My name is Julius Tiangson. I'm the executive director of the Gateway Centre for New Canadians. We are a settlement agency in Mississauga, and we primarily serve youth between the ages of 13 to 24.
I'll give you some brief background information about myself. I came to Canada in 1985 as a temporary foreign worker, actually. For about a year and a half, I was in a work exchange program, and I decided at that time that I liked Canada so much that I would immigrate.
I have worked with young people over the last 20 years, primarily among immigrant kids. They come under the live-in caregiver program and also under the permanent residency program--or the normal way, as many would call it. I've worked with families on the impact of some of the immigration policies that we have here in Canada with regard to family reunification and the impact of that with regard to children, youth, and their options for their lives here in Canada.
One of the things that I think we have not been really looking quite carefully into is the role of some of our immigration policies over the last couple of decades and the impact of those in terms of the options that children and young people--newcomers--have as they come and settle here in Canada. I have three observations.
The first observation is with regard to the immigration policy. I think when there is a policy in place that will prolong the reunification of family, there is definitely, from where I sit, an impact on the children and young people of those who came first when they settle here in Canada.
There have been studies out there, some of which are funded by Citizenship and Immigration Canada and by the social development program, in which there is a social impact on the lives of children and youth. There are consequences of that in terms of involvement in organized crime or street gangs. There are some important studies. Right now I cannot simply draw from them, but there are some good studies that have been done on this.
The second observation is that when the majority of the newcomers settle here in this country, their children and young people are, in a way, looking for places to belong, places they can identify themselves with, places where they can be participants and be involved in something that is productive.
Regardless of whether they're temporary foreign workers who have successfully gone through the point system and have become successful immigrants or those who have come through the regular route to immigration--regardless of their status--at the time of settlement, parents of these newcomers do have difficulty in their economic integration into this country, which leaves no other option for their children to actually participate in extra-curricular activities. This would prevent them from getting involved in street gangs.
The third observation, from where I sit, is the role of many organizations in the community, and the role of the provincial, federal, and municipal governments in ensuring that there are truly accessible places that need to be established in many centres in which our newcomers tend to settle. They are in the greater Toronto area, in Montreal, and in Vancouver, and now increasingly in cities like Edmonton and Calgary. These are large centres where, because of the economic opportunities, many of the newcomers and their families tend to settle.
The lack of accessibility, as well as a lack of programming done at the front end of settlement for children and youth, will definitely have the consequence at the back end, as I will call it, of many of the kids getting involved with the law.
We offer an alternative measure service or program in which young people have the alternative of serving their time for their conviction in our centre. What I have observed over the last three years of delivering this service is that a good 80% of newcomer kids who get involved and entangled with the law do so simply because they were in the wrong company, at the wrong time, in the wrong place, with the wrong people. When we begin to prod a little bit further, we find that the majority of them get involved simply because there is no alternative activity or there are no alternative places or stuff that is affordable for them and affordable for their parents.
So accessibility to this programming for newcomer children and youth is a critical component in ensuring that kids who are newcomers do not get involved in street gangs.