Bringing Ageing Parents: Which Countries Actually Allow It, and What It Costs

Parent sponsorship exists in a small number of destinations and is effectively closed in most of the rest. Canada, Australia and New Zealand all run permanent parent routes, and all three ration them: Canada's Parents and Grandparents Program (IRCC) admits sponsors through a limited annual intake, Australia's parent visas (Department of Home Affairs) split into an expensive contributory stream and a cheap non-contributory stream with a queue that published guidance has described in decades, and New Zealand's Parent Resident Visa (Immigration New Zealand) is capped and selected from a queue. The United Kingdom keeps a permanent route on the books, the Adult Dependent Relative route under UKVI rules, but sets the care test so high that most applications fail. Germany, the Netherlands and Ireland have no general parent immigration route: Germany admits parents of adult residents only in exceptional hardship cases, and Ireland runs a discretionary dependent-parent scheme with a high sponsor income requirement. The Gulf states allow parents to live with you on renewable sponsored residence permits that end when your own employment ends, which is residence without permanence.

Between those poles sits the route most families actually use: long-stay parent visitor visas. Canada's Super Visa, Australia's Sponsored Parent (Temporary) visa and New Zealand's Parent and Grandparent Visitor Visa let parents stay for long stretches without granting residence, and each requires health insurance and a sponsor income test. Every figure in this article is a planning range as published at the time of writing, checked in August 2026, and every one of them moves. Confirm the current numbers on the issuing authority's own page before you budget or apply.

Who this route is for

You are the sponsor, and the question is whether your parents can live with you in your destination country, visit for long periods, or neither. The answer turns on three things about you: which country you are heading to, whether you will hold citizenship or permanent residence there, and how much you earn. If bringing them is a condition of the move, the parent route belongs in your destination shortlist next to salary and points score.

If you have not yet worked through the emotional and financial side of leaving parents behind, our piece on what happens to ageing parents when you migrate covers the arrangements diaspora families actually use. This article is the narrower legal question: where can they follow you, and what does it cost.

The four categories

Sorting destinations into four buckets is the fastest way to see where you stand.

1. Parent sponsorship with a queue. A permanent route, capped and rationed by intake or ballot, with waits in years: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, plus the United States, where US Citizenship and Immigration Services treats a parent of an adult US citizen as an immediate relative with no annual numerical cap, so the wait there is measured in processing time.

2. Long-stay parent visitor visas. Multi-year permission to stay with mandatory private health cover, no residence: Canada's Super Visa, Australia's subclass 870, New Zealand's parent and grandparent visitor visa. Schengen offers nothing comparable, capping visits at 90 days in any 180.

3. Dependency-test routes. A route that turns on proving the parent needs long-term personal care unavailable at home: the UK Adult Dependent Relative route, Germany's exceptional hardship provision. Refusal rates are high by design.

4. No realistic route. Tourist visits only, or sponsored residence tied to your own permit, which is the Gulf model.

Canada: a real route, rationed by intake

Canada's Parents and Grandparents Program is the most substantial parent route among the destinations our readers target, and it is also the hardest to get into, because entry to the program is rationed before eligibility is even assessed.

The mechanics, as published by IRCC: sponsors submit an interest-to-sponsor form during an open window, IRCC invites a limited number of people from that pool to apply, and only invited sponsors can file. In recent years IRCC has drawn invitations from earlier interest-to-sponsor pools instead of opening a new one, so a sponsor who was never in the pool has had no way in. Check IRCC's Parents and Grandparents Program page for the current intake position before you plan around it, because this specific mechanic has changed repeatedly.

The financial test is where most sponsors stall. IRCC requires sponsors to meet a minimum necessary income, set above the low income cut-off, for each of the three tax years preceding the application, evidenced by Canada Revenue Agency notices of assessment. The threshold scales with family size and counts the parents you are sponsoring as part of that size. The published figures are updated annually, so treat any number you read anywhere, including here, as indicative and read the current IRCC income table.

Sponsors also sign a long undertaking to support the parent financially, running twenty years from the grant of permanent residence under the federal rules (Quebec applies its own shorter undertaking and its own income requirements), and a social assistance claim during that period is recoverable from you. Processing, once you are accepted into the program, has historically run well beyond a year.

The alternative most families end up using is the Super Visa. As published by IRCC, it allows parents and grandparents of citizens and permanent residents to stay for extended periods per entry on a multi-entry visa valid for up to ten years, with three conditions: a signed invitation and financial commitment from the child, proof the child meets an income threshold benchmarked to the low income cut-off, and medical insurance for the parent from an approved insurer with a published minimum coverage amount and a minimum policy term. Reconfirm the current stay length, coverage minimum and list of approved foreign insurers on IRCC's Super Visa page, because both the coverage rules and the insurer eligibility have been revised.

