Last updated on December 21st, 2016
Some important changes are coming in the new year for those Canadians, planning to apply for parent and grandparent sponsorship in 2017. The PGP is a program designed to allow Canadian citizens and holders of PR to sponsor their parents and grandparents to immigrate to Canada. Under the new processing system, in the next application cycle for the PGP applicants would now only be able to submit an application if they received an invitation to do so by the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. They will be required to fill a form online, which would be available for about a month, starting from January 3, 2017. In this form the applicants who want to sponsor their parents would need to indicate their interest.
After February 2, 2017 IRCC will them randomly select 1,000 applicants who will be invited to submit their application and will notify those who were not selected in this round. The chosen applicants will have a window of 3 months to submit all of the required documents, along with a complete application. Among the supporting documents, they will need to present tax records as proof of income, policy records and more. The extensive application kit and instructions would be available as early as January 9, 2017.
Since the new program was introduced in 2014 the quota would fill within days and applicants had to pay large sums of money to make sure their packages arrived first and the first come first serve program was flooded with many more applications than there were available spots. The new system would basically make the application process into a sort of a lottery, ensuring everyone has a fare chance to be chosen. For 2017, it is expected that there will be more applicants than there are available application, based on previous year’s’ demand. The Government of Canada established a new target of $20,000 of permanent residents admissions.
For those who are not lucky with their application this year, sponsorship is not the only way to bring parents and grandparents to Canada for longer. The Super Visa, which was introduced in 2011 has seen a tremendous success with permanent residents and Canadian citizens, who chose this option to reunite with their parents for many reasons. It has a shorter processing time if compared with the PGP applications and the requirements are quite a bit easier. The Super Visa is a multiple-entry visa, which allows the parents and grandparents to remain in Canada for up to 2 years and is usually given for up to 10 years, so applying for a visa each time is not necessary. The main difference between this type of visa and the permanent residence is that parents would need to return to home country after two years and are considered here as visitors, hence are not allowed to work. They are also not eligible for the provincial medical coverage, as sponsored parents would be, however many private insurance companies in Canada provide great plans to cover them for emergencies while in Canada.
#insurance | #supervisa
