How to Sponsor Your Family Members to Immigrate to Canada

If you are a Canadian citizen (or a permanent resident), you get the chance to sponsor you family members to immigrate to Canada. Canada is a country with a huge immigration rate and a well-planned immigration system. They believe that family reunification is important. This is why the immigration system introduced the Family Class Sponsorship program. With this program in place, if the person seeking sponsorship satisfies certain criteria, he/she gets to immigrate to Canada easily with the help of the family member who is a citizen or permanent resident of Canada.

Who Can be Sponsored?

To be eligible and to satisfy the criteria, the person who is immigrating to Canada must be a spouse, dependent child, grandparent or parent. A sibling, niece or nephew under the age of 18 years whose parents are deceased also fall under the criteria.

Who Can Sponsor?

Like already mentioned, he/she should be a Canadian permanent resident or citizen above the age of eighteen years. He/she must reside in Canada and this is only ignored if he/she is living abroad till the sponsored individual arrives. An individual who satisfies the above criteria cannot sponsor if he/she is a prisoner or have been convicted of any violence of sexual nature. Individuals who are in the process of bankruptcy or receiving social assistance from the government also cannot sponsor a family member. Other than these, he/she cannot sponsor if child support payments or immigration loans have not been paid back or if there was case of missed or late payments. If the sponsor is someone who was sponsored by another person and became a permanent resident less than five years ago or if he/she sponsored someone earlier and failed to meet the terms, the sponsorship won’t be accepted.

Other Requirements

• Payment of sponsorship and processing fees have to be paid for Family class applications. In addition to that, ‘right of permanent residence fee’ has to be paid, although it is not required if the sponsored individual is a dependent child.
• There is also a sponsorship agreement which the sponsor has to abide to. It says that he/she has to provide for the sponsored person in case he/she needs assistance
• The sponsored individual must submit all the details of his/her medical records and examinations.
• Police certificates of the sponsored individual have to be submitted if he/she above the age of 18 years.
• Those who reside in the province of Quebec has a separate agreement along with the mentioned one.

In case the criteria mentioned above is not met by the family member or the sponsor, they will have to try other methods like Express Entry to immigrate to Canada.