Starting December 2019, and in one of its attempts to facilitate the reunification of family members of protected persons in Canada, the Government launched two new initiatives to improve the process.
To start with, a Protected Person status in Canada is designated by the Immigration and Refugee Board and Citizenship and Immigration Canada to a foreign national who has reason to fear persecution in his or her country of origin due to race, religion, nationality, membership in a social group, or political opinion.
After getting this status, the protected person applies for the Permanent Residence. However, it happens that protected persons may have dependent family members abroad, which makes it difficult for immigration immigration officers to reach them during the permanent residence application process.To address these challenges, IRCC has put in place two new initiatives:
- A centralized intake process that will allow protected persons with dependent family members abroad to submit permanent residence applications for themselves and their family members simultaneously at a single location, the IRCC Case Processing Centre in Mississauga.
- A one-year Centralized Concurrent Processing Pilot that will process the applications for permanent residency of both the protected person and their overseas dependent family members at the same time.
Not all immigration offices are participating in this pilot. Therefore, the family members must be residing in a country within their are a of responsibility. A list of which is:
- Bogota, Colombia
- Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Kingston, Jamaica
- Lima, Peru
- London, England
- Nairobi, Kenya
- Mexico City, Mexico
- Port of Spain, Trinidad
- Sao Paulo, Brazil
Interested in knowing more about this stream? Kindly refer to the Government of Canada website here.
Bakouni 