Family Sponsorship
If you are a Canadian citizen or a permanent resident of Canada who is 18 years old or over, you can sponsor certain family members to become Canadian permanent residents. If you sponsor a relative to come to Canada as a permanent resident, you are responsible for supporting your relative financially when he or she arrives.
To sponsor a member of your family you must have the quality of a sponsor and your family member must meet certain criteria.
Sponsor’s Quality
- You must be 18 years of age or over.
- You and the sponsored relative must sign a sponsorship agreement that commits you to provide financial support for your relative, if necessary. This agreement also says the person becoming a permanent resident will make every effort to support her or himself.
- You must provide financial support for a spouse, common-law or conjugal partner for three years from the date they become a permanent resident.
- You must provide financial support for a dependent child for 10 years, or until the child turns 22, whichever comes first.
If you are an eligible candidate to sponsor a family member, please contact us.
Family Members
Your family members or your relatives need to have the criteria of a family member, do a medical exams, go through criminal checks and have their background check. The family members you could sponsor are:
- Spouse : if you are married to your sponsor and your marriage is legally valid.
- Common Law partner : You are a common-law partner, either of the opposite sex or same sex, if you have been living together in a conjugal relationship for at least one year in a continuous 12-month period that was not interrupted. (You will need to prove that you and your common-law partner have combined affairs and set up a household.)
- Conjugal partner : This is for partners, either of the opposite sex or same sex, who are in a relationship but due a exceptional circumstances beyond their control they are unable to live live together and therefore cannot be qualifed as common-law partners or spouses.
- Dependent children: A child is dependent on his parents if he or she is under 22 years of age and who do not have a spouse or common-law partner; Or if he or she is over 22 years of age and depends substantially on the financial support of a parent due to a physical or mental condition.
- parents (Father or Mother)
- grandparents
- brothers or sisters, nephews or nieces, granddaughters or grandsons who are orphaned, under 18 years of age and not married or in a common-law relationship
- another relative of any age or relationship but only under specific conditions
- accompanying relatives of the above (for example, spouse, partner and dependent children).
Financial Obligations:
The sponsor is required to sign an undertaking to provide the sponsored person with the basic requirements from the day they enter Canada till the end of the undertaking. He commits to repay the government for any social assistance payments made to the sponsored person.
The sponsor is also responsible for all financial engagements taken by the sponsored person throughout the undertaking period despite any change that could occur in the relationship between him and the sponsored person, such as marital breakdown, separation, divorce.
The Length of the undertaking varies for each family member’s category. The obligation to reimburse the government for benefits collected by the sponsored person can be deferred in some circumstances but it cannot be waved off completely (Supreme Court of Canada 2011, Attorney General of Canada vs. Mavi)
If you are an eligible candidate to sponsor a family member, please contact us.
