Shim Law News – Immigration IRCC Update
On September 1, 2017, IRCC announced an update to the fairly new implemented application intake process for the Parents and Grandparents Program. It is already know that on January 3rd of this year, Canadian citizens and permanent residents (PR) who wanted to sponsor their parents and grandparents to come and permanently reside in Canada had to first complete an online form and join a pool of applicants from which they would be randomly selected. The new program implemented by IRCC created not only confusion among lots eligible sponsors, but also frustrations among the sponsored parents and grandparents.
Before the early 2017’s program intake closed, 10,000 sponsors were selected and invited to submit an application to sponsor their parents and grandparents. They were given 90 calendar days to submit their applications which fell due on August 4, 2017. As IRCC had not received 10,000 complete applications by the deadline imposed of August 4, 2017, they decided to conduct a second round of invitations with a deadline to submit the new applications by December 8, 2017.
Therefore, another round of emails were sent by IRCC on September 6, 2017, and as mentioned, they invited additional potential sponsors to submit an application on behalf of their loved ones. In this second round of invitations, only those who have been randomly selected will receive an email inviting them to submit an application. The selection will exclude those potential sponsors who were invited in the first round of invitations (January 3rd, 2017) and who did not submit their complete applications until the previous deadline imposed (August 4th, 2017). Those potential sponsors will not have another chance to submit their applications in 2017, but they can update and prepare themselves to re-apply in 2018.
Although, the new invitation round was restricted only to those who have already submitted an Expression of Interest (EOI), IRCC has confirmed that more potential sponsors will be able to submit an EOI and an application in early 2018.
For more information: https://www.cic.gc.ca/english/department/media/notices/2017-09-01.asp
Source: IRCC website.