
If you were waiting for a great opportunity to sponsor your parents or grandparents to Canada, now is the time! Canada will reopen the Parents and Grandparents Sponsorship Program in January 2020. Aspiring sponsors need to start application preparation now. Canadian sponsors need to meet the income criteria that are based on low-income cut-off (LICO) + 30%. The sponsor will only be eligible if they meet the Minimum Necessary Income (MNI) requirements for three consecutive taxation years. As of August 31, 16,140 sponsored parents and grandparents became permanent residents of Canada in 2019.
The application intake process will happen for a limited time. Once the limit of form submissions is reached, the form will no longer be available, and no new submissions will be accepted. Potential sponsors will be invited to apply based on the order IRCC received the interest to sponsor forms.
It is important to notice that completing the interest to sponsor form is not the same as submitting an application. The candidates invited to apply will have 60 days to complete their application and include all supporting documents demanded. As stated by IRCC, all applicants who submit the form will receive a notification whether they were invited or not to the program.
According to Canada’s government official website, “In response to continuing high demand for the program, and because of IRCC’s success in significantly reducing the PGP application backlog and processing times, the maximum number of PGP applications to be accepted in 2019 will be increased to 20,000, up from 17,000 in 2018. This is 4 times the number of applications accepted in 2015”. This means that IRCC will accept up to 20,000 applications for Parents and Grandparents Program this year.