Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) plans on issuing about 17,000 of this visa per year. The Super Visa offers several advantages to expats of working age who need to be the primary caregivers of their aging parents or grandparents. It also works in favor of Canada's immigration goals.
Who is eligible for the Super Visa?
The eligibility criteria for the new Super Visa are quite straightforward. First of all, the sponsor needs to be an adult who is a Canadian citizen, a permanent resident or registered as indigenous under the Canadian Indian Act. They also need to reside primarily in Canada, i.e., not live abroad for most of the year. The parents/grandparents they sponsor can either be blood relatives or their family of adoption.
Secondly, the sponsor needs to have a minimum yearly income to be able to provide for their elderly, retired parents. Immigration services define this threshold as being of CAD 25,921 in a household with one person (excluding the parent/grandparent), CAD 32,270 in a household with two people, CAD 39,672 in one with three people, CAD 48,167 in one with four, CAD 54,630 for a five-person family unit, CAD 61,613 for a six-person unit and CAD 68,598 for a seven-person unit. For exceptionally large households with over seven people, CAD 6,985 needs to be added for each extra person. Proof of income can be their bank statements, pay slips and/or tax returns.
In addition to proof of income, the child or grandchild needs to provide a signed written statement that they are willing to provide for the parent/grandparent during their entire stay in Canada, i.e., 5 years for a new application. This means paying for their accommodation, food, clothing, and other necessities.
To avoid putting undue financial pressure on Canada's tax-funded, public healthcare system, the foreign parent/grandparent also needs to have health insurance. The insurance can be from any provider, Canadian or international, but must guarantee at least CAD 100,000 of emergency coverage. At the time of application, they only need to have health coverage for one year; they can renew the insurance for the following years later during their stay while already in Canada. And of course, as in standard immigration procedure, a general medical exam is also required before entry.
The new Super Visa is a multiple-entry one. This means that the parent/grandparent can take short trips in and out of Canada during these 5-7 years, including to their home country, without jeopardizing their visa status.
How is it different from older visa schemes?
An older version of the Super Visa already existed from 2011 to 2021. Apart from having a shorter consecutive stay limit of 2 years, it had additional restrictions.
For instance, it required the parents/grandparents to have medical insurance only from a Canadian provider. This was a significant cost barrier for some families, especially when the parents/grandparents were from a country whose currency is less strong than the Canadian dollar, that is, most Asian, African and Latin American countries.
Two other older schemes are the Parents and Grandparents Program (PGP) and regular multi-entry visa. The PGP grants indefinite, permanent residency to the parents/ grandparents. It requires the sponsor to promise to cover the living expenses of the parent/grandparent for a much longer period of 20 years, rather than only 5 years as in the new Super Visa. The Government of Canada has not given any updates yet as to whether the PGP will accept applications in 2022.
The regular multi-entry visa does not differ too much from a tourist visa. It allows a person to enter and leave Canada's borders as much as they desire within the visa's 6-month validity. To renew this visa, the parent/grandparent must pay for an extension from inside Canada at least 30 days before its expiration date.
What are the advantages of the new Super Visa?
One of the main reasons why the Canadian government updated the Super Visa is to solve the problem of the backlog of visa applications. As of late June 2022, there are an astounding 2.4 million immigration visas backlogged at the offices of Canadian immigration services, still awaiting processing or final approval. The Parents and Grandparents Program (PGP), for example, receives more applications per year than the capped number of available spots. This creates a long, cumbersome bureaucratic waiting line.
By issuing longer-term family reunification visas, the government can avoid worsening the current backlog or creating future ones. Instead of submitting a new application every six months or two years, applicants only need to reapply under the new Super Visa every five years. This reduces the amount of paperwork that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), which has budgetary and staff limits, has to deal with.
The above is particularly crucial because family visa applications keep increasing. For instance, the Parents and Grandparents Program (PGP) received applications for about 3500 more people in 2021 compared to 2020 (41,802 v/s 38,478). The cap for that program was raised in 2019 from 17,000 to 20,000, but it is not enough to fully solve the administrative backlog. Currently, the average processing time for any parent or grandparent sponsorship visa is 35 months, nearly 3 years. It is hoped that the new Super Visa can reduce the wait time to fewer months.
The PGP also operates on a lottery system. Candidates are drawn randomly from the large pool of ‘Interest to Sponsor' applications. The lucky ones are then given 60 days to provide all the necessary documentation. This method has been widely criticized for being unfair, for someone who just applied might, out of sheer luck, be given preference over someone who's been waiting for a year. Super Visa aims to correct this injustice and make the system more predictable by processing visas on a first-come, first-served basis.
A third advantage of the new Super Visa is, as mentioned previously, the possibility for the parent/grandparent to buy their health insurance in their home country, at a lower cost than in Canada, as long as it has international coverage.
Why is family reunification important for Canada?
By making family reunification easier, the government of Canada hopes to retain more young expats and migrants. Many international students, migrants and expats feel forced to eventually return to their home country in order to take care of their aging relatives. By making it easier for these relatives to join them instead, Canada can keep its large migrant and expat workforce that is central to its economy.
As Canada has a low birth rate, it needs significant annual immigration to keep its economy and public services running smoothly without increasing taxes. Since 1998, Canada has welcomed a yearly minimum of 200,000 migrants and expats to work in its territories. In 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, it accepted a record-high number of 400,000 new work and family reunification visas, despite the border restrictions.
Covid-19 has weakened the Canadian economy in the short term. This has exacerbated the need for foreign workers to rebuild the economy in the next few years. Sean Fraser, the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, recently emphasized that the Super Visa will help “everyday Canadian citizens and permanent residents succeed and contribute to society while affording their parents and grandparents invaluable opportunities to spend time with their family in Canada.”
