Every year Canada welcomes loads of people from all over the world that may be looking to immigrate or are here for refugee purposes. Canada is a very unique and diverse place to live and London Ontario has a strong Latino presence.
Santiago Mayorga’s family immigrated to Canada about 6 years ago. Santiago is came to Canada at the age of 13 and is now 19 and loving life in Canada. His family moved to Canada for refugee purposes along with the thought that Canada could provide them with a more stable environment as well as more opportunities.
The emotions running through immigrants moving to a new country is tough because many feel a sense of happiness along with sadness towards having to move. Santiago said “I felt excited and happy but sadness at the same time because I was leaving my life there to start a new one in a new country.”
The challenges many immigrants face is having to learn a new language. Santiago stated that he had to push himself to get out of his comfort zone in order to learn more and try to grasp more of the language ads best as he could.
Santiago said “I had to stop only talking with people that spoke Spanish because I need to try and learn more so I started to hangout with people at school and making news friends that spoke English and thats how I learned.”
Many immigrants face these difficulties and this is nothing new to most. The one thing many experience is a sense of Multi-Culturalism that is very unique to Canada and Santiago stated that it helped feel part of the Canadian culture and feel right at home.