Everything you need to know about sponsoring your child for immigration to Canada

Family class sponsorship enables family members who live in different countries to be reunited and live together in Canada. (Pexels photo)

Family class sponsorship enables family members who live in different countries to be reunited and live together in Canada. The program allows Canadian citizens and permanent residents to bring their children from abroad to Canada to become permanent residents.

Sponsor your family for Canadian immigration

Dependent children, whether biological or adopted, can be sponsored to come live in Canada with their parents.

To sponsor your child to come to Canada, you must:

• Be 18 years of age or older
• Be a Canadian citizen, a permanent resident living in Canada, intending to return to Canada, or a person registered under the Indian Act of Canada
• Be able to provide for the basic needs of the dependent child
• Be able to prove your relationship to your child
• Not have a criminal record, be in prison, charged with a serious offence, or be bankrupt
• Not be in default of a previous sponsorship undertaking or be under immigration investigation
• Not be receiving income assistance, except for reasons of disability

To be eligible for sponsorship, the child must be considered a dependant, meaning they are:

• The biological or adopted child of a Canadian citizen or permanent resident
• Are not married or in a common law relationship
• Are under the age of 22

A child over the age of 22 may qualify as a dependant providing that they meet two requirements:

• They suffer from a mental or physical condition that prevents them from being able to support themselves
• They have depended on their parents for financial support since before the age of 22

Dependent children must remain unmarried and not in a common-law relationship for the duration of processing, up until the point of becoming a permanent resident. In addition, a dependent child who is divorced, widowed or whose marriage has been annulled or who is no longer in a common law relationship at the time of the initial receipt of the application is considered to meet the definition of a dependent child.

Relationship between parent and child

A dependent child can either be a biological child or an adopted child of a parent. “Biological” child includes children:

• Who were born to the parent making the application
• Who are not genetically related to the parent making the application, but was born to the person who, at the time of the birth of the child, was that parent’s spouse, common-law partner or conjugal partner
• Who were born through the application of assisted human reproduction technologies

A birth certificate or baptismal certificate can serve as proof of a biological relationship.

In the case of human reproductive technologies, documents suitable for establishing a parent-child relationship are birth certificates but also authorized evidence that indicate that the person claiming to be the parent is the birth mother or spouse/common law partner of the mother at the time of the birth. Parents must also show that they used assisted human reproduction technologies.

If the child was born from a surrogacy agreement in a foreign country and the child is legally the child of the sponsor or their spouse or partner in that country, the child may be a “biological child”, if there is also a genetic parent-child relationship.

Lock-in age of dependent children

The age of a dependent child is locked in on the date of receipt of the principal applicant’s complete permanent residence application. A complete permanent residence application contains all of the items in the document checklist for the specific category, which includes proof of payment of the processing fees.