More than 95,000 people who applied to bring their parent or grandparent to Canada, 10,000 individuals have now been randomly selected under the new family reunification lottery system.
The lottery system was introduced by the Liberal government as a way of alleviating sponsorship application backlogs under the old, first-come, first-serve system.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) received a total of 95,100 expressions of interest submissions in the first round of the lottery, which ended on Feb. 2, 2017
The 10,000 randomly selected individuals now have 90 days to submit their full applications to sponsor their parents or grandparents. Anyone who was not selected this year can enter the lottery again in 2018.
Many applicants have spoken out against the lottery system, saying that the important issue of family reunification shouldn’t depend on luck.
Most of the serious applicants had started preparing the application to sponsor their family members before the lottery system was announced, so they already spend considerable time collecting all the necessary paperwork and money to consult a legal professional.
Under the old system, the government accepted for consideration the first 10,000 sponsorship applications that arrived at the Case Processing Center (CPC) Mississauga, Ont. as soon as it opened at the start of a new year. Critics of that system said it wasn’t fair to applicants who ended up spending lot of dollars for courier services to ensure that their application would be among the first to arrive.
A petition calling on the government to reconsider the lottery system has collected more than 670 signatures so far.
“This is the first year this new process will be in place so we will monitor results to see if adjustments are needed for next year,” IRCC spokesperson advised.
The government said the new lottery system will make the sponsorship application process “more fair and transparent.”
The government said the 10,000 accepted applications represent approximately 17,000 people since one sponsorship application can include more than one person. The notice also said the government has been making a “concerted effort” to reduce the application backlog, which sat at around 41,500 people by the end of 2016.
