Business acumen is the antidote to the political backlash against migration

2024/07/13 Leave a comment

Interesting initiative, similar to Talent Beyond Boundaries:

…Some of those businesses, including Saint-Gobain, Colas, Purolator, Lafarge and Fragomen, are already participating in a new partnership launched by the France Canada Chamber of Commerce (Ontario), or FCCCO, this past February.

Project Starfish – the initiative’s name is a nod to returning stranded starfish to the sea – is working with the IOM to provide companies with access to globally displaced talent. Migrants, meanwhile, benefit from job opportunities that allow them to immediately contribute to the Canadian economy. The workers, who originally hail from Djibouti, Costa Rica and Mexico, only arrive in Canada after securing a job and a work permit.

“Virtual Interviews and recruitments are ongoing by companies,” said Riva Walia, founding managing director of FCCCO, adding that 52 candidates were being considered for various jobs as of last week.

Ms. Walia and Sanjay Tugnait, president and chief executive of Fairfax Digital Services, are also conducting a roadshow to solicit more corporate participation in Project Starfish.

“Canada is the best in class when it comes to matching work force needs with a migration policy,” Ms. Pope said. “And that gives Canada a competitive edge compared to other countries. That will become more and more relevant as we see these demographic trends become more and more acute.”…

Source: Business acumen is the antidote to the political backlash against migration

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This Syrian IT worker was stuck in limbo in Lebanon. Now he works at Shopify — thanks to a Canadian pilot program for skilled refugees

2021/10/14 Leave a comment

Looks like a success story for this approach even if numbers are relatively small:

With years of experience in IT and surveillance systems, Omar Taha could easily transfer his skills and knowledge anywhere if an employer would give him a chance.

But being a refugee in Lebanon, the Syrian man didn’t know where to start to find an international employer to sponsor him to another country, let alone have the money and proper documentation such as university transcripts for relocation.

Then a fellow Syrian refugee told him about the recruitment drive by Talent Beyond Boundaries, a global non-profit organization that matches skilled refugees with employers around the world in need of their skills.

“It was in October 2018 when I contacted them. Honestly, I thought my chances of getting a job through them was one in a million,” said Taha, who has a master’s degree in computer engineering and years of work experience in IT and system operations in Syria and Lebanon.

“Then they reached out to me in 2019 and told me there’s this job opportunity with a company called Shopify in Canada and asked if I would be interested. And I was like, ‘Hell, yeah!’”

The 31-year-old man finally ended a life in limbo in January when he and his accountant wife, Roula Dannoura, arrived in Hamilton as permanent residents — among 18 former refugees (plus 27 family members) who came under Ottawa’s pilot program to resettle refugees here based on Canada’s labour market needs.

“A lot of the refugees I know in Lebanon have all sorts of skills and knowledge. But we don’t know how, when or where to start,” said Taha, who now works as a support adviser for Shopify, a multinational e-commerce company headquartered in Ottawa.

“I always dreamed of going to Europe or Canada or the U.S. to work there. But it’s very, very hard. How would I go through the process? Why would an international company be interested in someone who was a refugee in Lebanon and didn’t have any Canadian experience?”

With the resounding success of the pilot, Ottawa has expanded the program to recruit up to 500 skilled refugees from around the world.

“We have on a daily basis employers across different sectors now reaching out to us. We’re seeing a significant increase in the private sector engagement,” said Patrick O’Leary, Talent Beyond Boundaries’s Canada director.

“So it’s no longer a proof of concept. And this is really being seen as truly an untapped talent pool in Canada and around the world.”

Since its inception in 2016, the organization has vetted and developed skill profiles of refugees. Its international talent pool currently has 32,000 candidates — in backgrounds from engineering to health care and IT among others — including some 350 Afghans who have registered recently.

Over the last three years, through partnerships with different countries, more than 312 refugees, including 141 principal applicants, have resettled based on this model. While Australia has committed to welcoming 100 skilled refugees, the U.K. is set to usher in 205 refugee nurses in the next six months.

“In terms of the current pandemic, the biggest thing that we’re hearing across sectors in Canada is we need skilled workers,” said O’Leary, whose organization will launch a new online platform soon to allow Canadian employers to glean candidates’ professional profiles directly.

“We are providing a solution that hasn’t been on the table before and employers are coming out now.”

Under Canada’s expanded program, candidates with a job offer are waived permanent residence application fees and biometrics fees. They also have their pre-departure medical services and the immigration medical exam covered.

