Canada · Family class
Sponsoring your family to Canada
Spouse, partner, children, parents, grandparents. It is a well-established route — but it rests on a binding financial undertaking most people sign without understanding what they’ve agreed to.
The sponsor
Who may sponsor
A sponsor must be a Canadian citizen, a permanent resident, or a person registered under the Indian Act, and must have reached the minimum age set in the regulations.
Permanent residents must be living in Canada. Citizens living abroad may sponsor a spouse, partner or dependent child, but only if they satisfy the officer they will return to live in Canada once the sponsored person lands — sponsoring from abroad with no intention of coming back does not work.
Being eligible is not the same as being suitable. Eligibility is checked from the day you file through to the day a decision is made, so something that changes mid-process can undo an application that started out fine.
The bars
Who cannot sponsor
You’re in default on a previous undertaking
Or in default on court-ordered support payments, or on a debt owed to the Crown from an earlier immigration matter.
You receive social assistance
Other than for reasons of disability. This is about the ability to support, not a judgement about you.
You’re an undischarged bankrupt
The bar can lift once the bankruptcy is discharged.
Certain criminal convictions
Offences of a sexual nature, serious violent offences, and offences causing bodily harm to a family member. Time elapsed, a pardon or a record suspension can lift this — it isn’t always permanent.
You’re under a removal order or in detention
You cannot sponsor while your own status is being decided against you.
The full list, with its exceptions, is set out in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations.
The family class
Who may be sponsored
Family class is defined by relationship. If yours isn’t on this list, sponsorship almost certainly isn’t your route — and we’ll say so early.
Spouse or partner
Spouse, common-law or conjugal partner
Children
Dependent children
Parents & grandparents
Parents and grandparents
Narrow exceptions
Certain other relatives
Who this route does not suit
Brothers and sisters, adult children who are financially independent, aunts, uncles and cousins are not sponsorable in the ordinary case. Neither is a spouse you did not declare when you became a permanent resident yourself — an undeclared family member is excluded from being sponsored by you later, and that exclusion is hard to undo. If a relationship began mainly to obtain status, it fails on genuineness no matter how well the paperwork is presented. We would rather tell you this at the consultation than take a fee and file it.
The part people skim
The undertaking is a real financial commitment
It is a contract with the Government of Canada, and it is the reason a sponsorship should never be signed casually.
When you sponsor, you promise to provide for your relative’s basic needs — food, shelter, clothing, and the everyday requirements of living — so that they do not need to claim social assistance. If they do claim it, the province can recover what it paid from you, and you are in default until it is repaid.
Default has consequences beyond the money: it bars you from sponsoring anyone else until it’s cleared. People who sponsor a spouse and then discover, years later, that they cannot sponsor a parent usually discover it this way.
A spouse or partner also signs a separate agreement acknowledging their own responsibility to make reasonable efforts to support themselves. It does not reduce your undertaking.
How long it lasts
Length varies by relationship — sharply
A spousal or partner undertaking runs for a defined period after your relative becomes a permanent resident. An undertaking for a dependent child runs longer, and for a young child it’s measured partly against the age they reach.
A parent or grandparent undertaking is the longest in the family class, by a wide margin over the spousal one. That difference is the main reason parent sponsorship deserves a serious conversation before you enter the pool, not after. Check the current periods against the regulation below before you commit to one.
The exact periods are fixed in section 132 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations. Quebec applies its own undertaking under a separate agreement with the federal government, on its own terms.
Ending the relationship does not end the undertaking
Divorce, separation, estrangement, or the sponsored person leaving Canada altogether — none of it releases you. The undertaking runs its full term regardless. Sign it knowing that.
Spousal applications
Inland or outland — the choice that matters most
Both are routes to permanent residence. They differ in where your spouse must be, what they can do while they wait, and what happens if it’s refused.
Inland
Applying from inside Canada
Your spouse must already be in Canada with valid temporary status and must generally stay in Canada while the application is processed. Leaving can put re-entry at risk, since a temporary resident returning mid-application still has to satisfy an officer at the border.
The advantage is that they’re with you, and they can apply for an open work permit while the application is in process, so the household need not live on one income.
The disadvantage is decisive: a refused inland application carries no appeal to the Immigration Appeal Division. You’re left with judicial review or refiling.
Outland
Applying from outside Canada
Processed through a visa office abroad. Despite the name, your spouse can often still visit or be in Canada during processing — outland is about which office decides, not about being forbidden from entering.
The advantage is the safety net: a refused outland family-class application generally carries a right of appeal to the Immigration Appeal Division, which can hear evidence afresh.
The disadvantage is separation, and no automatic open work permit tied to the application while your spouse is abroad.
For most Pakistani applicants the question does not arise — the spouse is in Pakistan, so it’s an outland application, and the appeal right comes with it. Inland only becomes a real choice when your spouse is already in Canada on valid status. Where both are genuinely open, the honest trade is: being together sooner and working sooner, against giving up the strongest remedy available if the file goes wrong.
