of hatred towards certain communities, those same people go and give tax cuts to the rich. They give tax cuts to the multinational corporations. They do all of these things. And so this is the Trojan horse. This is the mirage that they use to say hate the others.

And it's exactly the same thing that they did against Jews in the nineteen thirties, '19 twenties, '19 forties that came up with the holocaust, by othering people, by saying that they are the problem when in reality, the problem is the people it's not Muslims or women wearing hijab that are giving tax cuts to the rich. It's people wearing suits and ties and that look all professional, and they are the ones that are giving tax cuts and tax breaks and destroying our system and destroying our society. It's not people that are coming here for a better life.

Before the British colonialism in Palestine in 1918, there was no distinction between Jews, Muslims, and the Christians. And before that, Jews were running from racism in Spain to Morocco, from Europe to Palestine and to Arab world.  The matter is not as what they are describing it now. Do you strengthen these ideas in the Jewish community?

I'm of Sephardic origin. My dad is Sephardi. My family on my father's side, survived the inquisition in Portugal, to a certain extent. So, obviously, we've been in Portugal for five hundred years over five hundred years now.

And so, obviously, we're being positioned with all of those things. Some of the things were lost. There has to be a very important understanding that antisemitism is a creation of Europe.

Jews were seen as a race is a creation of Europe in a very particular time, which was a time where we were trying to give scientific backing to racial theories. And that's the turn of the nineteenth to twentieth century. We were trying to explain everything in scientific ways, and Hannah Arendt, who is a big Jewish philosopher, one of the greatest philosophers of all time, in my opinion. She wrote extensively about how judiophobia or anti-Jewish sentiment is not the same thing as antisemitism. Antisemitism is this scientific, bogus belief based in scientism, that Jews are part of a race that is different, that is fundamentally different.

I believe that there's a diversity of Jewish communities. There are Jews in Morocco, as you said. There are Jews like myself in Portugal. My mom’s family is from England, and from Eastern Europe before that.

And so there are very different Jewish communities, and the Jewish Ethiopians. This idea that we're all similar is a very racist idea because it is this idea that basically we are one people, but we can be one people without being all the same. And we can be one people without saying that we are all from a common origin.

I think that there can be diversity, and Israel is very prominent about that. There's one way to be Jewish. The one way to be Jewish is to support Israel. There's one way to be Jewish in general, and I don't believe in that. And in history, obviously, the different Jewish communities had different experiences throughout their history.

The experience of the German Jewish community is not the same as the experience of the Jewish community in the Ottoman Empire in Turkey, for example, they left, during the inquisition and went and tried to practice the religion hiding in Latin America. It's not at all the same experience, but these different experiences shouldn't be shunned. They should be welcomed.

And so when we say, the Palestinians' antisemitism, is the same, as Nazi Germany. That's absolutely ridiculous. There's not one common antisemitism. Of course, there can be antisemitism that is used by Palestinians that is dead, that use similar tropes as that of Nazi Germany.

But today, when Palestinians are resisting against the oppressor, who is Jewish. Are they resisting against the oppressor because he's Jewish? or are they resisting against him because he's the oppressor? So that's the important thing. There are all of these theories like Arab antisemitism.

Antisemitism started during the crusades. The first crusade was one of the biggest programs that was recorded in history, because they came throughout Europe and killed and ravaged Jewish communities, throughout Eastern Europe. And then when they came to the Middle East, they didn't understand that some communities were Jewish, some communities were Christian, some communities were Muslim, but all of these communities were Arab.

And there are Arab Jews, a lot of Arab Jewish communities. What I think and what I will say that is important to remember, and that is sad, is that a lot of these communities with the creation of the state of Israel, historic tradition like, millennial communities, the Jews in Iraq, the Jews in Yemen, the Jews in Egypt, they were pushed out of the Arab community, of the Arab countries.  Obviously, Israel played a role in that, but there was the Arab nationalism became that shunned, the Jews, and they were, unfortunately, victims of that. And that is very, very sad because today, what we see is Jewish Arab communities, that don't say that they're Arab anymore. That came to Israel.

And now they have no country of origin anymore. They can't go back to their country's origin. They can't go back to Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, etc... But at the same time, they are not fully Israeli because the Israeli society has been very racist towards the Arab Jews, the Mizkali and Sephardic Jews, to the extent where there were movements in Israel against the racism that they were that they were suffering from.

In the history of Israel, there has been only one prime minister that was non Ashkenazi. And all of the other prime ministers have been Ashkenazi. And even people like Shimon Peres, who people think his name is Shimon Peres. Shimon Peres changed his last name to try to show that he was part of a Sephardic or whatever community when in reality, he was Ashkenazi.

