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Family Class

Spouse/Common-Law Partner

A Canadian Citizen/PR can sponsor their spouse or common-law partner. The application can be made while the sponsor is in Canada and your spouse/common-law is not, or when both are in Canada. Your spouse/common-law can even be sponsored if your spouse/common-law happens to lack legal immigration status in Canada. All other eligibility requirements continue to apply for both the sponsor and the applicant.

There is no defined minimum income that needs to be met for sponsoring your spouse/common-law. However, you must be able to show how you will support your spouse/common-law partner. There are various ways to document this.

IRCC officers are trained to carefully assess spousal/common-law partner sponsorship applications and they are able to determine whether the relationship is truly a marriage of love or just a marriage of convenience for immigration purposes. That is why it is very important to have a well prepared and documented application to submit to IRCC.

 

The current IRCC processing time is 12 months. This can vary depending on how complex an application might be.

Parents/Grandparents

The Parents/Grandparents program is one of the most in-demand family class programs available. Every time it opens it is oversubscribed and never meets the demand for Canadian Citizens or Permanent Residents to have their Parents/Grandparents become Permanent Residents of Canada.

To be an eligible sponsor you must meet income requirements based on the people you'll be responsible for. You will be responsible for your parents for a 20 year period which is known as the undertaking.

IRCC has announced that in 2020 and 2021 the intake process will involve a random selection after all interested interest to sponsor forms are submitted to them during a 3 week period. This will run from Oct 13, 2020 until Nov 3, 2020 and the intake cap will be 10,000 "spots". For the 2021 intake, the capacity will be 30,000. The intake time period will be announced at some point in 2021.

2020 Intake Minimum Necessary Income (MNI) Requirements

2020 PGP MNI.PNG
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