Sponsorship of parents, grandparents stopped
Sponsorship of parents, grandparents stopped
‘Temporary pause of up to 24 months’
Canada is no longer accepting sponsorship applicants for parents and grandparents because of the huge backlog and long wait times.
On November 4, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced that Canada will not process any more applications to sponsor parents and grandparents for immigration. The stoppage took effect the next day.
The Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) website calls the stoppage “necessary to prevent the program from being flooded with new applications.”
“Wait times for Family Class sponsorship applications for parents and grandparents now exceed seven years, and without taking action, those times will continue to grow, and that is unacceptable,” Kenney says. “Action must be taken to cut the backlog,” he continues.
Immigration Minister Jason Kenney
The CIC says there are “more than 165,000 parents and grandparents who have applied to become permanent residents of Canada are still waiting for a final decision.” In the Manila visa office, the latest numbers from the CIC show it took 36 months to process applications 80 percent of the way for this class.
What the ministry calls “the temporary pause of up to 24 months” of parent and grandparent applications is one of several new changes announced.
While the new measures are in effect, the ministry will be redesigning this immigration class.
Other changes include a new “Parent and Grandparent Super Visa.” The multi-entry visa will be valid for 10 years. Those approved will be allowed to stay in Canada for 24 months at a time without renewal. These will come into effect as of December 1, 2011.
To qualify for the Super Visa parents and grandparents must:
1. Show that the sponsoring child or grandchild has an income of at least $17,000;
2. Purchase private Canadian medical insurance; and
3. Complete the Immigration Medical Examination.
The CIC estimates that processing times for the Super Visas will take an average of eight weeks. This is because they don’t usually require steps like medical exams.
Another measure to tackle the backlog is to increase the number of parents and grandparents accepted as permanent residents next year by 9,500 applicants.
In reaction to the changes, opposition immigration critic MP Don Davies says, the NDP believes that to address the backlog, CIC should increase the number of applicants accepted, not stop the applicants. He says Kenney’s increase next year “is too little too late.” Also more resources need to be put in key consulates like Manila.
Opposition Immigration Critic Don Davies
Davies takes issue with the approach because, “the problem he’s trying to solve is the very problem he created.” Since the Conservatives took power in 2006, Davies says family class visas have been reduced by 15 percent. He says, by “slowly cutting the number of family class visas, that has added to the backlog.”
In an email, the press secretary for CIC, Candice Malcolm says the opposite. She says there’s been an increase in the average level of admissions in the family class since the Conservatives took office compared to that under the Liberal government during 2001 to 2005.
Malcolm says the backlog is a result of more applications received than they could process for the parent and grandparent class. For several years, the CIC has received approximately 25,000 more applications in this stream than they accept, she says.
Another concern of immigration critic Davies is that the government will not end up granting many of the newly created Super Visas for parents and grandparents. Canada already had a five-year multiple-entry visa, which was extended to 10 years in July 2011. “The problem was most people were denied,” he says.
Davies says that the CIC is not addressing the real problem. “We have real people who want to sponsor real parents and they are simply not going to be able to apply.” He says, “by simply pretending that there isn’t a demand there and putting a freeze on applications is not in any way dealing with the real problem.”
Davies and others such as immigration lawyer Joel Sandaluk say Canada will become less attractive to immigrants because of the new restrictions. “The people who Canada wants to attract are going to be turned off by the fact that their relatives are being treated in a such a poor way,” Sandaluk says.
This may prove to be problematic because of Canada’s reliance on immigration.
“Within the next five years, all of our labour force growth will come from immigration,” says a CIC news release on November 1, 2011. CIC also says the ageing population and low birth rate in Canada make immigration critical for maintaining the Canadian work force.
“What’s also going to happen is that you’re going to force the immigrants who are here to send money overseas to support their families in whichever country they’re in,” says Sandaluk.
In 2010, remittance inflows to the Philippines were estimated to be US$21.3 billion, the fourth largest amount in the world, according to a study by the World Bank.
Sandaluk says he’s suspicious that “when this program resumes it will take a much different form.” He says it may get harder for many immigrants to sponsor their family members after the reforms.
The changes will not affect Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP) workers sponsoring their families, says Flor Dandal, executive director of Kababayan Community Centre in Parkdale. LCP workers who complete their work requirements and become landed do not sponsor their family through the family reunification class, she says.
But other immigrants will be “greatly affected” by the reduction of family class applicants says Dandal. She says that a reduction “is not healthy” because families are a source of happiness and stability. People raising children need the help of relatives. She says supporting family reunification, is “a better way of building a nation.”
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