Those without enough initial settlement fund for their move to Canada are eligible for government loans to help with travel and start-up costs. To make the program more appealing to Canadian employers, immigration officials also aim to process 80 per cent of the cases within a standard of six months through a dedicated team.

Glen Haven Manor, a long-term care facility in New Glasgow, N.S., which has recruited talent locally and globally, welcomes the expanded program. It successfully brought two skilled refugees on staff under the original pilot.

“The long-term care sector throughout Nova Scotia and Canada has been chronically understaffed for many years now,” says Janice Jorden, employee relations specialist at Glen Haven Manor.

“Added pressures from the pandemic have escalated this critical need as well as the growing demands from the constantly increasing care levels of residents. For many nursing homes, being in rural Canada compounds the critical nature of this situation.”

One of the most recent additions to her team is Lamis Alhassan, a former Syrian nurse and nursing instructor, who joined the home in July after living in limbo in Lebanon with her husband, Abd Alazeez Alabaas, also a nurse, and two young daughters for six years.

The 31-year-old registered with Talent Beyond Boundaries in 2016 and spent three years upgrading her English to meet the required language standards before she was offered a job by Glen Haven in late 2019. Due to the visa processing disruption caused by COVID-19, her family received their Canadian visas in April.

“My bosses, colleagues and the residents here really welcomed us with open arms,” said Alhassan, who was matched with a co-worker on the same shift so she can be picked up and dropped off for work because the town only has one bus.

“Life is so quiet and peaceful here. I’m so happy that Canada is expanding this program so more refugees can have a better future and use their skills to make a contribution.”

Alhassan said both she and her husband plan to study toward being licensed to practise nursing in Canada once they are settled.

Source: This Syrian IT worker was stuck in limbo in Lebanon. Now he works at Shopify — thanks to a Canadian pilot program for skilled refugees

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From Jordan to Morden: Iraqi family thrilled to be in Manitoba under new program to resettle skilled refugees

2020/08/11 Leave a comment

Nice story highlighting a family that benefited from the Economic Mobility Pathways Project and Talent Beyond Boundaries:

Mokhles Abdulghani had never heard of Morden, a small community in southern Manitoba, before last spring when he was interviewed by a city official there in search of skilled immigrants.

But the Iraqi refugee quickly fell in love with Morden’s natural beauty and the changing seasons after watching YouTube videos about the city that would soon become his new home.

After spending five years in limbo as refugees in Jordan, Abdulghani, his wife and three children could hardly contain their excitement when they arrived in Morden this weekend.

“We already feel like home in Morden,” the mechanical engineer said Sunday. Still in quarantine, the family could only glimpse their adopted community through the living-room window.

“We can’t wait to start our new life in this country,” said Abdulghani, whose family is the first admitted to Canada under a new program launched by the federal government to resettle skilled refugees to fill the country’s labour gaps.

The Economic Mobility Pathways Project aims to bring 500 skilled workers and their families to Canada over two years, the world’s largest pilot project of its kind. Australia has a similar program and has committed to admitting 100 skilled refugees as permanent residents.

The project is one of the pledges Canada made at the 2019 U.N. Global Refugee Forum to create more pathways for refugees to use their skills as a route out of displacement.

Through the initiative, candidates with skills and knowledge can apply for permanent residence as economic migrants, instead of as resettled refugees sponsored by the federal government and private community groups — a process that can take years.

“Many refugees have immense talent and should have the opportunity, just like other skilled people, to use economic visas to relocate to a secure future. Canada’s work to open these pathways offers a safe and legal new solution for refugees,” said Dana Wagner of Talent Beyond Boundaries, a non-governmental organization that has built a refugee talent pool and is matching candidates with employers from around the world.

“There’s an extraordinary need for new solutions for refugees. Displacement is rising and conditions facing refugees during the pandemic are worsening. Meanwhile, companies in essential sectors like health care and manufacturing are still in critical need of skills. Mokhles and many more like him can be part of Canada’s recovery story.”

In April 2019, Abdulghani, 35, was selected by Morden, a city of less than 10,000 people, which recommended him for the Manitoba provincial immigration nomination program. The city is committed to offering wraparound supports to the families, including job-matching support.

Abdulghani, who has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Technology-Baghdad, said he and his wife Hajir Saad Ghareeb, 27, left Kurdistan in 2015 for Jordan after racism against them and other Sunnis, in particular in Northern Iraq, intensified.

