Herzl framed Jewish immigration as bringing strength to a poor Ottoman land.

Evidence

Theodore Herzl, the father figure of the Zionist social movement, concurred: “The immigration of Jews signifies an unhoped-for accession of strength for the land which is now so poor; in fact, for the whole Ottoman Empire.” The Zionist vision for Israel, as Ella Shohat has remarked, represents the modernizing imperative in a region seen as still marked by the biblical backwardness of its Arab inhabitants. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 565