VISION AND VALUES STATEMENT

Welcome Collective is an organization whose core mission is to mobilize Montreal’s local community to provide immediate help to the city’s most precarious refugee claimants.

Along with the United Nations, we believe that “Everyone has the right to seek and enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution,” (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 14.1).

We believe global migrations happen because of a lived experience of oppression. The conditions of oppression that cause many people to leave their homes often result from the deep legacy of colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and the accompanying extractive economic practices that rose alongside these systems.

Many of us who are settlers on the colonized and mostly unceded territory we now call Montreal, Quebec, and Canada enjoy a decent quality of life. Yet our quality of life was built on systems of oppression that operate at the expense of both Indigenous peoples and the countries from which many refugee claimants are today fleeing.

We therefore believe it is a moral imperative for us to go beyond the immediate humanitarian care of the refugee claimants who come to our communities. As an organization, we must speak out against and address the systems of racism, white supremacy, and patriarchy and the colonial reflexes that prevent our societies from welcoming and valuing all those who come to us for shelter. We must also address the root causes of oppression, both here and globally, which drive people to leave their homes.

We strive for a world of fair, inclusive and caring societies, where racism and patriarchy are things of the past and where people can live free from the legacies of colonialism, exploitation, and inequality in all of its forms.