Family Class: Sponsoring Overage Siblings

Question [Holthe Tilleman LLP website]

:

I’m a Canadian citizen who owns my own home with solid employment. Would I be eligible to sponsor my brother to immigrate to Canada? He is 55 years old.

[Tweet ” Can I sponsor my brother to immigrate to Canada? He is 55 years old.”]

Listen to Mark Holthe’s Answer

Family Class Sponsorship: click this link to determine if you may be eligible to sponsor a family member:

• http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/sponsor/index.asp

Read the Transcript

You can download a complete, word-for-word transcript of this episode here OR [spoiler]With Citizenship and Immigration Canada making it increasingly difficult to speak to an officer, there are few places to turn for information that can be relied upon. The Canadian Immigration podcast was created to fill this void by offering the latest information on Canadian law, policy, and practice. Please welcome ex-immigration officer and Canadian immigration lawyer Mark Holthe, as he answers a wide variety of immigration questions, and shares practical tips and guidance to help you along your way.

Welcome to the Canadian Immigration Answers podcast, today July the 30th 2015. Today’s question comes from Maria. And Maria has a brother in Portugal. This is near and dear to my heart, as I spent two years as a young missionary in Portugal, where I learned Portuguese, and had an opportunity to really get to know the people and the country and develop a love for that beautiful location. So thank you Maria for sending this question. She asks, “I’m a Canadian citizen, I have a home, I work, can I bring my brother to be legal in Canada? He is 55 years old.”

So Maria what you are asking is, can you sponsor a family member to become a permanent resident of Canada. The family members that are included within the family class are spouses, partners, dependent children, parents, and grandparents. It also includes adopted children and what the government determines and defines as other eligible relatives. So in the case of your brother he would need to fall under the classification of other eligible relatives.

And essentially in order for you to be able to sponsor him, you would need to be defined as what as within the immigration ranks, would commonly refer to as a lonely Canadian. In other words, you would need to show that you do not have a spouse, a common law partner, a conjugal partner or a son, daughter, parent, grandparent, brother or sister, uncle and nephew, or niece, a family member that’s living with you in Canada. Or that they themselves is a Canadian citizen, permanent resident of Canada.

So if you are a lonely Canadian, then it may be possible to sponsor your brother. However if you are not, and you do have family members in Canada, then the options that are available for you are quite limited. So Maria, I wish I had good news for you, but in these circumstances your brother would probably need to explore individual options for immigration. And for the most part those would be under the economic class. And they would include to a large extent the permanent resident categories within the new express entry regime that was instituted at the beginning of this year in January of 2015.

So with all of the people who have immigrated to Canada, and 4made Canada their home and have been able to really be blessed because of this opportunity, it’s only natural to want to include your extended family within this great country that we love. Unfortunately, because of the immigration — current immigration policy, those options are quite restricted. So your brother would have to consider possibly obtaining a work permit to work for a company, and then transition to permanent residence, but that’s a whole different question. So we’ll leave at that, thank you Maria for your question, and will see you all again when we address the next question from one of our contributors.

Thank you for listening to the Canadian immigration podcast, your trusted source for information on Canadian law, policy, and practice. If you would like to contribute a question for future podcasts, or wish to set up a legal consultation with Mark, please visit www.ht-llp.com.
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