Despite Changes, the Parents’ Sponsorship Program is Still Luck-Based

Many people from across the world immigrate to Canada every year with the dream of a better life ahead of them. Leaving their families behind, people set out on an endeavour to start a new life. However, the Canadian government offers a parent sponsorship program that enables those in Canada to bring their parents and grandparents here and come together with their loved ones again.

In order to improve the parent sponsorship program for immigration, the federal government of Canada has gone an extra mile to ensure some significant enhancements are made. This program is specially designed and tailored to help immigrants who would like to bring their parents or grandparents to Canada to live with them.

The year 2017 saw a considerable number of applications for the parent sponsorship program; however, the Canadian government could only approve 9500 applications out of 10,000 entries for sponsors. The reason behind application rejections were the many problems in this program. The government had not pre-decided a clear gauge for judgment before disqualifying some of the applications for sponsors. The government may have worked on new improvements in this program but the program is still based on a lottery system.

Although the government has made a vital change to the application form, they have added a field that asks information about family income. This clearly states that the government wants to use income as a parameter for qualification for the applicants. This newly introduced change at least sets a definite standard for consideration, whereas, previously, applicants had to depend completely on luck for their selection. It was entirely a lottery.

However, what is imperative to note is that the change won’t totally do away with the lottery system as the income criterion does not ask for any proof. Immigration lawyers in Canada believe even a change like this one will not be able to reduce the difficulty level in filtering out ineligible applicants.

In the parent sponsorship program for immigration, luck plays the role of an ultimate decider. There are a whole bunch of applicants who apply each year and get a rejection every time. Not because of ineligibility, but, just because their luck didn’t work in their favour. That means, if someone remains unlucky, they may never be able to sponsor their parents.

This is why, despite the federal government’s new amendments to a problematic lottery program for parent sponsorship, immigration lawyers in Canada believe strongly that the revised system is still extremely erroneous. Bettering and reconstructing the parent sponsorship program will demonstrate the Canadian government’s commitment to aiding more people in reuniting with their parents and keeping families together.