“We were happy in our first year in Amman because we felt safe and nobody would hurt us there,” he said. “But life was very hard. We were refugees and could only work illegally. I worked as a mechanical maintenance engineer at an electrical cable factory. I was earning less than half of what I should have been making in that position.”

Abdulghani applied for scholarships to continue his studies and finally got the financial support of a German Catholic charity to enrol in a master’s program in mechatronics engineering at Philadelphia University in Jordan. He graduated in February.

“I was working fulltime and studying fulltime, and maybe had two hours of sleep each day,” he recalled. “But when you have no hope, you do anything to rebuild your life. You use every drop of energy to keep going. You don’t care if you are tired or not.”

The family was thrilled when they received their Canadian permanent residence visas on March 15, almost a year after they were initially picked by the city of Morden. Then two days later, Jordan closed down its airport to international flights amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Finally, in early August, the family learned they would board a Canadian repatriation flight that departed Friday and arrived in Winnipeg late Saturday, after hours of stopovers in Istanbul and Montreal.

Abdulghani has already had two online interviews for jobs in Morden and nearby Winkler. He is also planning to take a doctoral degree after learning about the University of Manitoba’s renowned biomedical engineering program.

“It’s been an amazing first day in Morden for us,” said Abdulghani, who has yet to meet anyone other than a cab driver who was sent by the city to guide his rental car to their new home Saturday, where they are under quarantine. (Officials have filled the fridge in their apartment with food.) “We are still living this moment. We can’t believe we are here.”

According to Talent Beyond Boundaries, there are now 20,000 refugees registered in its talent database — most of them now living in Jordan and Lebanon. Fifty-seven have been shortlisted for Canada’s new project. Ontario, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia and Yukon have also signed on to participate in the program.

Source: From Jordan to Morden: Iraqi family thrilled to be in Manitoba under new program to resettle skilled refugees

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Opening economic immigration track to refugees a ‘win-win,’ says UNHCR rep

2020/02/27 Leave a comment

This has been discussed for some time with some organizations advocating for this (Talent Beyond Boundaries) and the government is piloting the Economic Mobility Pathways Project (EMPP):

Canada should consider letting in some skilled refugees as economic immigrants, says Canada’s new United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and with it, establish a new avenue for refugees to resettle, which could be used to help people in dire need in countries in crisis, like Venezuela.

Doing this would open up a track beyond the resettlement quota and the typical pathway for refugees, said Rema Jamous Imseis.

Canada plans to expand the number of immigrants accepted to 350,000 by 2021, including 51,700 protected persons and refugee programs, and 202,300 through economic and skills programs, according to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’s (IRCC) 2019 plan.

“This is something entirely different. It’s recognizing that refugees come with skill sets; you have a lot of highly educated people who already speak English and [have] years of rich work experience in different parts of the world,” she explained. “Why not look at some of these people?”

Any efforts to increase the number taken out of harm’s way and also benefit Canada, is “a win-win,”she added. While qualified, she noted a refugee fleeing a country may not have the expected documents; some may be missing copies of degrees, or birth certificates, or may be missing experience in a relevant field in recent years.

Even if the economic immigration stream is expanded to include one per cent of refugees in its total, it’d make a difference addressing the massive amounts of displacement globally, which over the past few years has reached “epic proportions,” she said.

“I don’t use that word lightly,” Ms. Imseis said during a Feb. 14 interview less than two weeks on the job. She’d spent that week immersed in resettlement discussions, including co-hosting an international meeting on the subject.

Canada recently launched a very small pilot to start and while it’s too early to put a timeline on introducing such system changes, she said she’s encouraged by the fact that “there’s a lot of interest and facilitation” from the government. For good reason, it’s initially going to be a slow process, she said.

“You can’t dramatically change a system overnight.”

IRCC spokesman Rémi Larivière said  Canada is known for its leadership in developing innovative programs that support refugees seeking protection.

Canada has been exploring labour mobility as a complementary pathway, he said, and IRCC’s first step was to establish the Economic Mobility Pathways Project (EMPP). Research with partners demonstrated that there are skilled refugees in Kenya and the Middle East who meet the requirements of Canada’s economic immigration programs, he said.

The need is so great for those living in extreme vulnerability, and yet so few get the “life-saving and life-changing” chance at resettlement, Ms. Imseis said. Of the 1.4-million people in need of resettlement in 2019, only about 64,000 refugees were resettled, according to theUNHCR.

In Canada, so far four applicants, along with nine family members, have arrived through the project and another four applicants and their families are expected to arrive shortly, Mr. Larivière said, with an expected 10 to 20 to arrive over the next year. A second research face will begin in April 2020, with results available by early 2021.

