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Why have you stopped accepting applications to sponsor parents and grandparents?

Every year, Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) gets more applications in this category than it can process. When that happens, it creates a backlog of applications.

To help reduce the number of people waiting in the backlog and address lengthy wait times, Minister Kenney introduced the Action Plan for Faster Family Reunification in November 2011. The Action plan increased the number of parent and grandparent admissions to 25,000 for 2012 and 2013, and also temporarily placed a pause on the acceptance of new applications.

The total of 50,000 admissions for 2012 and 2013 represents a 65% annual increase from 2010, and the highest in nearly two decades.

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