Canada begins second round of applications for Parents and Grandparents Sponsorship Program from 6 September

Immigration authorities of Canada announced that the second round of invitations for applications for the Parents and Grandparents Sponsorship Program has begun from 6 September.

The announcement came in the backdrop of the 10,000 application threshold not being reached during the first round of invitations. The three month-window for the submission of applications had expired on 4 August.

IRCC (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada) said that for the new round of invitations, sponsors and candidates will be selected randomly from the same set of applicants who had evinced interest in the program in January 2017.

Invitations to apply will be emailed, as sponsors were advised to check their inboxes as well as their junk boxes regularly during the second week of September. The last date for accepting applications for this second round of invitations is 8 December.

Emails will be sent only to sponsors selected in the second round. Meanwhile, sponsors who were unsuccessful after the first round of invitations received an email saying they had not been selected.

The selected candidates’ confirmation numbers will be posted on the IRCC website.

Totally, 95,000 families applied for the first round of the draw in January, of which 10,000 were chosen to be sent invitations to apply.

Immigration.ca said the IRCC has not revealed how many applications it had received after the first draw. As of June 2017, 700 had only been submitted, out of which some were incomplete.

The IRCC has already gone on record to say that it was mulling fine-tuning the new system for 2018. A massive backlog of applications, which was created under the old system, is gradually being followed upon, it was said.

Families should also look at the Parents and Grandparents Super-Visa as an alternative to the Parents and Grandparents Sponsorship Program, it was averred. With the super-visa, parents and grandparents are allowed to stay for twenty-four months at a time and there is a provision to extend the same to a maximum of 10 years.

Since the system was introduced in 2012 by the previous government, 89,000 parents and grandparents of citizens and permanent residents of Canada have been granted visas.

If you are looking to travel to Canada on the Parents and Grandparents Sponsorship Program, get in touch with Y-Axis, a renowned company for immigration services.