So in Israel, there is racism against Sephardim, against Yemeni Jews and from Jews from Asia. So it's very important to understand those distinctions too, because people see Jews as one common thing, and it's not that.

Some critics argue that Canada's multiculturalism policy, has led to cultural silos rather than integration. Do you think Canada needs to rethink its approach to multiculturalism, which is increased through immigration?

I don't think that Canada has to review its approach to multiculturalism. I think that Canada has to review its immigration system, which is an immigration system that does a lot of damage to immigrants that come to Canada. Because there are a lot of immigrants that come to Canada with the hopes of a better life. And when they come here, it was difficult to get a job. They lived in poverty. They were not integrated, quote, unquote, into society at all, because there was no means for them to integrate.

And so we see a lot of distress, in first generation immigrants that come to this country because we do not have the necessarily appropriate structures in place to allow them to fully have the life that they would like to have here. Nobody comes to Canada for a free ride. Nobody comes to Canada and doesn't work. I have met hundreds of people through my career that have come here without papers, and the first thing they do is work.

The first thing they do is try to learn French. Today, the discourse that we have about immigration is disgusting.  and I frankly never thought that we would see a discourse about that.

I'm going to be very honest. The Liberal Party of Canada is not the party of immigration. The Liberal Party of Canada might have been the party of immigration before, but it's not the party anymore. Let's not forget that Justin Trudeau's promised amnesty for everybody that was in precarious and migratory status, and he didn't keep that promise. And then, to add salt to the wound, he said that the housing crisis was because of immigration.

I'm sorry, but the housing crisis existed long before a lot of the immigrants came to this country. And the housing crisis and the price of cost of living crisis is because his government did not take the necessary measures to fight against speculation in the housing markets. Quite to the contrary, they allowed speculation to get completely out of hand, and they never put in they never put any measures until it was too late on speculation.

It was the government that did not reinvest in social housing, which is very important. For forty years, Canada has not built social housing because they don't think that it's necessary because they want to give tax cuts and they want to give money to promoters and real estate builders.

It's the cost of living crisis when the NDP asked for price controls on basic elements, essential elements, like bread, eggs, milk. They refused because the biggest donors of the conservatives and the Liberal Party are the biggest chains, here in Canada, Galen Weston, Metro, Loblaws.

But what I found absolutely horrendous is that Justin Trudeau, who says that he is the biggest friend of multiculturalism in Canada, at the same time, he basically threw migrant immigrants under the bus and said that the reason why, we are having all these problems in Canada is because of immigrants.

What kind of political party does that? It's a right wing political party. It's extreme right wing political parties that do that. It shouldn't have been the Liberal Party of Canada. And for me, this goes back to the thing I was saying about the immigration system.

The immigration system in this country is broken. People are right to say that. But who broke it, and why is it broken? It's broken because it treats immigrants like numbers. It does not give immigrants the full extent of their human rights.

One of the programs that we have at the United Nations has said that it resembles modern day slavery is a temporary foreign worker program. That is a program that you come to Canada, you have to give, you are employed on a farm, for example, and you live on the farm and you have no freedom whatsoever and your employer has basically complete power over you. That is something that the United Nations has said has to be abolished. It should absolutely be abolished, and we should give people if they're good enough to work here, they're good enough to be Canadian citizens, and they're good enough to live here. We should not be telling people, come work here.

Let us pay you less than what we would pay Canadians, and then once you're done with your contract, you have to go back to your country. If they want to go back to their country, that's fine, but they should be given an option to live in Canada, without being exploited like that. And the other thing, that Canada has done, is not a conservative government that it is.

This is Justin Trudeau's liberal government who closed Roxham Road. Roxham Road was the only point of entry for refugees coming from The United States. Today, we have a government in The United States that is going against trans people, that is going against queer people, that is going against immigrants, that is deporting immigrants, right, left, and center.  No regard for people's rights, no regard for their humanity. And the only point of entry for those people to come into Canada was through Roxham Road. And Justin Trudeau closed that, and he said that it was the right thing to do. Not even Stephen Harper did even dare to close that road. It was Justin Trudeau who did it. So the liberal record on immigration is absolutely horrendous, and I think that we have to remember that in this country, we have to respect people that come here that try to make a living here.

My dad and so many people have that experience, and we have to respect them. And we also have to build a system that allows immigrant communities to keep their dignity. Immigrants that come to Canada keep their dignity and keep their humanity, and that actually helps immigrants, that sees immigrants as something that is positive for our society and that we can build a society together instead of seeing them as the enemy.