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Changes to the Parent and Grandparent Sponsorship Program

On May 10th, 2013, Citizenship and Immigration Canada announced the reopening of the Parent and Grandparent Sponsorship Program starting January 2, 2014.  Whilst the quota of intake applications will be extremely low, at 5,000 applications in total for the first year, it is a step forward from the suspension of this valuable and important immigration program in 2011.

The new Parent and Grandparent Sponsorship program will include the following new qualifying criteria:

  1. Increased minimum necessary income required by the sponsors;
  2. Lengthened period for demonstrating sponsor income from one year to three years;
  3. Requirement that the income of the sponsor be demonstrated only through Canada Revenue Agency documents; and
  4. Extended sponsorship undertaking from ten years to a period of twenty years.

Parents and grandparents will be required to meet the normal permanent residence requirements including admissibility medically and criminally.