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First-Come-First-Served Process: Lottery-Based System and Rick Star

first-come-first-served process: The Liberal government has announced it will admit a total of 20,000 sponsored parents and grandparents next year, an increase from the 17,000 quota for 2018, according to Toronto Star. RICK MADONIK / TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO The restricted spaces of the sponsorship program and its conversion into a lottery-based system from a first-come-first-served process has been a thorny issue for immigrants, many of them viewing family reunification as a top priority. In the run-up to the 2019 federal election, the Liberal government announced it would admit a total of 20,000 sponsored parents and grandparents next year, an increase from the 17,000 quota for 2018 and four times the 5,000 spots set by its Conservative predecessor. The Conservative government under Stephen Harper briefly suspended the popular immigration program before capping its annual intake in order to reduce a ballooning backlog, which reached 167,000 in 2011. We have made substantial improvements to the parents and grandparents sponsorship process and eliminated the backlog of applications, Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen said on Monday. As of June, there were 26,000 parents and grandparents in the queue. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.