The hope is to use those case studies to “see if there are opportunities to finesse [the] system and maybe overcome some of these hurdles,” said Ms. Imseis, while keeping the same standards and targeting in-demand professions.

“Nobody’s lowering the threshold for them, it’s just about now trying to find ways to deal with the reality of being a refugee and how we can support applications under this track.”

Such changes could widen the opportunity to bring in migrants where the need is most, she said, including those affected by the unfolding crisis in Venezuela, where almost five-million have fled in the face of increasing food shortages and political unrest, with the Nicolas Maduro regime still in power despite world leaders, like Canada, supporting Juan Guaidó.

Source: Opening economic immigration track to refugees a ‘win-win,’ says UNHCR rep

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Pilot project aims to bring refugees to Canada as skilled workers

2018/10/13 Leave a comment

Interesting. Will be good to see how the pilot works in Canada:

Call it a global job recruitment agency for refugees.

A Washington-based NGO has built a refugee talent pool and is matching candidates with employers from around the world. Not only does it help pull displaced migrants out of poverty, it alleviates labour shortages in western countries by providing them with skilled workers.

Since its 2016 inception, Talent Beyond Boundaries (TBB) has vetted and developed skill profiles for more than 10,000 refugees now in Lebanon and Jordan — 30 per cent of them with an undergrad degree or above and half with intermediate to full English proficiency.

The talent pool includes people from 200 professions, the majority with a background in engineering, health care, IT, teaching, accounting and university education.

“We need to change the narrative of the way we view refugees as unskilled and uneducated,” said Bruce Cohen, a former counsel in the U.S. Senate, who co-founded the organization with his wife Mary Louise Cohen, also a lawyer. “This is not to undercut the existing refugee resettlement effort but to open up new pathways to add to the solution.”

With an established — and still expanding — talent pool as well as backing from the United Nations Refugee Agency, the project has reached out to Canadian employers and is using Canada as the testing ground to bring in skilled refugees on work permits and maybe even as permanent residents.

Funded by the U.S. State Department, the World Bank and other private foundations, TBB is partnering with the Canadian government, the UN and RefugePoint, an agency that promotes refugee resettlement and self-reliance, to divert refugees in Kenya and the Middle East to Canada through a pilot program. The pilot has the support of Ontario, Manitoba, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and the Yukon. All candidates must go through the same stringent requirements to qualify.

To date, across Canada, job offers have been made to six refugee candidates, including Mohammed Hakmi, who fled to Beirut with his family in 2011 when war broke out in Syria.

The native of Homs has a degree in information technology and more than five years of experience as a web developer and in computer networking. After responding to a post on Facebook by TBB, Hakmi was interviewed in English and assessed by experts in IT. Staff helped build his resumé to highlight his skills, experience and achievements.

“Being a refugee doesn’t mean a person is uneducated, that he or she is not innovative and effective in society. Many of us had good careers. No one chose to be a refugee and get trapped in these really terrible circumstances,” said Hakmi, 26, who, in September, applied for a work permit with a job offer from Kitchener-based tech firm Bonfire Interactive, with pro bono help from Toronto’s Segal Immigration Law.

“Refugees are not a liability but actually a good investment for the future. When you have been through so much, you value every opportunity you are given because you know how much of a gift it is. Refugees are the most dedicated workers you will find.”

Kris Braun, Bonfire’s director of engineering, said the company is looking to double its size and would require a number of talented software developers, who are in short supply.

“Canada’s tech industry is growing at a fast rate and we struggle to find good (job) candidates,” he said. “Refugees are trying to rebuild their lives after fleeing wars and conflicts. Part of it is to hold meaningful work. This is a win-win for us.”

Cohen said skilled worker and economic immigration policies are not designed with refugees’ circumstances in mind and requirements such as recent work experience and minimum settlement funds make it impossible for skilled refugees to qualify. It limits their migration options to humanitarian consideration only, he said.

Currently, fewer than 1 per cent of the 20 million UN-registered refugees around the world are resettled from a temporary host country in the developing world to the west.

“If you are a refugee or displaced person, you either run without your passport or your passport has likely expired while you are in another country,” said Cohen. “It’s these kinds of things that we need some flexibility and adjustments to make a difference.”

Cohen said he hopes to resettle as many as 25 refugees to Canada under the joint pilot with Ottawa and if successful, expand it to other countries.

Source: Pilot project aims to bring refugees to Canada as skilled workers

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