Gurmalkiat Singh Kahlon
Vancouver, January 5
Canada’s Department of Immigration will not accept applications under the Super Visa program this year, although this 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 super visa. The duration of super visa has already been increased to five years. 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. 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.
It is true that the Government of Canada had facilitated 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 was fixed in 2016 with a slight change in the program which had been running unaccounted for many years. Applications have been received for three years, but they have not been processed further, due to which people who have applied in 2020 are still waiting. The department said that this year only at least 15 thousand applications will be processed from the first applicants and new applications will not be taken during this time. As an alternative, the government initially started a two-year super visa program and extended it to five years last year.