Budget the insurance seriously. As a planning range only, cover for a parent in their late sixties or seventies at the level IRCC requires has commonly been quoted as a four-figure annual cost in Canadian dollars. It rises steeply with age and pre-existing conditions, and some insurers decline outright. Get a quote before assuming the Super Visa is the cheap option.

Australia: two doors, one expensive and one closed in practice

Australia runs the widest set of parent visas and the starkest split between what is theoretically available and what is realistically available.

Every parent visa starts with the balance-of-family test: broadly, at least half your children must live permanently in Australia, or more of your children must live in Australia than in any other single country. Parents who fail this test are ineligible for every permanent parent visa regardless of money. Check the Department of Home Affairs definition, because it counts stepchildren and adopted children in ways that surprise people.

Non-contributory parent visas (subclasses 103 and 804). The application charge is comparatively small and the queue is the problem. The Department of Home Affairs has published estimated queue and processing times for these visas stretching far beyond a decade, with departmental guidance at times describing waits in the region of thirty years for newly lodged applications. Treat that as an order of magnitude as published, and read the current estimate on the Department of Home Affairs page for the subclass before quoting it to anyone. Read that as a route that will not deliver for a parent already in their sixties. Confirm the current published estimate on the Home Affairs page for the specific subclass.

Contributory parent visas (subclasses 143, 173, 864 and 884). The wait is far shorter and the price is the reason. The second visa application charge runs into the tens of thousands of Australian dollars per parent, and the all-in total for a couple, including both instalments and the assurance of support bond, has commonly been quoted at AUD 100,000 or more. Treat that as a planning range and price it from the Home Affairs fee schedule for your exact subclass. The assurance of support is a separate line: an assurer lodges a bond with Services Australia for a set period (ten years on the contributory permanent visas), refunded at the end if no recoverable social security payments were made. It is refundable capital, and it sits beyond your reach for the whole period.

Sponsored Parent (Temporary) visa (subclass 870). This is Australia's long-stay visitor answer. It allows a sponsored parent to stay for a multi-year period without work rights and without a path to permanent residence, subject to an approved sponsorship, a sponsor income test assessed by the Department of Home Affairs, and private health insurance held for the whole stay. Places have been capped annually. It is the pragmatic route for families who cannot fund the contributory stream, and it is worth pricing alongside the Canadian Super Visa if you are choosing between the two countries.

New Zealand, Ireland and the UK

New Zealand. Immigration New Zealand operates a Parent Resident Visa with an annual cap, selected from a queue or ballot, plus sponsor income requirements benchmarked to national median wage figures and a sponsorship undertaking. There is also a Parent Retirement Resident Visa built around a substantial investment in New Zealand, which is a route for capital rather than for income. For visits, the Parent and Grandparent Visitor Visa allows repeated long stays within a multi-year visa, with limits on how much of a given period can be spent in the country and a requirement for adequate health insurance. The cap, the selection mechanism and the income thresholds have all been revised in recent years, so read Immigration New Zealand's current parent category pages rather than any secondary summary.

Ireland. There is no general parent immigration route. The Department of Justice operates a policy for non-EEA dependent parents of Irish citizens and certain residents, and the published sponsor financial requirement is high: the policy document has set a gross income requirement for the sponsor in each of the three years preceding the application, at a higher level for two parents than for one, with the parent required to hold private medical insurance and to have no access to public funds. The scheme is discretionary. If Ireland is on your shortlist mainly for its skilled work permits, plan on your parents visiting rather than joining you, and verify the current policy with the Department of Justice.

United Kingdom. The Adult Dependent Relative route under UKVI rules is the only permanent option, and its test is the reason so few succeed. The applicant must show that as a result of age, illness or disability they require long-term personal care to perform everyday tasks, and that the required level of care is unavailable or unaffordable in the country where they live, even with the sponsor's financial help. Being lonely, being elderly, or preferring to live near family does not meet it. Applications are normally made from outside the UK. The practical reading is that a parent in reasonable health has no UK route, and the family's realistic option is repeat visitor visas within the standard visit rules, which do not permit living in the UK by stringing visits together. Confirm the current rules in Appendix Adult Dependent Relative on the UKVI pages.

