Unlock the Power of eSignature Legality for Forms in Canada

How to eSign a document: e-signature legality for forms in Canada

so as of October 20 2022 ircc has updated instructions on how to digitally sign the relationship questionnaire form 5532 so in this video we'll take a look at how you can digitally sign that form if you're a Windows user or you are a Mac User let's go so a few weeks ago I made a video about all the updates to the spousal sponsorship program that were announced in September 2022. in case you missed it the spousal sponsorship program is now completely online some forms have been updated and the signatures now need to be provided digitally so that video is linked in the description below I share the complete list of forms that you need to provide for spousal sponsorship where to upload those forms how to use the online portal and all that stuff all right but in this video we are specifically going to be taking a look at the 5532 digital signature requirements which are a little tricky to understand so here's a table that I created with a list of all the forms that are pretty much common to every spouse's sponsorship application I talked about this table in the previous video also and I am going to link this table in the description below so this table has the list of all the forms the method of submission whether they require validation whether a signature is required what kind of signature is required who should sign it the format of those forms and where you should submit those forms again I go into detail about this table in that video that I talked about so definitely check that out so these firms are pretty much going to be common for every spousal sponsorship application with the exception of maybe 5562 which is a country specific form or the 5476 which is a use of a representative form if you're using one also make sure to check the country's specific requirements for any additional forms that are required from your country all right so from this list there are a few forms that are PDF downloadable such as 1344 55 32 54 76 and 5533 now from the PDF downloadable forms these three firms 1344 55 32 54 76 if applicable also have to be digitally signed now and it's very easy to digitally sign the 1344 and 5476 you simply download the PDF fill it out type your name in the boxes provided and that takes care of the digital signature but this form 5532 is the one that has been causing a lot of issues this still does not allow digital signatures unless you do some tweaking which we are going to discuss so previously because we did not have a fix on how to provide digital signatures for 5532 I discussed that you could actually print and hand sign it but now ircc has provided further clarifications on how you can do digital signatures for this form and you can find those updated instructions on this guide 5289 if you scroll down click on complete the application in step 3 this is where you will find these instructions to digitally sign the form 5532 you must first complete it and then select print to PDF so these were very recently added I guess they were added on October 20th 2022 and they were not there before so these instructions seem to work really well for Windows users but for Mac users people who use MacBook or iMac Apple users basically they are still experiencing some issues so we'll try to cover how to get around this signature issue for 5532 for both windows users and Mac users [Music] alright so right now I'm in my Windows device I've already downloaded the form 5532 this is what it's going to look like and I filled it out a little bit just to give you an example so quickly if I can show you the version of the form is still February 2021 so the form has not been updated only the instructions to digitally sign it have been updated by ircc so if I scroll down to the signature section and let's say I click here and try typing in my name it won't allow me to do that okay every other field that shows in blue you are allowed to enter information there but the signature field still seems blocked so in order to digitally sign this here's what you should do first you fill out the entire form meaning everything that you can actually fill out right here such as your sponsors details your principal applicants details the details about relationship the complete form in its entirety fill it out ignore the signature section for now double check triple check quadruple check all your information and once you're confident then what you have to do is come here click on file and simply click print then and under printer you're going to select print to PDF this is exactly ing to the instructions and simply hit print and then it's going to ask you where you want to save it so let's save it to our desktop and let's save it as 5532 test okay as a PDF document make sure PDF document is selected as type and simply hit save and then it's going to convert this into a unsecured PDF and then if we go back to our desktop and locate that here's the file that we just saved okay and so if I open this again with my Adobe Reader this is what the form is going to look like so now this is the new form that we just saved all the information is already populated and that's why I said double check triple check because now you won't be able to edit this information that you've already populated here so if you made a mistake you will have to start over Okay but assuming that all the information is correct you will scroll down again to the signature section and now what you're going to do is Select this tools icon hit fill and sign and it's going to enable this window here and simply click on this signature section once okay and it's going to open up a text box and this is where you can now digitally sign it so if I try to type my name it allows me to do that and that's how you can digitally sign it okay so you can do the same thing for the other signature sections also in this form so if I scroll down again here is the principal applicant section so my fill and sign is already enabled so if I simply click here it brings up this text box again and this is where my wife can now also type her full name obviously she's the one who should be typing her name here I'm just showing you an example so you scroll down and there's two more sections to sign this form so again click here with the fill and sign enabled and sponsor's name here and principal applicant's name here and now you are