Joseph Sean so I’m the program lead for the Hong Kong BNO visa and the integration program at the Northwest Strategic Migration Partnership. So I sort of coordinate all the support for all the Hong Kongens who’ve moved to the northwest of England in the last sort of two years on the new British National Overseas visa. Today’s event was really aimed at targeting businesses to discuss the benefits of employing migrants but particularly refugees enforced migrants. So people from Hong Kong from Ukraine from Afghanistan sort of to discuss kind of the benefits that it brings to their business, but also sort of the of impacts it can have on their lives as.
How did the event go?
I thought it went really, well, really, really well. I think the turnout was fantastic. There’s a lot of engagement from the audience as well. We saw that with the questions i think the of the section with the two, the two refugees themselves. That sort of midway through. I thought was really, really powerful. Sort to hear their experiences first off, sort of why they came to the UK, sort of someone who came over from Ukraine, but also someone who’s traveled from Hong Kong. Sort of understand the barriers that theyve faced to find an employment here, but also the support they’ve got. I particularly from my perspective as well. It was really, really great to hear Christine and how she she sort of said that it was her work with our team that sort of really, really helped her gave a lot of confidence as a result, she’s now gone on and got a job, but she think absolutely fantastic.
Your message to SME's
I’d say absolutely come come to us if you if you’re interested with engaging sort of migrant communities, you we all know at the moment any business knows that there is a’s a huge gap in the Air Pi market. In the minute there are 100 of thousands of vacancies and particularly post Brexit. Now if you want to get overseas talent, it costs a lot of money. But what we’re saying is you don’t need to go overseas. You don’t need to spend that money because those migrant communities are already here in the UK. In the Northwest. The Northwest accounts for, you know, about 40 thousand Hong Kongens live in the Northwest. Now about 20 to 30 thousand Ukrainians, thousands of Afghan and also tens of thousands of refugees, all of which have got great skills qualifications. So if you’re interested in engaging with those communities and supporting those communities, come to us, drop us an email, we’ll engage with you and we can support you to sort of sort of tap into those communities as well.