Germany, the Netherlands and the Gulf

Germany. Family reunification for parents of an adult resident is not a standard entitlement. The German Residence Act (Aufenthaltsgesetz) contains a provision allowing other family members to join a resident in cases of exceptional hardship, and the bar is genuinely exceptional: a level of dependency or care need that cannot be met in the home country. Parents of a minor child who holds German citizenship are in a different and much stronger position, which is why the answer for a young family with a German-born child differs from the answer for a single engineer. For most readers moving to Germany on an engineering or IT route, parents will come as Schengen visitors, capped at 90 days in any 180 across the whole Schengen area. Verify with the German mission in your country and the local Ausländerbehörde, since these decisions sit with the local authority. The Netherlands is similar and, if anything, stricter. The Immigratie- en Naturalisatiedienst (IND) publishes no general family reunification category for parents of an adult resident, so plan on visits and confirm the current position with the IND before you assume otherwise.

The Gulf. The UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia all permit residents to sponsor parents, with one decisive difference from everything above: the parent's residence is tied to yours. Sponsorship typically requires a minimum salary set by the immigration authority, a security deposit or guarantee per sponsored parent, mandatory health insurance, and renewal on a fixed cycle, often annual. When your employment ends, your permit lapses and your parents' permits lapse with it. That is generous while it lasts, and it stops short of permanence. Check the ICP or GDRFA pages for the UAE, and the equivalent ministry for Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and note that our comparison of Gulf family sponsorship salary thresholds goes into the salary conditions in more detail.

What it costs

The costs split into four categories, and only one of them is the visa fee.

Application charges. These range from the comparatively modest (the UKVI Adult Dependent Relative application fee, IRCC's sponsorship and processing fees) up to Australia's contributory second visa application charge, which is among the largest published visa charges of any of these countries. Take each figure from the authority's own current fee schedule. Price them per parent, and remember a couple is two of everything.

Bonds and undertakings. Australia's assurance of support bond is refundable capital held by Services Australia for a decade. Canada's twenty-year undertaking is a contingent liability with no cash cost unless your parent claims social assistance. Gulf deposits are refundable guarantees. Model these as money you cannot touch for the duration.

Health cover. This is the cost families most often miss. Every long-stay parent route above requires private medical insurance for a person in the age band where premiums are highest and exclusions are broadest. Expect four figures a year per parent in the destination currency, more with pre-existing conditions, and expect some insurers to decline. If your parent has a chronic condition, get a real quote before anything else, and read our breakdown of out-of-pocket healthcare costs by country to understand what the insurance does not cover.

The income floor you must hold for years. Canada wants three consecutive qualifying tax years, Ireland's policy has looked at three preceding years, and Australia and New Zealand run their own tests. A promotion next month does not fix a shortfall in the last three assessments. This is the constraint that most often turns a five-year plan into an eight-year plan, so model it first.

If you want an outside read on whether the parent route survives contact with your actual numbers, our free quiz matches your occupation, your income and your family situation against the routes that fit, and it will tell you plainly when the country you have in mind has no parent route worth planning around. If you would rather have the whole sequence written out, including which country to target given the parents you intend to bring, that is what NextMigrate's personal migration roadmap is for at $499, down from $999, started with a $99 deposit with the balance settled afterwards.

How long it takes

Three separate clocks run, and families usually count only one.

The first clock is your own status. Most parent routes require citizenship or permanent residence, so the parent clock does not start until your own residence lands, commonly two to five years from arrival on a work visa.

The second clock is the income qualification period: the three tax years Canada assesses, or the equivalent look-back elsewhere. It can run in parallel with the first, and planning it that way is one of the few genuine accelerations available.

The third clock is the queue and the processing, and it has the widest range. Canada's program has run over a year in processing on top of the intake selection. Australia's contributory stream publishes multi-year processing estimates and its non-contributory stream is measured in decades. New Zealand's capped selection adds an unpredictable wait before processing begins.

Add them honestly. Someone landing in Canada next year, reaching permanent residence in three years, then needing three qualifying tax years, then entering an intake pool, is realistically looking at a parent arriving close to a decade from now. Plan the interim years, because they are most of the story.

When this does not work

Some situations end the analysis, and it is better to learn them now.

• The parent fails the health requirement. Canada, Australia and New Zealand assess whether a condition would place excessive demand on public health or social services, and it bites hardest on the age group parent visas serve. Our guide to medical inadmissibility for a family member explains how that assessment works.
• The balance-of-family test fails. If your siblings are all at home, Australia's permanent parent routes are closed no matter what you earn.
• Your income sits under the floor and will stay there. The threshold scales with family size, so two parents can push a sponsor who comfortably qualified for one below the line.
• Your destination has no route. Germany, the Netherlands and most of Schengen have nothing for a healthy parent of an adult resident. Solve that on the shortlist, before the language exam and the credential assessment.
• You are on a temporary permit with no residence pathway. In the Gulf the sponsorship is real and lapses with your job.

Common mistakes

Assuming permanent residence is enough. Some routes need citizenship, and where residence suffices, the residence itself takes years. Check which status the parent route requires.

