Canada · Family sponsorship
Sponsoring parents and grandparents is not an application you can simply file
This route begins with an expression of interest and a selection you cannot influence. Being eligible, being organised and being represented do not get you invited. Here is how it actually works — and why so many families use the Super Visa instead.
The route, plainly
An invitation first, an application second
A Canadian citizen or permanent resident can sponsor a parent or grandparent for permanent residence. But unlike spousal sponsorship, which you can file whenever you are ready, this route runs through a controlled intake.
Prospective sponsors submit a short interest-to-sponsor form, which goes into a pool. IRCC then selects from that pool and issues invitations to apply. Only an invited sponsor has an application to make. Everyone else in the pool has nothing to file, nothing to appeal and nothing to chase.
Two things are worth understanding before you build a plan around this. First, being able to submit a new interest form is not a given: IRCC has gone long stretches without opening a new intake, has drawn invitations from a pool submitted in an earlier year, and has paused the program outright. Second, even a form in the pool is not a queue position. Check on canada.ca what is actually open before you rely on this route.
That structural fact governs everything else on this page. Demand for places has consistently exceeded what IRCC accepts, intakes do not run on a predictable schedule, and there is no version of this route where careful preparation secures you a place in it. What preparation does is put you in a position to respond properly if you are invited, and make sure you are not waiting on this route alone in the meantime.
What the route is made of
Four things that decide whether this works
The first is outside your control entirely. The other three are worth understanding before you rely on them.
Step one
Interest to sponsor
Step two
Selection from the pool
Step three
The income test
Step four
The undertaking
The financial test
Income, measured across tax years
Sponsoring a parent or grandparent carries a higher financial bar than sponsoring a spouse, and it is assessed differently. Rather than a snapshot of what you earn now, IRCC looks at your income across a set number of consecutive tax years and requires that each of them meets the minimum for your family size. How many years, and how much, are both published by IRCC and both have changed over time.
Two consequences follow. First, the evidence is your Canada Revenue Agency record — what you actually declared — not an employer letter or a healthy bank balance. Second, the year you have a weak tax year is the year the route closes to you, regardless of what you earn today. People who have recently arrived, recently changed careers, recently started a business, or who work partly in cash are the ones most often caught by this.
The family-size count is broader than people expect: it includes the parents or grandparents you are sponsoring, their dependants, your own dependants, and anyone you have previously undertaken to support. IRCC publishes the current minimum for each family size on its site — read it there rather than relying on a figure quoted anywhere else, including here.
The commitment
What an undertaking really is
It is a contract with the Crown
You promise the government that the sponsored person will not need social assistance. The province can recover from you anything they receive.
It is long
The undertaking for a parent or grandparent runs far longer than for a spouse. The exact period is set in the regulations — read it before you sign, not after.
It cannot be withdrawn
Once the sponsored person lands, the undertaking is fixed. It survives job loss, illness, divorce, estrangement and their moving out of your home.
A co-signer is equally bound
Adding a spouse to strengthen the income does not divide the obligation. It doubles who is liable for it.
Default has consequences
An unpaid sponsorship debt can bar you from sponsoring anyone else, including a spouse or child, until it is cleared.
The sequence
From intake to decision
Note where the waiting sits. Steps one to four can take years and produce nothing at all.
- 1
IRCC decides whether there is an intake
There is no application to make until IRCC opens one. Intakes are irregular, they have been paused for extended periods, and there is no obligation on IRCC to run one in any given year. Confirm the current position on canada.ca before you plan around it.
- 2
An interest form goes into the pool
A brief online declaration of who you are and who you intend to sponsor. In some years IRCC has not accepted new forms at all and has instead invited from a pool submitted in an earlier year — so having a form in the pool and being able to submit one are separate questions.
- 3
You wait to be selected
Invitations go out to selected submissions. Many people in the pool are not invited in any given round, and some rounds do not happen. There is no queue position to check and nothing to chase.
- 4
An invitation arrives — or does not
An invitation is time-limited and comes to the email address on the interest form. This is the point at which a real application becomes possible.
- 5
Two applications, filed together
You apply to be approved as a sponsor and your parent or grandparent applies for permanent residence. The two go in as one package, not one after the other.
- 6
Assessment of both sides
IRCC assesses your income and eligibility as sponsor, and separately assesses your parent or grandparent for admissibility, including medical and security screening.
The real decision
Sponsorship or Super Visa
These are not competing applications. They answer different questions, and most families we speak to actually want the second one.
