The Liberals are reworking Canada’s faulty parent and grandparent immigrant reunification program after several failed attempts.
Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino announced that the applications will be postponed until 2020 while the government reworks the application process.
“To ensure that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has sufficient time to complete the development of a new intake process for the 2020 Parents and Grandparents Program, the reopening of the program will be postponed until Ministerial Instructions are issued,” said a statement on the Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada website.
The Parents and Grandparents Program (PGP) takes in about 20,000 elderly people each year. Recipients of the visa are admitted as permanent residents and are eligible for citizenship.
As noted by True North founder Candice Malcolm, there already exists a “super visa” program that allows elderly family members to stay in Canada two years at a time and the visa itself remains valid for 10 years.
The parallel PGP route has seen several iterations after failing to meet the extremely high demand.
Originally the program operated on an in-person first-come, first-served basis. After that system was scrapped, the Liberals created a lottery system that was also done away with.
The most recent form of the program was an online system that saw all of the spots were taken up within minutes of the website going active.
Now, the Liberals plan to change the system once again. No details have been released about what the new program will look like in 2020.
