Parental Sponsorships will open January 28th, 2019.

Immigration Canada has finally announced that the Parents and Grandparents (PGP) Program interest form will open at 12pm (noon) eastern time on January 28th, 2019.

This year, the PGP program has been completely modified and streamlined to ensure a more predictable experience for potential applicants. For those that have experienced the PGP program in the past few years, applicants had to enter a random lottery draw which can be rather unplesant for your PGP due to the unpredictability.

A new and improved application process

The 2019 PGP is announced to be a new and improved first come first serve intake process. We cannot confirm wether the new application process will be improved as it has yet to launch, but we believe that the predictability of the first come first serve program is a much fairer approach by Immigration Canada.

The application process will remain exclusively electronic and Immigration Canada will accept interest to sponsor submissions for a limited time after the starting date and then invite potential sponsors to submit a full PGP application.

Immigration Canada will accept sponsorship applications in the order that their submissions were received (from Noon EST January 28th, 2018) until the established 2019 limit of 20,000 complete applications is reached.

Who is eligible to sponsor?

In order to be eligible to sponsor your parents or grandparents to become Canadian permanent residents, you must meet the following requirements:

You must be at least 18 years old
You must be a Canadian Citizen, Canadian Permanent Resident or a person registered as an Indian in Canada under the Canadian Indian Act.
You must meet the minimum income requirements for 3 consecutive years prior to the submission of your application.
You must sign an undertaking committing you to provide for your sponsored person (this requirement varies in term depending if you live in the province of Quebec or not)

How to apply?

The application process remains a two-step process:

1. You must fill out an interest to sponsor form as soon as possible on January 28th 2018 (noon Eastern Time). This is now a first-come first-serve intake so make sure you are available at the time!

2. If you are selected, you will be invited to submit a complete application within 60 days (missing documents will have the application returned) until the quota of 20,000 complete applications has been met.

What are the new requirements?

The 2019 PGP program includes a couple of new requirements for potential applicants, make sure you read the document list carefully to avoid having your application returned and missing the quota!