In 2019, Immigration, Refugee, Citizenship Canada will accept 20,000 parents and grandparents sponsorship applications. In addition, the Liberal will scrap the highly controversial lottery system which has drawn critics from many circles.
As in Express Entry where interested applicants have to submit an Expression of Interest online; in the case of parent/grandparents’ sponsorship, interested sponsors have to complete an Interest to Sponsor online.
There are many questions which are unclear at this moment. Example 1, do sponsors have to supply income documents showing they are eligible to sponsor when the Expression to Sponsor is submitted or that proof is only required when the Invitation to Apply is given? If so, then anybody who is a permanent resident/citizen can submit an Expression to Sponsor in the hope that 5/6/10 years down the road, when the Invitation to Apply is issued, they would have made enough income to qualify for sponsorship!
Example 2 is related to parents who are bringing in dependent children, who are siblings of the sponsor. Is his/her age locked at the point when Expression to Sponsor is submitted online? Or it is locked only when the Sponsor receive the Invitation to Apply, which may be several years down the road and the dependent children may have become ineligible by then.
In the coming days, we will become clearer with this change and what the new procedures would entail but one thing for sure, there will be a mad rush online on 1 Jan 2018. To those who are considering sponsoring their parents/grandparents, my advice is that you should use a legal person because as usual, IRCC will organize closed door briefing sessions to acquaint us with the new processes. We will therefore be in a better situation to handle this than someone who does not have the same access.
To read more, please click Changes in Parents/Grandparents Visa.
