Refugee health-care workers bringing strong skills, full hearts as they take on new jobs in a new land

Nine months following their arrival in Canada after being recruited from one of the world’s largest refugee camps, Abdifatah Sabriye and Patricia Omar Kamssor are settling into life as health-care workers, taking care of elderly residents at a new nursing home in a coastal Nova Scotia town.

“I really love them. Any time I go home, I do miss them,” Kamssor said of the residents in an interview at the Mahone Bay Nursing Home, located along Nova Scotia’s South Shore.

“Honey, I want you to roll towards me,” Sabriye said, already picking up the Maritime term of endearment as the pair moved one resident to her bed.

“In our culture, if someone’s elder, they are like our parents, so I’m always treating them like my parents,” he said in an interview.

Sabriye and Kamssor are among 300 people — 135 workers and 165 of their dependents — who have come to Canada through a federal program that aims to bridge the gap between skilled displaced people and labour shortages. It is not a humanitarian program.

CBC News first met Kamssor and Sabriye in March 2023 at the sprawling Kakuma refugee camp in northern Kenya, where they had been living for 11 and 14 years respectively, after fleeing violence in neighbouring African countries.

More than two years after they’d been accepted into the federal program, they finally arrived in Nova Scotia in October 2023.

Program provides a new talent pool

MacLeod Cares, which owns the Mahone Bay Nursing Home, has hired 24 employees through the program from three different refugee camps — two in Kenya and one in Jordan. They are continuing care assistants (also known as personal support workers in some provinces), providing assistance to residents for such things as hygiene, feeding and mobility.

Two of those employees have already left Nova Scotia to join family or friends in other provinces.

The Economic Mobility Pathways Pilot (EMPP), which launched in April 2018, is unique in that refugees become permanent residents as soon as they land in Canada. That means they can move about the country as they wish and are not tied to a specific province or workplace.

All provinces and territories, except Quebec and Nunavut, are now participating in the program, although no candidates have yet arrived in New Brunswick, Saskatchewan, Yukon and the Northwest Territories. Most workers were offered jobs in Ontario and Nova Scotia, according to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC).

Doug Stephens, chief human resources officer for MacLeod Cares, said his company’s traditional recruitment efforts had not been as successful as they were in the past, which he attributes in part to the fact that some Canadians did not want to work in health care due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

He said the EMPP provided access to a new talent pool.

WATCH | Refugees arrive in Canada to work in health care after waiting years:

Refugees waiting for years arrive in Canada to work in health care

Two years after being accepted into a federal program that offers work in health care, African refugees are arriving in Nova Scotia to take on their new jobs.

“It’s made it a lot easier for us to transition to a new home, expand our workforce and have enough staff to run the facility,” Stephens said.

In a statement, a spokesperson for IRCC said the federal government has set “ambitious targets” for the program and hopes to resettle 2,000 people over the next few years.

Employers in Nova Scotia have also met with construction workers and auto service technicians from Jordan, some of whom are refugees, although none have arrived yet, said a spokesperson for the Nova Scotia Department of Labour, Skills and Immigration.

Life in Canada brings challenges

Kamssor, who is originally from Sudan, and Sabriye, who is from Somalia, agree that the move to coastal Nova Scotia has not been without challenges.

There is nowhere to buy African food or halal meat in their small town, the winter was difficult and they’re now searching for permanent housing.

The company purchased housing specifically for the candidates in the program to rent, but the hope was that they would be able to move out after six months. They are now struggling to find affordable housing within walking distance, since they don’t have cars and there is no transit.

But the newcomers say the community has been welcoming and they are enjoying the work.

Kamssor worked as a supervisor in a pharmacy and also provided a variety of care in a clinic inside the refugee camp. While she was doing more advanced work there, she said she doesn’t find the work in Canada boring.

“As long as it is concerning human life and taking care of them, I’m just OK with it, and it’s not boring at all,” she said.

Both Kamssor and Sabriye are planning to continue their education and hope to become nurses.

They’re also learning to drive, have joined soccer teams and eventually hope to be reunited with their families left behind.

Although they are here to fill a need, both said they are profoundly grateful for the opportunities Canada has provided them, and they are encouraging more companies to consider recruiting from refugee camps.

“I know a lot of friends there,” Sabriye said. “They’re skilled but they don’t have anything.”