Immigrants hoping to bring their parents or grandparents to live permanently in Canada will soon learn if they were lucky enough to win a coveted spot through a controversial lottery process for family reunification.
Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) is beginning to notify prospective sponsors who filled out online forms last fall to express their interest in resettling a relative. The notification process will unfold over the next 10 days.
After weeding out duplicate and incomplete forms, IRCC officials randomly selected the 10,000 sponsors — who will now be invited to apply formally.
Tens of thousands of immigrants desperate to sponsor their relatives have been disappointed each year by the program.
The government returned to a lottery system after last year’s first-come, first-served online system was plagued by problems. The lottery system itself replaced a first-in process which saw applicants sprint to get physical documents to processing centres.