Unlocking Online Signature Legitimacy for Pregnancy Leave Policy in United Kingdom

How to eSign a document: online signature legitimacy for Pregnancy Leave Policy in United Kingdom

hi my name is nick nathan i'm a uk immigration lawyer and today we're going to go through an online british citizenship application by naturalization on the online form so the first place to find the form is if you google this here you should be able to go onto the gov.uk website which is here and fill in the form online so you should come to the apply for british citizenship by naturalization page and it gives you a few bits and pieces to be aware of in terms of the requirements not all of the requirements we'll go through those as we proceed through the presentation and at the bottom it invites you to apply now and this is the uh the application portal that you will be answering the questions that the government will be asking you for the purposes of the application so it asks you to provide some basic details uh here and the first thing i'll ask you for is an email address um so that it can verify that so i'm providing this now and you'll receive a verification email which you will need to verify before making the application itself um so here asks you to confirm who the email uh belongs to and as you can see uh it can either belong to you or an immigration lawyer so for example if i was filling this out on behalf of a client output the the answer would be immigration advisor based in the uk in lots of applications most applications uh they're fairly straightforward and you don't necessarily need a lawyer uh if there are issues that you think that uh that are concerning having watched this presentation and having looked at the guidance that i'm gonna take you to then it may be useful to have someone review the application and that's something that um that i do fairly regularly for clients once or twice a week i'll look at a citizenship application in a review so that would normally be kind of appropriate if um if there was something in particular that was worrying you or you just wanted that peace of mind uh in order to continue with the application but as it is uh we're going to uh indicate that i'm the applicant here um and that we don't have a immigration advisor in the uk so this is the main kind of portal where you're going to be answering all the questions for the purposes of the application unfortunately you can't see all the questions in advance so either you can fill out one of these forms yourself in order to get an idea of what the questions are and then come back to it you don't have to make the application immediately the form will exist for i think it's four months at the time of recording before it's automatically deleted if it's not been submitted so you can make or set up the application form quite far in advance of when you're planning to apply or you can just watch this presentation and it should give you a good idea of what the questions are that you're going to be asked so you're not completing the form on behalf of someone else so you've got to put your name which i've put here and it's got to be the same name that you have in your passport i indicate if you have any other names for example if you're if you have a maiden name and confirm that this is the email address that the home office can contact you on home office will generally use your email to contact you they don't post things in the regular post as much these days and they're moving towards a model where they don't really post anything at all so it's mainly going to be email and kind of digital level documentation that you're going to communicate with the home office with for the purposes of this application uh put in a phone number uh although it's i haven't received much communication i can't think of really any communication at all from the home office in naturalization applications by phone but you put in the details anyway and your post or address again it's unlikely that you'll receive things in the post these days having a home office moved over to digital model is this where you live yes and then i'm gonna put a date more than five years ago uh but if you haven't lived in your address for uh five years then you will need to provide the other addresses that you've lived there where you've lived in the in the in the other period of time so citizenship ceremony you're asked here which council local authority you live in for the purposes of where you'd like to have a citizenship ceremony the citizenship ceremony is the end of the process if your application is approved by the home office you that it then gets passed over to the local authority which you indicate here uh who invite you for the citizenship ceremony where you go and swear allegiance to the queen and go through that process so i'm going to put westminster so that's where the office is based sex relationship status [Music] just enter here so it asks you here if you're a eea national what it means by eea nationals european economic area national um so essentially if you're a european national then you have to indicate that in the form here the reason it's asking you to indicate that is because the way that a european national would prove that they've been resident in the uk is likely to be slightly different to a non-european national because of the free movement rules that exist before the uk left the european union and the kind of eu settled state of scheme which which which came into effect after after brexit so because of free movement rules it's unlikely that on lots of european nationals don't have a formal document to confirm that they had uh indefinitely germaine or permanent residents in the uk you could obtain a document but lots of individuals didn't so that's why the the questions are asked about european nationals here so are you a eea or swiss national i'm going to put no for the purposes presentation i'm going to be from the u.s but just so you can see what answers you will be providing we'll use your indefinite leave germain including ilr granted under the eu ss to apply for british citizenship so if you have obtained a status indefinite settle status under the eu settles data scheme then you should have an email from or a decision from the home office usually by email usually a pdf attached to the email and it's the date of that that letter decision uh that you need to enter here so as i say i'm gonna indicate no here so uh the next question is about your nationality song uh united states and same here and place of birth birth new york if i can type date of birth and again putting in fictional date of birth for the purpose of this presentation passport so again uh indicating the details that are contained on my passport fictionalized for the purpose of this presentation and that should be it for that so i says i can provide this passable if required and the point at which you would normally provide the passport is when you attend the