Canadian Immigration Blogs

Sponsoring a spouse with a criminal record

Immigration Officers are vigilant when it comes to accessing foreign national’s admissibility to Canada in order to ensure the safety and security of Canada, it’s citizens and permanent residents. Your spouse may be denied entry into Canada if they have a criminal record. There are options available to overcome the inadmissibility though. Continue reading below to learn how to sponsor your spouse to come to Canada even if they have a criminal record

Overcoming criminal inadmissibility

The most important step in sponsoring a spouse with a criminal record is to be it resolved. Whether that be having the record expunged, obtaining Criminal Rehabilitation or being deemed rehabilitated. Criminal Rehabilitation means that you have proved without doubt that criminal activity is in your past, you are very unlikely to reoffend and will not be a threat to Canada, it’s citizens or permanent residents.

Can a same-sex partner be sponsored?

If you were married in Canada then your same-sex marriage will be valid in regards to sponsorship of a spouse. If you were married outside of Canada then your same-sex marriage will be deemed valid if it is recognized in the country that the marriage took place.

In terms of same-sex common-law and conjugal partnerships they are deemed to be valid inside and outside of Canada in regards to the sponsorship of a partner.

Among all difficulties you have met, being separated from your loved ones is always difficult to endure. Citizenship and Immigration Canada understands this and, through the family sponsorship program, can facilitate your family’s unification in Canada.

Family Sponsorship allows you to sponsor your parents, grandparents, spouse, partner, dependent child, adopted children and other eligible relatives.

With the re-opening of the parental and grandparental sponsorship categories, as of January 2, 2014, a maximum of 5 000 new (and complete) sponsorship applications of this type will be accepted for processing each year. The 5 000 cap will commence at the beginning of each year and end on January first of the subsequent year. Case in point, the cap for this year commenced on January 2, 2014 and will end on January 1, 2015. This means that completed applications on or before January 2, 2014 will be duly processed until 5 000 complete applications have been submitted and the cap for this year has been reached.

Only applications which are considered to be complete at the time of submission will count towards the imposed 5 000 cap. Applications that are deemed to be incomplete will otherwise be returned to the sender.

     Amendments have been made to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations (IRPR), which are basically the legal rules when it comes to immigration matters, to include the recent re-opening of the parental and grandparental sponsorship program. These changes received approval on December 12, 2013 and came into effect on January 1, 2014.

The changes include unique amendments to sponsorship regulation that normally exist when sponsoring a family member. These amendments, however, only pertain to sponsoring a parent or grandparent. They include: