Meet Canada’s New Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen

Ahmed Hussen is the new Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) Minister. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reshuffles some of his cabinets and puts former Immigration Minister John McCallum as Canada’s ambassador to China.

Ahmed Hussen is a Somalia-Canadian lawyer who came to Canada as a refugee in 1993. His specialties as a lawyer include criminal, immigration, refugee and human rights law. He was elected as member for York South-Weston in October 2015, when the Liberals came to power. He is the first person of Somali descent to be elected. Hussen, is the National President of the Canadian Somali Congress and has a political career dating back to 2001.

According to the Speaking notes of Ahmed Hussen, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship at a Luncheon at the Canadian Club of Toronto, he highlighted the developing Immigration programs like Express Entry, Global Skills Strategy, the Start-Up visa and the Atlantic Immigration Pilot. A promising growing immigration program in the year 2017.

Meanwhile, in a short period of John McCallum as the Immigration Minister, he was in charge with the following:

• Facilitates the entry of a targeted 25,000 Syrian refugees. As of January 2, 2017, there are 39,671 Syrians that had migrated to Canada.
• Sets 300, 000 immigrants as the new benchmark annual number for Canada.
• Makes changes to how Comprehensive Ranking System points are awarded under the Express Entry System, reducing points for qualified job offers and adding points for a Canadian education.
• Introduced the Global Skills Visa development with an ambitious two-week processing time for the best and brightest foreign workers. This is expected to be finalized in early 2017.
• Revamps the Temporary Foreign Worker Program and eliminates the cumulative duration rule at the end of 2016
• Benchmark processing time of 12 months was established for Family Immigration class.
• Changed the application process for sponsorship of parents and grandparents from first-come, first-served to a lottery format.

To read the whole Speaking Notes of Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen, click Speaking Notes.

Sources:

CBC.CA

Images from Google