One of the legislated objectives of Canadian immigration law is to promote family reunification; however, Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) did not accept any new sponsorship applications for parents and grandparents (PGP) between 2011 and 2014. On January 2, 2015, CIC re-opened the PGP family sponsorship program, but only permitted 5,000 such applications during the year.
As of January 2, 2015, CIC is once again accepting 5,000 applications for 2015. Applications are accepted on a first-come, first-served basis, where only the first 5,000 complete PGP sponsorship applications will be processed. Like all sponsorship applications, the required documentation, fees, and checklists must be included in the application in order to be considered complete. As such, great care should be taken to ensure that the application contains all the necessary supporting documentation.
Since 5,000 complete PGP sponsorship applications were received within 3 weeks in 2014, we can anticipate that the new 2015 spots will also be filled just as quickly.
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Arghavan Gerami
Arghavan Gerami is the Founder and Senior Counsel at Gerami Law Professional Corporation ('PC'), a full-service immigration law firm in Ottawa, Ontario. Since 2011, Ms. Gerami has focused her practice on immigration and refugee litigation. Prior to that, Ms. Gerami worked at the Ministry of Attorney General and the Department of Justice and had the privilege of serving the Honourable Mr. Justice M. Evans at the Federal Court of Appeal on immigration and administrative law appeals. Ms. Gerami contributes to the Immigration Law Section of the Canadian Bar Association, the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Ms. Gerami has also published numerous journal articles and presented at various immigration and refugee law conferences and events across Canada.