Parental Sponsorship Cap Increased

The Cap on Grandparent and Parental Sponsorship Applications has Doubled, from 5,000 to 10,000 Per Year

Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada has announced that they have increased the amount of new parent and grandparent applications that will be accepted. The quantity of applications that will be retained for processing by IRCC has now climbed to 10,000 from the previous cap of 5,000 per year. The annual limit of 5,000 new applications had been in place since the program resumed in 2014 after being on put on hiatus since 2011. The new application limit of has already been reached for 2016. Although the intake of applications has doubled, it took only 3 days from when the program opened for 2016, January 4th, to when IRCC issued an official notice stating that they have received more than 10,000 applications and are closing the program for the year. The program will reopen on January 3, 2017 and will again accept 10,000 new applications. Although the number of applications accepted for sponsoring parents and grandparents has increased, there has not yet been anything done to accelerate the processing of these applications. IRCC indicates that they are working on applications received in 2011. This means that they must first address those received in 2014 and 2015 before being able to fully move onto the newly submitted applications.