{"id":68825,"date":"2016-01-13T20:54:59","date_gmt":"2016-01-14T01:54:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=68825"},"modified":"2016-01-13T20:54:59","modified_gmt":"2016-01-14T01:54:59","slug":"could-be-a-better-way-to-accept-applicants-for-parent-sponsorship-mccallum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2016\/01\/13\/could-be-a-better-way-to-accept-applicants-for-parent-sponsorship-mccallum\/","title":{"rendered":"Could be a better way to accept applicants for parent sponsorship: McCallum"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The Honorable John McCallum. (Photo courtesy of McCallum’s official Facebook page<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

OTTAWA\u2014Immigration Minister John McCallum says there could be a better way to accept applications for a coveted sponsorship program other than the current system, which has some couriers charging hundreds of dollars to deliver files.<\/p>\n

But McCallum is not committed to making any changes, saying only that the government has a year to review the process before the parent and grandparent program re-opens.<\/p>\n

The Canadian Press reported this week that couriers lined up at a Toronto-area immigration office hours before the program opened for applications on Jan. 4 and, in some cases, they charged clients as much as $400 in order to guarantee their file would be among the first submitted.<\/p>\n

Only 5,000 spots are currently available in the first-come, first-served visa program, though the Liberals have promised to raise the cap to 10,000.<\/p>\n

Over 14,000 applications were received this year and the Immigration Department is holding on to the excess files pending that increase.<\/p>\n

McCallum suggests the higher cap would come with the release of the government’s overall plan for immigration in 2016.<\/p>\n

The parent and grandparent sponsorship program only accepts applications by mail or courier to the processing centre in Mississauga, Ont., and since it re-opened in 2014 with a cap on applications, it has hit that ceiling within the first few days.<\/p>\n

McCallum’s department had said previously the first-come, first-served approach was an effort to ensure the program’s fairness and the rates charged by couriers were beyond their control.<\/p>\n

Some applicants have said the way the program is structured leaves them no choice but to pay what it takes to get their files in first, a system that particularly hurts applicants from outside Ontario, who have to pay higher delivery fees just to get them to the office.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you’re telling me that we could find a better way to handle this so that people don’t have to pay these high fees to couriers, then I accept the point,\u201d McCallum said Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe exercise has been completed now for 2016 but we will have a year to figure out ways in which we might improve that process for the next year.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OTTAWA\u2014Immigration Minister John McCallum says there could be a better way to accept applications for a coveted sponsorship program other …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":11776,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,16],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-68825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","category-news","tag-original","mauthors-stephanie-levitz","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68825\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}