Parents and grandparents
You don’t apply — you ask to be considered
Parent and grandparent sponsorship is capped, and it doesn’t work like the rest of the family class. You cannot simply file when you’re ready. IRCC opens an interest-to-sponsor step — a short form declaring you want to sponsor — during a defined window, and everyone who submits goes into a pool.
Invitations are then issued from that pool. Only people who are invited may submit a full application. Submitting interest is not applying, and being in the pool is not a queue position you can rely on — in the years IRCC has drawn from an existing pool rather than opening a fresh one, people who never registered had no way in at all.
This stream also carries an income requirement measured over several consecutive tax years and assessed against family size — a materially higher bar than spousal sponsorship. The figures and the tax years they are measured against are published by IRCC on its sponsor your parents and grandparents page, and we confirm which apply to you rather than print a number here.
The alternative
The super visa
Where sponsorship isn’t available or isn’t sensible, the super visa lets parents and grandparents visit for long, repeated stays on a multi-entry visa, with private medical insurance and a supporting commitment from the child or grandchild in Canada. The stay length, the minimum insurance coverage and the income the host must show are all set by IRCC and change — they are published on the IRCC super visa eligibility page.
It is not permanent residence and it should not be sold as a step towards it. What it does offer is time together without taking on the long sponsorship undertaking, and without waiting on a draw that may not come.
For many families it’s the more honest answer. We’ll tell you when we think it is.
Children
Dependent children
A child is a dependant if they’re under the age set in the regulations and unmarried and not in a common-law relationship. There is also a separate category with no age limit: a child of any age who has depended substantially on a parent’s financial support since before that age because of a physical or mental condition.
Age is generally assessed by reference to a fixed lock-in date rather than the date a decision is made, which is intended to stop a child ageing out purely because processing took time. Which date applies to your file is worth confirming precisely — it is one of the few places where a small factual point changes the whole outcome.
The trap
Declare every child, every time
Every family member must be declared and, where required, examined — including children who are not coming to Canada, children from a previous relationship, and children living with someone else.
A family member who wasn’t declared and examined when you immigrated is generally excluded from ever being sponsored by you afterwards. This is the most common and most painful failure we see in this category, and it is usually not fraud — it is someone who assumed a child who wasn’t travelling didn’t need to be listed.
Genetic testing is occasionally raised where documentary proof of a parent-child relationship is thin. It’s a last resort, at your cost, not a routine step.
How it works
From first conversation to a decision
Six stages. The first two can end it — deliberately, before you’ve paid a service fee.
- 1
Confirm you may sponsor
Status, age, residence and the bars below are checked first. If you can’t sponsor, nothing after this matters — so we settle it before you spend anything else.
- 2
Confirm the relationship qualifies
Family class is defined by relationship, not by affection. We check that yours sits inside a category IRCC recognises, and that it isn’t caught by an exclusion.
- 3
Build the relationship evidence
For spouses and partners, this is the whole case: how you met, how the relationship developed, how it’s lived now. Photographs alone don’t carry it.
- 4
File sponsor and applicant together
Two linked applications — your sponsorship and your relative’s permanent residence — assessed as one file. Government fees are paid to IRCC, not to us.
- 5
Medicals, biometrics, background checks
Your relative completes these when instructed. Admissibility — medical, criminal, security — is assessed on their side, independently of your eligibility.
- 6
Decision, or a request to explain
Officers may ask for more, or interview you. How a genuineness concern is answered matters — a careful, evidenced response gives the file its best chance; a casual one rarely does.
Government fees, income figures and processing times all change. IRCC publishes the current ones on canada.ca, and we confirm which apply to your file rather than quote a number here that may already be out of date.
Refusals we’re asked to fix
What commonly goes wrong
Genuineness. The officer isn’t persuaded the relationship is real, or believes it was entered into primarily for status. Thin evidence, a very short courtship, a large unexplained gap in circumstances, or an arranged marriage documented only by a nikah nama and a photo album — these draw questions, and answering them badly is what turns a question into a refusal.
Undeclared family members. Covered above. It is the most avoidable failure in this category and one of the least fixable.
Misrepresentation. An inconsistency between what’s said now and what was said in an earlier visa application can be treated as misrepresentation, which carries a bar on entering Canada. Fix inconsistencies before filing, not after they’re noticed.
Sponsor eligibility changing. Eligibility is assessed continuously, not once at filing. A default, a bankruptcy, or a change in circumstances during processing can sink an application that was sound when it went in.
Admissibility on the other side. Medical or criminal inadmissibility is assessed against your relative independently of your eligibility. A perfect sponsorship does not cure it.
Straight answers
The questions people actually ask
Can you guarantee the sponsorship will be approved?
How much income do I need to sponsor?
What does it cost?
How long does it take?
Does divorce end the undertaking?
My relative is already in Canada on a visitor visa — can I sponsor from inside?
Can I sponsor my brother, sister or adult relative?
I sponsored someone before and it went wrong. Can I sponsor again?
Find out where you stand
Before you sign an undertaking, understand it
Tell us who you want to sponsor and we’ll tell you honestly whether the relationship qualifies, whether you’re eligible to sponsor, and what you’d be committing to.