This includes stayed orders, departure orders, exclusion orders and deportation orders.

Exception: People who were granted permanent residence despite an unexecuted removal order. 

Sponsors being held in correctional or pre-trial holding facilities are unlikely to be able to support their relatives. 

Exception : Persons on parole, on probation or serving a suspended sentence. Persons held in immigration detention centres may be ineligible because of other bars. (For example, charged with an offence).

Sponsors or co-signers convicted of either of these offences where five years have not passed since the completion of the sentence imposed cannot sponsor unless: 

• For convictions in Canada, they have been pardoned or finally acquitted;
• For convictions outside Canada, they have shown, at least five years after the expiry of the sentence, that they have been rehabilitated or there has been a final acquittal.

For the purposes of calculating the five-year period above, a sentence includes probation, suspended sentences and intermittent sentences. However, conditional discharges and absolute discharges should not be considered for the purposes of these provisions of IRPA.

Persons in default of a court-ordered or court-registered support obligation to pay support are not eligible to sponsor. This includes persons who are and who are not registered with the responsible federal, provincial or territorial authority as being in default of family support obligations are not eligible to sponsor. A person who is unable or unwilling to live up to current family-related legal and financial obligations is likely a poor risk for honouring a future family-related financial commitment.

Sponsors must demonstrate that they have resolved the matter to the satisfaction of the responsible provincial or territorial authorities before they can be eligible to sponsor.

An immigration debt includes:

• a transportation, adjustment assistance, admissibility or
• Right of Permanent Residence Fee (formerly ROLF) loan;
  • a deposit or guarantee of performance of an obligation;
  • costs incurred to remove a foreign national.