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The Canadian Government has always been very empathetic to separated families and tried their best to incorporate reunification measures. As such, the family sponsorship program allows citizen or resident sponsored admission and settlement of a family member in Canada. The spousal sponsorship branch of this grant extends to domestic partners and significant others of the resident or citizen as well. If you are interested in spousal sponsorship, VisaSpot will tell you about a few essential things that you should keep in mind.
Spousal sponsorship includes spouses, common-law partners, and conjugal partners in its purview: which in informal terms translates into wife/husband, domestic partners or romantic partners who live together, and romantic partners who live separately due to circumstances. To be eligible to be sponsored as a spouse, you would have to provide proof of association that exceeds an year. Thereafter, your spouse can apply for a visitor visa while waiting for spousal sponsorship clearance.
The eligibility requirements for a sponsor are that they are of or more than 18 years of age, a citizen or permanent resident of Canada, or registered under the Canadian Indian Act. There is no set limit for the net worth or annual income of the sponsor for spousal sponsorship eligibility, however, if your spouse has dependent children of their own, your LICO (Low-Income Cut Off) score may be taken into consideration to make an assessment of your financial resources and determine if you would be capable of bearing the financial liability of the children.
A spousal sponsorship generally takes around 12 months to be processed by IRCC offices. Till the application process is completed and accepted, visitor visas are generally used by immigration aspirants. If you are sponsoring your spouse, expect to be around $1100 short after the application submission. If you do not wish for the right of permanent residence, you will be required to pay around $600 and the sponsorship application of any dependent children that you or they may have will have a $150 fee. Other than the application and processing fee, the sponsor will also have to be bound to an undertaking that promises financial support for the sponsored spouse’s needs for the next three years.
While the sponsored spouse is waiting for the confirmation of permanent residency application, they can apply for an open work permit that allows them the flexibility to be employed by a large variety of industries for various job titles instead of being restricted to a single industry or job role like a regular work permit would have them be. After the application is successfully cleared, the sponsored spouse becomes a permanent resident and no longer needs a work permit.
The factors that disqualify a person from acting as a sponsor range from a history of criminal activity like the commission or attempt of murder, violent, sexual, or familial crimes, a medical record with a history of certain illnesses, the non-lapse of undertaking of a previous partner’s sponsorship, the inability to have paid back a previous partner’s social assistance debt, being a loan defaulter of performance bond, immigration loan, child support or alimony, being under Canadian removal order, or if the sponsor themselves were initially sponsored by a spouse and it hasn’t yet been five years.
If you are interested in sponsoring your spouse to Canada, you can contact VisaSpot, one of the leading immigration consultants for spousal sponsorship in Toronto. They will also help your spouse to apply for a visitor visa in Toronto while they wait for the completion of processing.