biometrics appointment so just to give you an overview of the application process the first thing that happens is you fill out this form and when you're ready and to apply you pay the fee after you paid the fee it moves you through to uh the uh the separate portal run currently at the time recording by sopristeria or uk vcass which is the home office corporate partner and what they will do is they will enable you to upload your documents on the portal the supporting documents that you can use in support of your application which will come to you and also the book your appointment to give your biometrics so when you go to your appointment to provide your biometrics all you're doing normally is taking your passport and you'll have your picture taken and give your fingerprints and once that process is finished then the application then gets sent over to the home office for a decision uh in terms of the and then once the decisions be made you then have the invitation from the local authority to the citizenship certainly um in terms of time frames looking at um the service standard for decisions is about six months for the for a decision to be made by the home office and at the moment at the time of recording in early 2022 uh decisions are taking that that amount of time so in terms of the the actual process of uploading and collating all the documents and the evidence depending on your situation sometimes that can be quite onerous depending on how much evidence you need to prove residents and stuff like that we're going to cover that process in a different video so this process of the online application is is going to be what we're going to concentrate on here and the upload process document collation and the covering letter how to prepare one is going to be the subject of a separate video which which i'm gonna be hopefully uh recording at some point soon after this one okay so after we have gone through uh the passport details it will ask you if you've got a national identity card which i'm going to indicate no and it's going to ask if i have any other nationalities i which i'm going to say no but just so you can see if you do have other nationalities it's going to ask you to provide details of those so the country dates you've held the citizenship of that other country from and to if it's if it's not held um at the current time uh if you still hold it then obviously you took that okay so going to say no to that and move on to the date that you're granted indefinite leave tremaine so this is a key requirement of the british citizenship application process for naturalization essentially you need to have held indefinite leave to remain or settled status in most cases you will need to have held those for a 12 month period it's possible to not uh require indefinitely to remain or settle status if for example you have right of abode but in most cases or other status which means there's no limit on your time to be in the uk but in most case cases it will be either you've got a set of status or you've you've got indefinitely germaine and you've held that for 12 months the only exception to that is if you are married to a british national in which case that requirement does not apply you don't have to have held and definitely tremaine for that 12 months you still need indefinitely from maine but you don't have to have held it for a 12-month period at the time of the online application okay so i'm gonna indicate in my application that i was granted uh indefinitely germain on the first of jan 2020 so i've held that for 12 months all right i'm going to say that i don't have a national insurance number but if you do then you should put it in there the life in the uk test you will need to you will need to repass the life from the uk test for the purposes of this naturalization nation application there are some limited exemptions but in general you need to have passed it and you'll be it comprises a test where you ask questions about life in the uk and uh the what happens in the uk and uh what british people like to do in their spare time the questions are slightly uh strange and lots of british people fail it but in general it's pretty straightforward and there's a book you can get which is i think this may have been updated but this is the book that you can with all the test questions in it and which you can use to revise um and most of the clients that i have don't have any issues with it whatsoever so it's not something to to worry you too greatly i think with a bit of work you can normally pass it without any any issues so again i'm gonna put a reference in here just for the purposes of this form [Music] that's not working there we go uh so you'll be asked to give details about your parents so their names date of births where they were born and the nationalities i'm going to just indicate that i don't have these details but just be aware that you'll need to provide those details if you do have them and then we get to the section on convictions and other penalties this is essentially the good character requirement the home office have a requirement that if you essentially if you've got serious criminality or convictions then that will prevent you from becoming a british citizen you can also fail to meet the good character requirement test if you have kind of minor convictions or things that aren't even convictions that the uh the home office would consider you even though you haven't received a conviction or committed an offence in the eyes of the criminal courts you may have uh still be considered a bad character or bad conduct or bad associations and stuff like that so if there is something that you think that you you're worried about either because you've got a formal conviction or you've got anything else that's listed in the in this list um so for example it says penalties for driving insurance driving disqualifications usually that won't amount to that won't be enough for a refusal under the bad character guidance but if you're worried about it then what i suggest you do is you read the good character guidance which you can find online and and it will take you to the relevant uh kind of uh conduct that you're worried about and it will give you an explanation of what uh what the home office approach would be to that conduct so that's definitely worth a read before you make an application and if you're still unclear then that's the kind of thing that you you'd speak to a lawyer about you get a one-off consultation and get them to give you their advice on what they've seen in terms of whether it's something that's going to be a big issue in the application so in i'm going to indicate that so i'm going to indicate no but for example if you if you type if you select driving events it will ask you to provide details like this so you'll need those in the application if you do have them um for example this is you know another example of the the detail that you have to give for other types of