Gurmalkiat Singh Kahlon
Vancouver, January 5
Canada’s Department of Immigration will not accept applications under the Family Reconciliation Scheme this year, but the Super Visa program will continue. According to the department, efforts will be made to settle the 15,000 applications in the waiting list from previous years under this scheme by the end of this year. The PR people who are waiting for the applications to be filled by the department have been asked to give priority to keeping their parents with them under the super visa, the duration of which has been extended to five years earlier. The department has also cut the PR quota of skilled workers invited from abroad by 20 percent to 24,500 under the post graduation program.
It should be mentioned here that the government of Canada had given the facility to the people of foreign origin living permanently that they can invite their parents, grandparents and grandparents to Canada permanently under the family reunification program. The annual quota of 5000 applications has been fixed in 2016 due to a slight change in the program which has been running unaccounted for many years. 5000 have been selected from the total applications received at the beginning of the year and they have been invited to fill the application. Applications were being received for three years, but no further action was being taken on them. Due to this, people who have applied in 2020 are still waiting. The department said that this year at least 15 thousand applications will be processed from the first applicants only, but new applications will not be filled. Of course, the department has only talked about this year recently, but according to department insiders, the suspension is the second step toward a permanent shutdown of the program. As an alternative, the government initially started a two-year super visa program and last year extended its duration to five years.