the CanadaVisa Team - 10 January, 2017
On January 9, 2017, Quebec’s Immigration Minister Kathleen Weil announced that, as of January 26, Quebec will stop receiving new requests for groups to privately sponsor refugees. While the province stated that this pause is temporary, no date has been announced for when the private refugee sponsorship program may resume receiving applications.
According to the provincial government, the suspension is required in order to process the backlog of more than 10,000 requests, of which 7,500 are requests from Quebec families sponsoring Syrian refugees. Weil confirmed that “All applications that we receive before January 26, 2017 will be processed,” while the website of the Quebec Ministry of Immigration, Diversity, and Inclusion (MIDI) states, “the deadline for submitting a new undertaking application is Thursday, January 26, 2017, at 4:30 p.m. [Eastern Standard Time], regardless of where the person you wish to sponsor comes from.”
Quebec’s immigration plan sets out a target of 4,050 to 4,400 sponsored refugees to be admitted in 2017. Consequently, accepting further applications could result in processing times of several years. Weil explained that applications submitted in January 2017 could take until 2019 to be completely processed.
“We have received many sponsorship applications as part of the welcome operation of Syrian refugees, and the sponsorship organizations are aware that the processing times are due to the considerable inventory which has accumulated over the last year,” stated Weil, in a French communication to Quebec newspaper La Presse. “However, we are continuing our close collaboration with these organizations in order to assist refugees who have already arrived in their francization and their participation in Quebec society.”
Groups who wish to collectively and privately sponsor refugees to come to Quebec may submit a collective sponsorship application to the MIDI. In order to sponsor a refugee and their family, a group must be comprised of either two to five persons, a non-profit organization, or a Quebec resident and a non-profit organization. The applicant(s) commit to supporting the sponsored refugee and their family for one year (or three years, in some cases), and facilitating their integration and settlement in Quebec.
