By Brian Okoth
The Canadian Immigration ministry has pulled down a tweet refuting a statement by Kenya’s Foreign Affairs minister that Canada had allowed Kenyans an expanded access to its job market.
Alfred Mutua, the Kenyan minister, had on Tuesday tweeted that he and Canadian Immigration minister, Sean Fraser, had agreed to have more Kenyans allowed into Canada to “fill a labour shortage”.
“During my official visit to Canada, I have also held a discussion with the Honourable @SeanFraserMP, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship of Canada and agreed on the various migration opportunity pathways for Kenyans to go and live or work in Canada,” Mutua said on his Twitter page.
He added: “Currently, Canada has more employment opportunities than available people to work and we agreed that Kenya can help fill that gap. The process for those who wish to go to Canada is simple but requires one to be diligent.”
According to the Kenyan minister, the two governments were in “deep negotiations” in regard to the agreement.
“We will be providing a comprehensive statement within the next few days with guidance and links agreed upon between the Kenyan and the Canadian government so that Kenyans can apply for migration or job visas,” said Mutua.
Responding to Mutua’s tweet in a separate post, Canada’s Immigration ministry denied that there was a special agreement to allow more Kenyans the access into Canada’s job market.
“Disinformation is circulating which suggests that special programmes are welcoming Kenyan immigrants. This is false, and the immigration programmes referenced do not exist,” the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship ministry said.
After Canada posted its response on Twitter, media outlets in Kenya and abroad reported that the North America nation had left the Kenyan minister with “egg on face”.
BBC’s headline on the story was “Canada denies welcoming Kenyans for jobs”.
The Canadian Immigration ministry would later pull down its “no jobs for Kenyans” tweet.
A search for that particular tweet gave the following response: “…this page doesn’t exist. Try searching for something else.”
It wasn’t immediately clear why the Canadian ministry deleted its earlier tweet.
