How to Sponsor Parents to Immigrate to Canada

Many new immigrants from mainland China have stabilized their work and life in Canada after a few years of adjustment. Many of them want to sponsor their elderly parents to immigrate to Canada, so that they can take care of their children on the one hand, and honor their filial piety on the other. Last year's new Canadian Immigration and Refugee Act has many implications for family-sponsored immigration. There are a number of legal issues to be aware of when applying for parental sponsorship:

(1) Children in Canada must apply for parental sponsorship outside of Canada. Family sponsorship from within Canada is limited to spousal sponsorship only;

(2) You can be a sponsor along with your spouse;

(3) Your family income must be at or above the cut-off income set by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC). The income line varies from province to province and from territory to territory;

(4) You must guarantee that you will be responsible for the care of your parents for a period of 10 years;

(5) You must complete and submit a Sponsor Application Form, a Sponsor Contract, and a Financial Assessment to the Ministry of Immigration and Naturalization at the Mississaga Centre. If your sponsor application is approved, the second step is for your parents to apply for a Canadian immigrant visa on the mainland.

The following people cannot be sponsors:

(1) you are in prison;

(2) you have filed for bankruptcy and the period of bankruptcy has not expired;

(3) you are on a government assistance program;

(4) you have previously sponsored a person to immigrate to Canada and failed to fulfill your responsibility to financially support that person;

(5) you have been convicted of a serious criminal offence. .

Some new immigrants often have the following misconceptions:

(1) It is believed that receiving government assistance will affect the sponsorship of a parent. This is a misconception. The law prohibits people who are on welfare from applying for sponsorship, but the law does not prohibit people who were previously on welfare but are not now on welfare and have a job with an income at or above the cut-off income line from applying for sponsorship. In fact, if your current situation meets the requirements of the law, your previous record of receiving benefits will not have any effect on your sponsorship of your parents.

(2) Thinking that unemployment insurance benefits will affect your future sponsorship of your parents. This is another misconception. Unemployment insurance is not a government program and will have no effect on your future application for parental immigration.

(4) Some immigration consultants claim 99% or 100% success rate. The success of an application is determined by the circumstances of the individual and no one can claim a 99% or 100% success rate. In fact, you can sue such immigration consultants for misleading and false advertising. False advertising can land a person in jail for up to 2 years in Canada. As an analogy, a real doctor would never claim a 100% success rate, only a charlatan who buys a doggy bank would claim a 100% success rate in order to attract scammed customers.

(5) Some immigration consultants or immigration consulting firms call themselves legal experts or law centers. In Canada and the United States, only lawyers licensed to practice law in their local province or state may refer to themselves and their firms by the word law or lawyer, and it is against the law for any other person to do so. Lawyer Wen Wu is collecting information on the advertisements of immigration consultants and will submit it to the Ontario Bar Association and the Federal Competition Bureau of Canada. You can also file a complaint.