The federal department of IRCC (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada) has not disclosed complete information regarding the Parents and Grandparents Program (PGP) in 2022; however, here is some information that we do already have at our disposal.
According to the new Immigration Plan for three years, the IRCC is targeting to bring around 23,500 newcomers to the country under the PGP next year.
Before this pandemic, every year, the IRCC used to regularly release the new PGP numbers in January. However, they have issued updates and directed PGP draws in the autumns of 2020 and this year.
It is still unknown when the IRCC will launch the Parent and Grandparent Program (PGP) in 2022. Furthermore, we are also not sure what format it will be in. In the past few years, the federal immigration department has trusted more on a lottery scheme. That helps in selecting sponsors at spontaneous from the expression of interest (EOI) forms submitted on the official website. Before COVID hit the world, the federal department was skimming into other ways of managing the PGP applications. Just like every year, the submitted PGP requests (demand to sponsor parents and grandparents) exceed the number of open spots. IRCC received around 200,000 EOI forms in 2020 and 2021; however, IRCC is processing only 40,000 applications under PGP for these two years.
There are a few details regarding PGP, however, that we have available for you. For instance, the immigration department makes sure that the processing time for applications in this program should not be more than 24 months.
Moreover, the IRCC suggests that to meet the eligibility for PGP, sponsors:
- Must be 18 years or older;
- Must be a citizen or permanent resident of Canada (or the sponsor should be registered as an Indian under the Canadian Indian Act);
- Must be living in Canada;
- Must fulfill the minimum necessary income (MNI) level for the PGP and prove their income to the IRCC by providing the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) Notices of Assessments (NOTE: If married and common-law partners want to co-sign an application, they can merge their incomes.);
- Must sign a legal undertaking, which shows their commitment to offer financial support to the sponsored candidates for 20 years and also repay any social assistance which was availed by the sponsored candidates within this duration.
The minimum necessary income (MNI) level varies for different sponsors based on the family size as well as the location where the sponsor is residing in Canada. Furthermore, if a sponsor is residing in any province other than Quebec, then his or her income will be assessed for 2019, 2020, and 2021 tax years. On the other hand, if a sponsor is residing in Quebec, he or she will be assessed based on the income for the last 12 months.
Super Visa: Backup option for PGP.
A backup option for bringing your family together in Canada is a Super Visa. Your parents and grandparents can enter Canada multiple times during a ten-year period with the Super Visa.