The Super Visa is a visitor route for parents and grandparents of Canadian citizens and permanent residents. It permits long, repeated stays on a single authorisation rather than the short visits a standard visitor visa contemplates. It requires a supporting invitation from the child or grandchild in Canada, evidence that they meet an income threshold, and private medical insurance meeting IRCC’s minimum coverage amount and validity period. Those requirements, and the length of stay each entry allows, are set out on IRCC’s super visa eligibility page. Unlike sponsorship, it does not depend on an intake — you can apply when you are ready.
What it does not do is confer status. A Super Visa holder remains a visitor: no permanent residence, no path to citizenship, no provincial health coverage, no right to work, and no credit towards a future sponsorship. Time on a Super Visa does not accumulate into anything.
So the honest way to frame the choice is by what the family actually needs. If the need is for a parent to be present — to spend long stretches with grandchildren, to be cared for, to be part of daily life — the Super Visa answers that, now, without depending on a selection you cannot influence. If the need is genuinely for status, with the permanence, the healthcare access and the eventual citizenship that come with it, only sponsorship delivers that, and you must accept that it may never become available to you.
The two are not mutually exclusive. Submitting an interest form when an intake opens does not stop a parent visiting on a Super Visa, and for many families the sensible position is to do both: pursue presence now, and keep the status route open in case an invitation ever comes.
Status, if you are selected
Parent and grandparent sponsorship
Presence, available now
Super Visa
What commonly goes wrong
The failure patterns we see
Waiting on the pool and doing nothing else. Families spend years hoping for an invitation that may never arrive, while the parent ages out of comfortable travel and misses the years they wanted to be present for. The waiting is the cost, and it is rarely counted.
Income that does not survive the look-back. A sponsor earning well today is refused because an earlier tax year in the assessed range fell short. By the time the invitation arrives, that year cannot be changed. If you intend to sponsor, your tax filings are the preparation.
Under-counting family size. People calculate against their household as they picture it and forget that dependants of the sponsored parents, and anyone previously undertaken for, are counted too. The threshold they were measuring against was the wrong one.
Signing the undertaking without reading it. Sponsors treat it as paperwork rather than a long, unbreakable financial liability — and discover its weight only when circumstances change.
Treating the Super Visa as a stepping stone. It is not one, and applying for it while stating an intention to remain permanently undermines the visitor intent the officer is assessing. If the parent has been refused before, understanding the officer’s reasoning through GCMS notes matters more than reapplying quickly.
Believing someone can influence selection. Nobody can. If you are being offered guaranteed selection, priority submission or an inside route, you are being sold something that does not exist.
Being honest about fit
Who this route does not suit
If you need your parents here soon, this is not your route
This route does not suit a family with an urgent need — a parent in declining health, a new baby, a bereavement. There is no expedited path, no compassionate queue and no way to make an invitation arrive sooner. For urgency, the Super Visa is the route that can actually respond. It also does not suit anyone who needs to start now regardless of policy: there have been periods with no intake at all, in which there was simply nothing to submit.
It also does not suit sponsors whose recent tax years will not stand up to the look-back, sponsors who are not in a position to carry a long undertaking honestly, or sponsors who are themselves still on a temporary status and not yet permanent residents or citizens. And it does not suit anyone who needs certainty: the defining feature of this route is that meeting every requirement still does not entitle you to apply.
We would rather tell you on the first call that the Super Visa is the better answer for your family than take a fee for a form that goes into a pool. Selection is IRCC’s and no representative influences it — which is why we publish a no-guarantee policy.
Where the current details live
Intakes, income thresholds and undertaking periods
Whether an intake is currently open, the minimum necessary income for each family size, the tax years assessed, the length of the undertaking and the fees payable all change, and some of them change without much notice. We deliberately do not print those figures here, because a number that is correct today becomes a liability on a page you might read next year.
IRCC publishes the current position on canada.ca, including whether an interest-to-sponsor intake is open at all. The underlying obligations — sponsorship eligibility, the undertaking and its duration — sit in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations. Read the figures at the source, on the day you need them.
Straight answers
The questions families actually ask
Can I apply to sponsor my parents whenever I want?
Does applying earlier in the intake window help?
What income do I need to show?
Can my spouse’s income be counted?
What does the undertaking actually commit me to?
Is a Super Visa a step towards permanent residence?
My parent was refused a visitor visa before. Does that end the Super Visa option?
Can you get my parents invited faster?
Presence now, or status later
Work out which route your family actually needs
Tell us your status in Canada, your recent tax position and why you need your parents here. We will tell you honestly whether sponsorship is realistic for you — and whether the Super Visa answers the need better.