Background
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) introduced a new lottery process this year for citizens and permanent residents of Canada to sponsor parents or grandparents. In the lottery, IRCC chose 10,000 candidates from a pool of completed online forms, but did not receive 10,000 complete applications from lottery winners by the deadline of August 4, 2017, as it had anticipated. Therefore, to fill the rest of the 2017 quota, IRCC is holding a second lottery to invite additional candidates to submit applications.

Eligibility for Second Selection Round

• Potential sponsors for the second round will be selected using the same randomized list used to identify the first round of candidates.
• Potential sponsors who were invited in the first round but did not submit applications will not have another chance to apply in this round.
• Those who are not selected to submit applications in this round will have the opportunity to apply again in 2018.

Lottery Process
Email invitations were sent starting September 6, and have continued over a few days. Potential sponsors can confirm whether or not they have been selected by:

• accessing the IRCC website and comparing their Confirmation Number with the list of numbers that were randomly selected; or
• completing an online form , to which IRCC will respond within 10 business days with an answer.

What This Means for Citizens and Permanent Residents
Citizens and permanent residents should benefit from the additional selection round for the program.
Those who had previously submitted an online form this year should contact their immigration professional for application submission assistance if they are invited to apply through the lottery.

This alert is for informational purposes only. If you have any questions, please contact the global immigration professional with whom you work at Fragomen or send an email to canada@fragomen.com

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