The family represents a large part of immigration to Canada. It consists of granting immigrant status to a family member of a citizen or landed resident of Canada.
Persons eligible for family sponsoring are:
- The spouse or common-law spouse: a spouse of a person without a marriage contract. This can happen after 3 annual common tax as a spouse of the person.
- Parents and grandparents of citizen or landed resident
- The children or adopted children of a citizen or landed resident
- Your brothers or sisters, nephews or nieces, grandchildren, your son or granddaughters who are orphans, aged under 18 and not married and not de facto spouses;
In all cases, the application procedure must be made jointly by the citizen or landed resident who wants to bring his family if it is abroad. If the parent is already in Canada, they should submit a joint immigration application.
The resident must be able to sponsor family members and meet their needs for a period of 3 years for a spouse, 10 years or until adulthood for children under 16 years, 3 years or until the age of 25 years for children over 16 years and 10 years for other parents.
If the family member to sponsor is in Canada, he must submit an application in Canada. Some papers must be completed by the landed resident, some by family members and some by both. Here is a list of papers to be provided in PDF format.
If members of the family are outside Canada, the procedure takes place in two parts:
- The sponsor fills a sponsorship application and provide all documents in this list. The application package is present in this link.
- The Members of the family applying for landed residence. According to their origin their countries and their geographical location, there may be different procedures detailed in this list.
If you live in Quebec, and your parent will joinyou, then you must apply first to the Quebec government. Indeed, the procedure is then shared between Quebec and Canada, you must then:
- Apply for sponsorship in the Government of Canada
- Make an application to a commitment in the Government of Quebec
- Your sponsor must then apply for a CSQ (Certificat de Sélection du Québec) and then apply for landed residence (once obtained the CSQ)
Sponsorship is one of the fastest ways to become a permanent resident of Canada. From my experience, it takes about 6 months to prepare everything you need and to be able to go to Canada. It must however provide money to pay the application of CSQ ($ 300 non refundable), if any, and apply to immigrate to Canada ($ 500 non refundable) and $ 900 (refundable if your application is not accepted at last).