Canada · Visitor visa
The Super Visa for parents and grandparents
A long-stay visitor visa for the parents and grandparents of Canadians and permanent residents. It is built for long stays with family — not permanent residence — and it is your child or grandchild in Canada, not you, who has to qualify first.
The route, plainly
What a Super Visa actually is
A visitor visa with a longer horizon — and a heavier set of conditions attached to it.
An ordinary visitor visa lets you come to Canada for a short trip. The stay authorised when you land is measured in months, and each time you want longer you are back in front of the system asking for it.
The Super Visa is narrower and longer. It is open only to the parents and grandparents of Canadian citizens and permanent residents, and it authorises a continuous stay measured in years per entry, on a visa valid for years beyond that, with the option to extend from inside Canada. For a family that wants a grandparent present for a grandchild’s childhood rather than for a wedding, that is the whole difference.
What it is not is a path to staying. It is visitor status. Your parents cannot work on it, it does not accumulate toward permanent residence, and it does not convert into anything. It also carries conditions an ordinary visitor visa does not — an income-backed undertaking from the inviting child, private medical insurance, and an immigration medical exam.
The specific numbers — the length of stay, the income threshold, the minimum insurance coverage, the government fee — are set by IRCC and have been revised more than once in recent years. We deliberately don’t print them here. IRCC publishes the current figures and we check them against your file rather than against memory.
What the file has to prove
Four requirements, and who carries each one
Two of these sit with your child or grandchild in Canada. Applicants are often surprised by that.
The inviter
A child or grandchild in Canada
The income test
A minimum-income undertaking
The insurance
Private medical insurance
The medical
An immigration medical exam
The undertaking is worth understanding properly, because families read it as paperwork and it is not. Your child in Canada is putting their name to a promise that they will support you financially while you are there, and IRCC tests that promise against their filed income for a household counted as if you were already living in it. Adding two parents to a household of four changes the number that has to be met. It is the single most common place a Super Visa file falls over.
The insurance is the second. The requirement is not simply “have travel insurance” — the policy has to cover healthcare, hospitalisation and repatriation at IRCC’s minimum level, run for the minimum period from entry that IRCC sets, and come from an insurer IRCC accepts. That last point has changed: policies from outside Canada can now qualify, but only where the insurer is authorised in the particular way IRCC specifies. A cheap policy that fails that test costs you the application. The coverage amount, the minimum period and the insurer test are all published by IRCC on its Super Visa page, and we check a policy against it before you pay a premium.
How it works
From first conversation to a decision
The order matters. We check the inviter before anyone books a medical or buys a policy.
- 1
Check the inviter first
Everything hangs on your child or grandchild in Canada — their status, their household size, and whether their filed income actually reaches the threshold. We start there, because if it doesn’t, nothing else matters yet.
- 2
Assemble the host’s side
The invitation letter, the undertaking of support, proof of status in Canada, and income evidence drawn from Canada Revenue Agency records rather than payslips alone.
- 3
Buy compliant insurance
A policy that meets IRCC’s coverage terms and is issued by an insurer IRCC accepts. Many cheap policies fail on an exclusion or a coverage gap, which is a refusal reason on its own.
- 4
Build the applicant’s side
Passport, ties to Pakistan, travel and refusal history, and the honest purpose of the visit. This is still a temporary-resident application, and an officer still has to believe you will leave.
- 5
Medical and biometrics
The panel-physician exam and biometrics are scheduled around the filing. We tell you the sequence so nothing expires while something else is pending.
- 6
File and wait
IRCC decides. Processing depends on the visa office and the file — anyone quoting you a fixed date is guessing, and we won’t.
The real decision
Super Visa or sponsorship for permanent residence?
Most families are choosing between these two. They are not competing versions of the same thing.
Super Visa
Long visits, available now
You can apply whenever you are ready — there is no intake window and no lottery. The status is temporary: visitor, no work, no route to citizenship, and private insurance to be maintained for as long as your parents keep coming.
It suits families who want presence rather than permanence, or who need something in place while they wait for a sponsorship opportunity.
Parents and Grandparents sponsorship
Permanent residence, if you get in
This gives permanent residence, with provincial health coverage, the right to work, and eventual eligibility for citizenship. The trade-offs are access and commitment: IRCC opens the intake periodically and selects from a pool of interested sponsors, so you cannot simply decide to apply, and the sponsor signs a support undertaking that runs for many years.
It suits families whose goal is that the parents live in Canada, not visit it — and whose sponsor can meet a sustained income requirement.
In practice the two are often used together rather than chosen between: submit interest in sponsorship when the intake opens, and apply for the Super Visa so your parents may be able to be in Canada in the meantime. The two are separate applications, each assessed on its own merits by IRCC — and being in Canada as a visitor does not create a right to stay if the sponsorship does not come through.
If you want to talk this through against your own household — who the sponsor would be, what their income looks like, whether your parents want to move or to visit — that is exactly what a consultation is for. Book one here.
Straight talk
Who should not pursue a Super Visa
We will tell you this on the call rather than take your money
If the goal is for your parents to settle in Canada permanently, this is the wrong route — it does not lead there, and years on a Super Visa build nothing toward it. If your child in Canada cannot meet the income requirement for a household that includes your parents, the application fails on that alone, and buying insurance first is money thrown away. If you are looking for a way for a parent to work in Canada, this visa forbids it. And if the person inviting you is a sibling, an uncle, a cousin or a family friend rather than your own child or grandchild, you are not eligible at all — no matter how the relationship is described on the invitation letter.
Straight answers
The questions families actually ask
How is this different from a normal visitor visa?
How long can my parents stay, and how long is the visa valid?
How much income does my child in Canada need to show?
Can we buy the insurance in Pakistan?
Does a Super Visa lead to permanent residence?
We were refused a visitor visa before. Is a Super Visa still possible?
Can you guarantee the visa?
Bring your parents over
Find out whether your family qualifies
Tell us who is in Canada, what their household looks like, and what your parents actually want — a long visit or a move. We’ll tell you honestly which route fits, and if neither does, we’ll say that too.