Family Sponsorship for Brazilians

Parents and grandparents: intake is paused

This is the question we are asked most by Brazilian clients, and the answer changed recently.

**On 15 July 2026, IRCC paused intake of new sponsorship applications under the Parents and Grandparents Program.** No new interest-to-sponsor forms are being invited until further notice, and no reopening date has been announced. Applications already in the queue continue to be processed.

If you have been waiting for the annual interest-to-sponsor window to open, it is not opening on the usual schedule. Planning around an imminent intake would be a mistake.

What remains available for parents and grandparents is the **super visa** — a long-stay visitor route allowing extended visits rather than permanent residence. It requires private medical insurance and proof that the sponsoring child or grandchild meets an income threshold. It is not permanent residence, and it should not be described as a path to it, but for a Brazilian family wanting a parent present for a birth, a year of childcare or an extended stay, it is the route that currently exists.

When the program does reopen, sponsors must demonstrate minimum necessary income — the low income cut-off plus thirty percent — across three taxation years. If you expect to sponsor a parent eventually, that is worth knowing now, because it is assessed on tax years already filed and cannot be fixed retroactively.

Spouses and partners: what is actually required

Spousal and partner sponsorship remains fully open, and it is simpler than most Brazilians expect in one important respect.

**There is no minimum income requirement to sponsor a spouse or partner.** This surprises people, and the misconception stops couples from applying who would have been approved. The exception is where the person you are sponsoring has dependent children of their own, which introduces an income test. Otherwise, what matters is that you are not receiving social assistance — disability support excepted — and that you can undertake to support your partner financially for the duration of the sponsorship.

To sponsor, you must be a Canadian citizen or permanent resident, at least eighteen, and living in Canada — or, if a citizen living abroad, able to show you will return to Canada when your partner is granted permanent residence.

Canada recognises three relationship types: **spouse** (legally married), **common-law partner** (twelve consecutive months of cohabitation), and **conjugal partner** (a narrow category for couples genuinely prevented from either marrying or cohabiting, which rarely applies to Brazilians since neither obstacle usually exists).

A marriage performed in Brazil is recognised by Canada provided it was legally valid where it took place. Brazilian civil marriage is well documented and rarely causes difficulty.

União estável is not automatically common-law

This is the single most consequential misunderstanding among Brazilian couples, and it costs applications.

A **união estável** is a recognised legal status in Brazil, and an *escritura de união estável* — the public deed signed before a notary — formalises it. Couples reasonably assume that a document declaring them partners under Brazilian law establishes partnership for Canadian purposes.

**It does not, by itself.** Canada's common-law definition is factual rather than documentary: you must have lived together continuously for at least twelve months. A couple who signed an escritura last month are not common-law partners for Canadian immigration purposes, however valid that deed is in Brazil. Conversely, a couple who genuinely lived together for two years may qualify even without ever having signed one.

The practical implication is about evidence, not status. Your escritura is useful — it corroborates the relationship and shows you took a formal step — but it does not replace proof of twelve months' cohabitation. You still need the leases, the joint accounts, the correspondence addressed to both of you at the same address, covering that period.

If you have cohabited for less than twelve months and cannot wait, marriage is the route that works. That is a real decision with real consequences, and worth taking advice on before acting.

Proving a relationship to someone who has never met you

The officer assessing your file has no knowledge of you and must decide whether the relationship is genuine. Long-distance relationships and significant age or background differences attract additional scrutiny — not suspicion exactly, but a requirement for more evidence.

**Build the file chronologically.** Show how you met, how the relationship developed, and that it continued. Flight records and passport stamps for visits, messages spanning the relationship rather than a curated week, photographs with other people in them and across different occasions rather than only couple portraits.

**Financial interdependence carries weight.** Joint accounts, shared expenses, money transfers between you, naming each other as beneficiaries. For Brazilian couples where one partner is already in Canada, regular remittances home with records are useful evidence.

**Involve your families.** Statutory declarations from people who know you both, photographs with each other's families, and evidence that the relationship is public rather than private — which in Brazilian family life is usually not difficult to demonstrate.

**Explain gaps rather than leaving them.** If you did not see each other for a year, say why. An unexplained gap looks worse than a documented one, and a short, factual letter accompanying the application is better than hoping it goes unnoticed.

Inland or outland, and the Quebec question

You can apply from within Canada or from outside it, and the choice has consequences most couples are not told about.

**Outland** applications are processed through a visa office and are generally the faster of the two. Despite the name, you can apply outland while physically in Canada. The applicant may travel while the application is in progress, subject to holding valid status.

**Inland** applications require the sponsored partner to be in Canada with valid status, and allow them to apply for an open work permit while waiting. That is the main advantage: the ability to work during processing. The trade-offs are a longer timeline and more restriction on travel, since leaving Canada can jeopardise an inland application.

**If the sponsor lives in Quebec, expect a materially longer timeline.** Quebec operates its own undertaking process on top of the federal one, and reported processing times for Quebec-destined family applications run substantially beyond those for the rest of Canada. This is not a reason to avoid Quebec, but it is a reason to plan for it rather than discover it.

We do not publish processing times here because they move, vary by route, and published figures describe the eightieth percentile rather than a typical case. Check IRCC's processing times tool for your specific route before planning around a date.

A note on accuracy

The parent and grandparent intake pause took effect on 15 July 2026 with no announced reopening, and family sponsorship rules, income thresholds and processing times all change. Nothing on this page is a processing time or a dollar figure. Verify current program status on canada.ca before acting, particularly for the parent and grandparent route, where the position may change without much warning.

How Brazilian relationship documents are assessed in a Canadian file depends on the facts of your relationship rather than the documents alone, and this is an area where an individual assessment genuinely matters. This is general information, not legal advice — Mila Lugovska, RCIC R515234, member in good standing of the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants.