Canada Immigration : Set To Accept 20,000 Parents And Grandparents Sponsorship Applications

22 Aug 2018

Canada will end its Parents and Grandparents Lottery System to select candidates under the Parents and Grandparents Sponsorship Program in the next year. IRCC will issue invitations to apply depending on the order through which the applicant gives the online interest. It will invite candidates until the government reaches the quota of 20,000 applications. Furthermore, the application window will open in January 2019. From 2017, it is undertaking the selection in a random manner.

Families had made a complaint that this random process gave them no knowledge of selection for reuniting with their family members. Moreover, it was also criticized by sponsors, stakeholders and candidates.

However, the government has now accepted the fact of non- working of the lottery system by changing it to the online edition.

Program Change in 2019

The Problems with the Existing Parents and Grandparents Sponsorship System are as follows;

• It is Impossible to know regarding getting the selection. 100,000 persons applied but the selection figure was only 10,000 in 2017.
• Any person has the eligibility to enter the lottery pool. All the information is still self-declared and it is not possible to know about the seriousness of potential candidates.
• There was also a huge drop-off in the lottery selection for completing the application. Only a few thousand submitted the necessary applications.
• Finally the system for selecting candidates was outdated.

In 2014, at the time of the reopening of the program the cap was 5,000 applications. Moreover the government reduced the application inventory, which was 167,000, in 2011 to 26,000 in 2018.

Sponsors who received the invitation to apply as a part of the second have October 5 as the deadline for submitting a completed application.

The Target for Admitting Parents and Grandparents

Canada has a plan to welcome 20,000 parents and grandparents in 2018, which will go up to 20,500 in 2019 and 21,000 in 2020, based on the multi-year immigration plan of November 2017.