If you are a Canadian Citizen or Permanent Resident and at least 18 years of age, you can sponsor your parents or grandparents to come to Canada as Permanent Residents under the Family Class.
To sponsor a parent or grandparent you must, amongst others,:
· be living in Canada;
· sign a sponsorship application with the parent or grandparent, to commit to provide financial support to the parent or grandparent;
· meet certain income requirements.
Certain individuals may be ineligible to sponsor parents and grandparents, these include persons who are:
· in default of a child support payment under a court-order;
· receiving government assistance (except for disability reasons);
· convicted of certain offences;
· declared bankrupts and are yet to be released;
· in default of a prior sponsorship agreement.
Prior to January 2017, applications for parents and grandparents’ sponsorship were done on a first-come basis. In January 2017, IRCC created a new process for taking applications. People would now be randomly chosen to apply.
With the new process, candidates are given 1 month to indicate their interest to sponsor their parents or grandparents (Jan 3, 2017 – Feb 2, 2017). This is done through filling out and submitting a web form. Once the 1 month period is up, IRCC will randomly select 10,000 people from those who submitted the form and ask them (via email) to send their application. A new application package for 2017 will be available on IRCC’s website on January 9, 2017. If chosen, candidates will have 90 days to submit their applications.
This new process in its nature takes away control of the application process from the sponsor in that the sponsor can only wait to be chosen to apply by IRCC. It also eliminates the rush and expense attributed to the previous system where candidates paid exorbitant courier fees to guarantee their applications were amongst the firsts to be submitted. Since the new process’s criteria for selection is random, everyone stands a chance to be chosen.
The application process is currently ongoing and we are available to assist interested applicants with the process.