done with the digital signatures for this form so in case you were not able to follow through the video you can obviously watch it again or you can get to this table which is linked in the description below as you can see I've updated the instructions and if you scroll down here I've also written those instructions here for how to do 5532 digital signatures so all the instructions are in this table also all right keep that in mind [Music] so for Mac users if I try this print to PDF instructions I am definitely getting an issue and I have tested this on other machines as well my wife also has a Macbook and she's also getting the same issues so I am pretty sure a lot of you Mac users out there must have experienced this if you haven't then you don't have to watch the remaining video but if you have experienced issues signing this 5532 digitally with your MacBook then watch the remaining part of the video right so this is the form 5532 downloaded already to my MacBook and then open from my MacBook meaning from my desktop and then if I scroll down to the signature section again as you know we can't sign all right so now if I try the print to PDF so hit file and print and this is the message that I'm getting before you can perform print related tasks such as page setup or printing a document you need to a printer so now I never had a printer installed here and I'm not going to buy a printer just to do this right so this is an optimization issue for this form with Apple devices so depending on the operating system for Mac that you're using you may encounter this better so at this point this form is not very Mac friendly they might fix it again ircc has been updating these things very quickly so this might get fixed down the line but for now you are not going to be able to do this if you are experiencing this error and of course if you are really tech savvy you might find a workaround but I'm talking to the general public such as myself who doesn't really understand these things so in this case there is still a workaround as some of my lovely subscribers have suggested me what you can do is you can digitally sign this form from your Mac device using a different browser which is a Mozilla Firefox browser let me show you how you can do that so first step is to go to Google or whatever browser you're using and simply search Mozilla Firefox okay this is basically a web browser that we are going to download and here you're going to Simply click download Firefox and it's going to start downloading to your MacBook then once it finishes downloading it's going to look something like this Firefox 106.0.1 DMG so simply double click this and let it so once you're done installing you're going to be prompted it with this window and here you have to Simply click and drag this Firefox icon to your applications folder I've already done that and then once you do that it's going to a few more updates and then it's going to finish installing once it does you can actually locate that Firefox in your applications so here is the Firefox browser so I'm simply going to double click and open it and we are now inside the Firefox browser so once you're inside simply search for sponsor spouse basically you are going to locate your guide 5289 again so go back to this link click on complete the application locate that form 5532 again and simply click this okay and it's now going to open in this window it's not going to download to your PC which it would normally do if you opened it with your Google Chrome or any other browser but when you open it with Firefox it opens in a separate window okay so don't download it yet fill this form out right here inside the Firefox browser all right so start filling this out all the details and once you get to the signature section if I simply click here it enables the signature box so this is the sponsor signature section if I try typing my name it allows me to do that and you can simply select the date here also so let's say today is October 21 so I'm simply going to select 21. so once you're done with the sponsor signature here you are simply going to keep scrolling down and this is where the principal applicant can also type their name so once you're done with the form simply send it to your principal applicant or use screen sharing and they can type their name here also okay remember there are four sections here four signatures two for principle applicant and two for sponsor so once you're done with this form double check to make sure all the information is correct and then locate this print icon here simply click this and then save to PDF all right and just simply hit save and I'm simply going to save it to my documents folder then if I go back to my documents folder and I look at that form this is the form that we just finished obviously a lot of it is empty but I just wanted to show you the signature section as as you can see the digital signature is right here okay so if you're experiencing issues with your MacBook or Mac device then you can use Mozilla Firefox to do digital signatures this way just make sure that when you're using Mozilla to do the signatures like that fill out all the information correctly and complete the form in its entirety because once you export this to PDF like we just talked about and when you open the new PDF which you saved from Mozilla it's not really going to allow you to edit any information here okay because this form is now kind of blocked and by the way even Windows users can use this technique simply download your Mozilla Firefox browser and fill the form inside the browser it's going to allow you to digitally sign it all right so that's how you can digitally sign the 5532 for now obviously down the line this can get further updated and it might become as easy to digitally sign 5532 as it is for these forms 1344 and 5476 but until those updates happen these are some of the techniques that you can use to digitally sign it again this table has all the details and it's linked in the description below so that was it for all updates I had for you for now a huge shout out to my subscribers for staying on top of things and keeping me informed good job also a very happy and prosperous Diwali to you I hope that this festival of light makes your application process faster for more things that are confusing cause headache and heartburn hit subscribe I'll catch you in the next one [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music]