These refugees are coming to Canada as health-care workers. Trouble is, they’ve been waiting for years

For nine years, Patricia Kamssor has worked in a clinic in a refugee camp in Kenya doing everything from cleaning and treating wounds to giving injections, treating infections caused by eating infected sheep and cattle, and helping one child with a corn jam. in his nose.

Established in 1992, Kakuma is one of the largest refugee camps in the world, home to 260,570 people fleeing violence in neighboring African countries. It’s hot, dusty and crowded, with rows and rows of what are meant to be temporary homes made of mud and thin sheet metal in the northwest corner of Kenya.

It is also Kamssor’s house. He was a refugee, and he was invited to Canada to work in a nursing home on the south coast of Nova Scotia.

“I like to help people. Actually, I have a heart to help people,” he said in a recent interview at his home in the camp.

They are among 121 refugees offered jobs as continuing care assistants in Nova Scotia under a new federal program called the Economic Mobility Pathways Pilot (EMPP). But it’s been two years since he was accepted into the program, and he still hasn’t entered Canada, partly because of the pandemic and because the government is still working on the issue.

It is not a humanitarian program, but a new path designed to create a bridge between the needs of health workers in Canada and displaced people living in refugee camps who want to move here.

Since the EMPP began in 2018 as a small research project, 132 people – 48 applicants and 84 dependents – have come to Canada this way. Initially funded through philanthropy, the federal government is now providing $6.2 million to the program to help NGO partners identify qualified candidates abroad and support them through the interview, recruitment and immigration process.

The government is also working with communities and employers across the country to raise awareness of the program, with the goal of welcoming 2,000 qualified refugees to work in various sectors with shortages over the next few years.

Abdifatah Sabriye is about 30 years old — she does not know her date of birth, which is not common in some parts of Africa. He has been living in Kakuma camp since fleeing Somalia with his mother, two sisters and two brothers 14 years ago. The family’s father and eldest brother were killed in Somalia’s civil war.

Sabriye said she did not get the emergency medical care she needed.

“It motivated me to become a health worker,” he said as he walked around his neighborhood in the refugee camp.

Sabriye has been a medical assistant since 2018, doing the same job as Kamssor. He was accepted into the Canadian program in February 2021 and has been working on the various stages since then.

No word yet on when it might arrive

Kamssor and Sabriye admit that when they first heard that Canada was looking for health workers, they didn’t think it was true. Now that he has gone through such a process, he believes that the opportunity is real, but there is no information about when it will arrive in Canada.

“They didn’t tell me anything. It’s still waiting,” said Kamssor.

Nine provinces and territories currently participate in the program, but employers in Nova Scotia have issued the most job offers to EMPP candidates.

“The reality is we need health care professionals and places like the Kakuma camp have the people and skills we need,” said Suzanne Ley, senior executive director for the Office of Health Professional Recruitment in Nova Scotia, an office created to address that. lack of provinces.

Ley, who was part of a recruiting trip to the Kakuma camp last fall, said it’s important for Nova Scotians to know that people being recruited into the province through this new pathway are “qualified.”

Candidates come as permanent residents

Part of what makes this program unique is that candidates come to Canada as permanent residents – not refugees, and not on temporary work permits. They must meet the same criteria as traditional economic immigrants, including demonstrating experience in health care and British expertise.

Currently, EMPP candidates must apply to one of the three existing economic immigration programs – the Provincial Nominee Program, the Atlantic Immigration Program or the Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot. After being accepted into one of these programs, they apply for permanent residency through Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

“The standards are the same, so they come with the training we need. They come with the qualifications we need,” said Ley.

Kamssor, who is also about 30 years old, works in a clinic in a refugee camp, run by the International Rescue Committee, six days a week. He makes about $135 a month, or $1,600 a year.

Kamssor was at a boarding school in his home country of Sudan when violence erupted, separating him from most of his family, who were not heard from during the 11 years he lived in the Kakuma camp. He didn’t know that he was still alive.

He accepted a job offer from MacLeod Group Health Services, which operates seven nursing homes in Nova Scotia.

The job is a permanent full-time position with a starting salary of $36,525 at a new 96-bed nursing home in Mahone Bay, a seaside town about 85 kilometers southwest of Halifax. The home, which will open later this year, is part of the provincial government’s efforts to ease waiting lists for access to long-term care and free up hospital beds for surgeries and other medical treatments.

Sabriye and Kamssor applied for the program in December 2020 and February 2021. Within two months, each received an email saying they had been selected.

“I really enjoyed that moment,” Sabriye said. “Taking this opportunity that changed my life, to go to a country like Canada, which I always dreamed of. Well, at that time I felt like I was going to tomorrow.”

He laughed heartily at the memory, but the reality was that the wait had been hard.

Six months after receiving the email, Sabriye had a job interview via Zoom.

He also received an offer from the MacLeod Group on November 15, 2021, followed by a provincial nomination to come to Canada on August 5, 2022. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada confirmed the recipient of the permanent residency application on September 29, 2022. CBC News has seen all relevant documentation .

IRCC says it is committed to processing “most” applications under the EMPP program within six months.

That time has passed for Sabriye. For Kamssor, it will go up in four days.

“The process is a process and we will take it one step at a time,” Ley said. “But you know, I think it’s only fair that we’re nearing the end.”

He also said his team strives to recruit ethically and he asked staff at the camp if Nova Scotia would contribute to what he called a “brain drain” or hunt for health workers needed there.

Michael Ikuro, who is in charge of training at the clinics in the refugee camp, confirmed to CBC News that he is not worried about losing staff because there is no shortage. In fact, he said he has a line of people hoping to be trained to work at the camp’s clinic and “thankfully” Canada is recruiting refugees.

“All I can ask is to choose, take a lot, a lot,” he said in an interview at the clinic.

In March, the federal government announced that it will create a new pathway this summer that will standardize the eligibility criteria and streamline the process so that there is only one application, allowing EMPP candidates to bypass the main application at the provincial level, making the whole process “easier and more fast.”

Meanwhile, Kamssor and Sabriye waited.

Kamssor is hopeful but a little skeptical that his new life in Canada will become a reality.

“No one was going to make me believe everything or know that I was going,” he said. “Maybe something will pop up again.”