Counting income you cannot evidence. Canada assesses notices of assessment from the Canada Revenue Agency. Cash income and undeclared freelance work generally do not help, so structure your income now for the paper record you will need later.

Treating the queue estimate as a promise. Published queue lengths move with policy and intake levels, and they have lengthened as often as they have shortened.

Buying travel insurance instead of the required medical cover. The Super Visa and the subclass 870 both specify coverage terms that a standard travel policy usually does not meet.

Believing an agent who guarantees a parent visa. Nobody can guarantee a place in a capped intake or a ballot. Any agent promising a parent visa outcome, charging a large upfront fee for a "reserved" place, or asking you to pay into a personal bank account is a warning sign. Verify a Canadian consultant with the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants, an Australian agent with the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority, a UK adviser with the Immigration Advice Authority, and a New Zealand adviser with the Immigration Advisers Authority. Our guide on how to avoid immigration scams covers the patterns in detail.

Applying for a visitor visa with the obvious intention to stay. A visit application that reads as a residence application gets refused, and a refusal is disclosable on every future application. If the honest plan is long stays, apply for the route designed for long stays.

What to do next

1. Decide whether bringing your parents is a requirement or a preference. That answer reorders your destination shortlist.
2. Place your target country in one of the four categories above, then read the current rules on the issuing authority's own page.
3. Model your income against the sponsor threshold for your family size, including the parents, over the look-back period that country uses.
4. Get real insurance quotes at your parents' actual ages and health status, and write down the year a parent would realistically arrive once all three clocks are added.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which countries allow parent sponsorship for permanent residence?

Canada, Australia and New Zealand run permanent parent routes, all capped or queued. The United States allows citizens aged twenty-one and over to petition for a parent as an immediate relative through US Citizenship and Immigration Services, a category published as having no annual numerical cap. US permanent residents cannot petition for a parent. The United Kingdom's permanent route carries a care-dependency test most applicants cannot meet. Germany, the Netherlands and Ireland have no general route. Verify each with the relevant authority, since parent categories are revised often.

Can I sponsor my parents if I am a permanent resident and not a citizen?

It depends on the country. Canada allows both citizens and permanent residents to sponsor parents through the Parents and Grandparents Program and to host on a Super Visa. US Citizenship and Immigration Services restricts parent petitions to US citizens aged twenty-one and over. Australia's parent visas allow sponsorship by eligible citizens, permanent residents and certain New Zealand citizens. Check the sponsor eligibility section of the specific route before assuming your status qualifies.

How much income do I need to sponsor a parent?

Every route with an income test scales the threshold with household size and counts the parents you are bringing. Canada uses a minimum necessary income set above the low income cut-off across three tax years, assessed from Canada Revenue Agency records. Ireland's dependent parent policy has published a gross annual income requirement over three preceding years, higher for two parents than one. Read the current published table for your route, because these figures are updated at least annually.

Is a long-stay parent visitor visa a path to permanent residence?

No. Canada's Super Visa, Australia's subclass 870 and New Zealand's parent and grandparent visitor visa all grant extended visits without work rights and without a route to residence. They solve the problem of being physically together. They do not solve inheritance of status, access to public healthcare, or the parent's long-term legal security.

What happens to my parents' visa if I lose my job?

On the Gulf sponsorship model, your residence permit and every permit dependent on it lapse together, with a short grace period to leave or transfer sponsorship. On the permanent routes in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, a parent who already holds permanent residence keeps it, though your financial undertaking continues to bind you.

Do parents need to pass a health check?

Yes, on the permanent routes and often on the long-stay visitor routes too. Canada, Australia and New Zealand assess whether a condition would place excessive demand on health or social services, and the assessment is applied to applicants in the age band where conditions are most common. This is a frequent refusal reason for parent applications specifically. Some categories have exemptions or waivers, so take advice from a licensed adviser if your parent has a significant diagnosis.

A note on advice

This article is general information. It does not constitute legal or immigration advice, and it does not account for your nationality, your parents' health or your family structure. Parent categories are revised frequently, and every figure here is a planning range as published at the date on this article. Before you commit money, confirm the current rules with IRCC, the Australian Department of Home Affairs, Immigration New Zealand, UKVI, the Irish Department of Justice or the relevant Gulf ministry, and have a licensed or registered adviser confirm your case.

To find out whether the route is viable before spending anything, take the free quiz. It matches your occupation, your income and your family situation against the routes that fit, and it will say plainly when the country you had in mind has no parent route worth planning around, which is the point at which a new shortlist is worth more than a better application. If you want the sequence mapped out, naming the country, the status you need first and the income years to protect, that is what the $499 personal migration roadmap delivers.