Canada halts new PR applications for parents and grandparents under the Family Class category.
News Mania Desk / Piyal Chatterjee/ 5th January 2025
The Canadian government has ceased accepting new permanent residency (PR) applications for parents and grandparents under the Family Class category. This alteration was announced in the Canada Gazette on Friday and initially reported by the Canadian Press agency. The change will be in effect for an indefinite duration and will continue until new guidance on this matter from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Minister Marc Miller is provided. The Gazette announcement indicated, “These Guidelines are designed to guarantee that starting January 1, 2025, no new permanent resident visa requests from parents or grandparents of a sponsor and no sponsorship requests linked to those applications will be accepted for processing until new Instructions are provided.”
At present, Canadian citizens and permanent residents can sponsor them. Nevertheless, they will still qualify for the supervisa, a long-term, multi-entry visa.
The Gazette entry stated that the Department of Citizenship and Immigration will only handle applications related to this matter that were submitted in 2024. “Unless further Instructions are issued for the 2025 calendar year, no other permanent resident visa applications from parents or grandparents under the family class nor sponsorship applications related to those will be processed in 2025,” the entry indicated.
“Applications will only be accepted for processing in 2025 if they are received in 2024,” it stated. Additionally, there is a limit of 15,000 on the number of these sponsorship applications that can be processed.
As per the annual report presented to Parliament by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) in November of the previous year, in 2023, 28,313 people (16,907 women and 11,406 men) were accepted in the parent and grandparent category, indicating a four percent rise from 2022. By the close of 2023, more than 40,000 sponsorship applications were awaiting processing by the department.