events so i'm going to take no for the purpose of this presentation uh the sex offenders register same i'm just going to take no uh again bankruptcy this is all part of the same good character requirement so this is uh something that you can check in the in the good character requirement guidance so there's a there's a question about non-applying dependence that means children that you've got who so non-apply independence are it's basically children that you've got who are not listed on the application who are not applying for citizenship at the same time as you are and the question is actually related to whether they've got any criminal convictions which is a bit strange um so if you type yes then uh they will ask you about your their their character so it's like an extension of the good character requirement which is a bit strange but anyway i'm going to put note here um again this is all part of the good character requirement this is a question about war crimes unlikely to apply to many people same with terrorist activities and terrorist organizations so so there's a requirement in a uk naturalization application to have two referees the purpose of the referees is to verify your identity as an applicant there are various requirements for how that referee needs to to know you and to qualify as a referee but broadly they need to have known you for three years and at least one of the two referees you provide should be a professional person the other one should be over the age of 25 preferably they should both be professional people there's a list of what an acceptable professional person means for the purposes of this requirement in home office guidance and there's a pretty detailed article on my website on edwardlegal.com which uh sets out all the requirements of the the referee must adhere to the criteria they have to meet so uh definitely have a look at that if you're if you're considering you don't know whether the referee meets the requirement in my experience it's very rare for a home for the home office to contact referees and i can't remember in any of my cases where that's ever happened so um it's something that uh to so just bear that bear that in mind i guess uh so in the application you have to put their details in uh and they will also have to sign a form in addition to this so i'm just putting in uh some fictitious details here i'm not gonna bother putting in an address but you'll have to and provide any addresses of the they've lived out in the last three years if it's not their current address so again i'm going to put in fact i can just put tbc uh so you have to provide an email address and a phone number and also their profession and if they've got a british passport then it will ask for that passport number so you're gonna have to ask them for that as well and then also how you know them so for example um like you then have to do the same thing for for your second referee and doyle again these are just i'm just putting these details in for the purpose of this presentation you will have to put the actual information in so i'm going to say no and then i'm going to say another white colleague okay so the question about the biometric residence permit if you have if you have a brp you as a biometric residence permit you can put the details in here if you are a european national for example it's very unlikely that you'll have a brp so it's not a requirement of the naturalization application is just asking for these details because uh because it does but it me just because you don't have one that doesn't mean that you're not gonna be eligible for the application so i'm gonna say no i don't have a brp from now for a previous previous period if i say yes it's going to ask me to provide the details so all of these all this information should be available on the brp itself uh so i'm just going to say no for simplicity uh previous applications so when it's asking about previous applications uh it means any previous visa applications and if you are a non-eu national then it's likely you'd have to apply for a visa to come to the uk and then at least one or two other visa applications to remain in the uk after that including your indefinitely domain application so you'll need to put those details into this application and be aware of those details for eu nationals it may be that you applied pre-brexit for a residence document of some description and in which case you put that application in otherwise it might be that you're applied under the eu set of status scheme it's likely that you applied under the eu service data scheme in which case you should put in the details of that application so i'm going to put in previous application so let me put my name so again it says put the data application if known so a lot of people don't know when they made their application so look i'm going to say that i made my application in uh on the 1st of march 2010 the reference number it may be if it's an entry clearance application which it could be gonna be gwf something like that uh it's made in the u in uh new york which is where my fictitious character is from and say no my fingerprints weren't taken so if if if you have main application uh then that's the that's the information that's going to be asked and then it's going to ask you if you can make if there's any other application so i'm going to say i'm going to say no but usually it would be if you're a non-european national you're going to have made an entry clearance application and then you're going to have made either an indefinitely domain application at least those two plus maybe switching applications or extension applications once you're here so usually uh that might that might be a two or three or four applications that you've made to be listed in the application form okay so it asks about my partner i think i indicated that i was married so i'm gonna put in this is uh kelly thompson again just making up names here that's not a person i know uh your partner's name is not known by any other name it asks for nationality so i'm going to say united states again and put in date of birth for kelly and i'm going to say she's not naturalized british citizen here the question is asking you this because if she's british then that changes the qualifying period but how long you need to have spent in the in in the uk for the purposes of this application so there's a three-year qualifying period if you're married to a british national which is a section 6-2 application for everyone else who's not married to british nationals section one application and the qualifying period is a five year period so that's the key difference uh when you're applying if you're married to a british citizen and that's why it's asking you these questions here uh so town and country of birth again you should enter that based on the information in the in the part in the passport that they have to be accurate and then the address um again enter that uh i'm just