In 2009, Inderpal Virk of Ludhiana, Punjab lost the use of his legs in a road accident that also damaged his backbone.

When his son applied for immigration to Canada in 2016, the 64-year old was denied permanent residency as his treatment costs would exceed what was allowed under the Immigration Act for newcomers

But thanks to the changes in the rules, Virk and his wife Daljit are applying again.

The changes in the medical inadmissibility rules of Canada’s Immigration Act are also happy news for a mother in Mohali Punjab who hopes the amendments will give her 14-year-old daughter with special needs easy access to permanent resident status.

“I gave up hope the day I came to know from a relative in Canada that a family that had applied for PR renewal had to face deportation order on the grounds that its son had Down syndrome (a genetic disorder).”

Another applicant, Sanjog Gulati from Panchakula said; “I had almost cancelled moving to Canada fearing that my son who has been diagnosed with autism would be rejected.

“The inclusivity of the new rule will benefit parents like me immensely,” he told TNN.

Like Virk, Gulati and the mother from Mohali, hundreds of Indians applying for Canadian status stand to benefit from the changes to the medical inadmissibility provision recently approved in Ottawa.

Last year, about 1,000 individuals and their families were deemed inadmissible to Canada on medical grounds because of the “excessive demand” provision in Section 38(1)(c) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

Excessive demand applies to a primary applicant or an accompanying dependent with a medical condition for which the anticipated cost of treatment is determined by a Canadian immigration officer to be more than the annual cost threshold. For 2017, this threshold was $6,655 a year and $33,275 over five years. The Canadian authorities believed that cases like these, if granted residence, might affect the health or social services adversely. Anyone likely to put so much of a burden on the state was unwelcome.

The cost threshold has now been more than tripled to $19,812 CAD per year.

Immigration consultant Ajay Sharma told Indian media that the revisions in the policy will open up new avenues for immigration seekers from India, now that dependent children with learning disabilities and developmental syndromes have been secured under the changes.

Moreover, as the annual cost threshold has been increased three-fold, more people can apply without the fear of rejection on medical grounds, he said.

Chandigarh-based immigration law expert Sukhdeep Singh Bawa says that the families who were denied PR renewal due to excessive demand provision in Canada had to challenge medical inadmissibility in court to mitigate deportation.

“These families bore the financial and psychological brunt of these medical assessments, while taxpayers ended up paying a substantial bill for the government to defend the excessive demand provision in court. However, those who can’t afford going to court are neither able to challenge the assessments nor propose mitigation plans,” he said.

Peter Salerno, associate lawyer at Green and Spiegel LLP said the changes are significant for foreign nationals who have been diagnosed with medical conditions and submit applications to IRCC to enter or remain in Canada as a Temporary Resident or Permanent Resident.

Even foreign nationals with immediate family members that have medical conditions can be potentially obstructed from entering Canada by the health provisions.

IRCC has, in the past, characterized these provisions as essential to reducing the impact of immigrants on the publicly funded Canadian health and social systems.

IRCC has recently changed its position and has taken steps to promote the inclusion of persons with disabilities in Canadian society.

As a result, applicants with medical conditions are much less likely to cause "excessive demand."

An inadmissibility finding may only be made if the services that a health condition may reasonably require exceed the new, much higher, cost threshold, Salermo wrote on his company’s website.