Canada | Parents and Grandparents Program applications paused

The Canadian government announced it will not accept new applications under the Parents and Grandparents Program in 2025.

Key Points:

• The Parents and Grandparents Program allows sponsoring Canadian citizens or permanent residents to bring parents and grandparents to Canada as permanent residents.
• Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has announced that no new permanent resident visa applications made by parents or grandparents of a sponsor and no sponsorship applications made in relation to those applications will be processed in 2025.
• IRCC intends to process a maximum of 15,000 family sponsorship applications in 2025, and they will only process applications that were received in 2024 unless a new intake for the 2025 calendar year is implemented.

Additional Information: The measure aligns with the government’s 2025-27 Immigration Levels Plan and strategy to reduce permanent resident targets over the next three years. The government is implementing new measures to reduce permanent resident targets to 395,000 in 2025.

This alert has been provided by the BAL Global Practice Group.

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