Inviting Family Members & Friends
This page details how to support family members who want to visit you after you are already in Canada (and how to extend their stay after arriving).
If you have not yet applied for permission to come to Canada, you should know that as an international student, your spouse, common law partner, and/or children can request status with you. Find details about bringing your dependants with you to Canada.
If you are already in Canada and wish to invite family or friends to join you, you can support them by sending the following documents to include with their application:
A spouse, partner or child/children should be eligible to stay in Canada with you for as long as you have status. But, this permission is not always granted immediately upon arrival. If your spouse/partner gets an open work permit, it will likely expire on the same date as your study permit.
However, if your spouse/partner applies only for a TRV or eTA, they will be admitted to Canada as a visitor. This may also be the case for your children. Those entering Canada with visitor status are usually given status for six months (or fewer).
The exact time period is decided by an immigration officer and the exact expiry date is communicated in one of three ways:
- A hand-written date, found under the stamp in the passport which confirms entry to Canada;
- A document which states how long the visitor can stay in Canada, known as a visitor record; or,
- In some cases, the immigration officer does not write anything on the passport or does not provide a document to the visitor. In such cases, it is assumed that the visitor is allowed to stay in Canada for up to six months from the date of the stamp. If they don’t stamp the passport, it is recommended to keep a record of the flight in case there is a need to prove the date of arrival.
To stay longer, the visitor should apply to extend their stay before the end of the allowed time period. To do so, they should apply for an extension of their status as a visitor, which will allow them to stay longer. A successful application will result in a visitor record being issued.
Visiting parents are not necessarily able to extend their status to match yours. However, they can request an extension of their initial visitor status.
Register for a live Question and Answer session (Requires logging-in with JOINid/UTORid)
Frequently Asked Questions
Check out our Resources page for more support.