putting tbc because it's not relevant so marriage and civil partnership so we're gonna say uh that we got married in 2009 and then it's gonna ask you uh where um did you marry so we're going to say new york and if you've been married previously then you need to provide that i'm going to say no what but yes so you can see the questions that you're going to be asked so previous partner you'll be asked to put their name in and you'll be asked the country of nationality and date of birth and then it will be asking you for the date of your previous marriage and it would also ask you after the question why it ended so for example death or divorce or whatever so um i'm just going to put no for previous and i'm going to put no for details of children but again if it will ask you if they live with you you can say yes so that's that on family and then it's going to ask you about your employment so the key reason they ask you about your employment is for the home office for the purposes of the application the best evidence or the expected evidence of residence from the homeless point of view is a letter from your employer so if you have got if you're currently employed and you've been employed for five years then a letter from your employer stating that you've been employed for that time at the office or wherever it is in the uk for the home office that's the best evidence that you can provide at residence that's the evidence they suggest in um in their guidance if you can't provide all the stamps in your passport so usually what you would do is you take a scan of your whole passport and you could then track all the stamps in and out for lots of people for example eu nationals and for people who use the e-gates in coming in and out of the uk that's not uh it's not sufficient because they don't get stabbed in enough um so for those individuals eu nationals and for e-gate nationals the ladder from the employer and letters from previous employees is usually the evidence that i would expect or advising a client to get hold of as their best evidence and so this is the uh the place in the form where you provide that information about your employer so let's say i'm currently employed and then i would say for example i am a solicitor and that i am self-employed um i'm finding the details of my employer and just for purposes of this application and you will be asked to provide a tax office reference number which is usually something like this something like that you can ask your employer to provide that information and then if you confirm that it will ask you if you've got any other previous employment so the question here is have you had any work over the past 10 years or since you came to the uk so this is usually something of a pain point for people who come to me and they've been in the uk for 20 years and they have to basically piece together their employment history sometimes it's more straightforward if you only have two or three employers but sometimes you might be temping or you know you've got part-time jobs or whatever this all should be declared on the form so you need to provide those that information if you can in the form and you'll be asked to provide it here so uh like this so after you provide the start date and the end date i'm going to say no i don't have any previous employment details and that should then take me out of that section and then it will ask me about the my arrival date in the uk um it will give you so the arrival date uh section gives you a bit of information on uh the resonance period so again as we've discussed the resonance requirement is five years if you are not married to a uk national three years if you're married to a uk national and there is an absence requirement uh here where during your period of residence you can't have been absent from the uk for more than a month you know a certain period of time and it's going to ask you in the form to list those absences so let's put in our fictitious date of arrival and let's say we arrived at heathrow before moving on to the next one the the form just confirms the absence requirements so you can't have spent more than 270 days outside the uk in the qualifying period if you're married so that's a three-year period but for everyone else who's not married to a british national so the two the three appearances for people who married a british national not just married in general i should clarify so 450 days in the five-year period you can't be absent from the uk for more than 450 days during the five-year period um and if you have then you need to meet kind of additional if you if you have been absent from the from the uk for that period of time and above then it's not the kind of end of the story you can still uh meet the requirement you just have to ask for the home office to to waive the requirement and they will only waive it in certain circumstances and those circumstances are listed in the guidance which which will which i'll take you to um in addition you can't have been outside the uk for more than 90 days in the last 12 months so that's that means the last 12 months of leading up to the date of the application and you can't have been in the uk illegally during the three or five year qualifying period okay so here we're going to look at the uh how to enter one of the absences so you can see so we'll put in uh yes before we do this quite a good explanation here of what's declarable what's not so if you leave the uk on a monday and come back on a tuesday for the purposes of the form that's not in absence because you're not outside the uk for one clear day if you leave the uk on the monday and you come back on the wednesday then that is one absence for the purposes of the form so if when you put in your absences you have to provide this information so you provide the country visited and the reason for the trip so just put business and then the dates of the trip so let's say took place we came back last week sorry last weekend's then and then it will ask you if there's any additional trips outside the uk and i'm going to put no but obviously you need to list all of those trips well then because the way that we filmed this video we've had to go back and refilm a few bits and pieces so this is the check your answers section which normally you'd come to after you've completed all of the questions but we've missed out these last uh four or five here so just to go through those quickly they're pretty straightforward um the this question is do you plan for your main home to be in the uk if the application's successful this is part of the future intentions requirement where essentially you have to show that you intend to live in the uk for the foreseeable future and you normally answer that question yes then you'll be asked about the resonance requirements and whether you meet them and here there's quite a good explanation of how these work so over the three or five year qualifying period three years for spouses of british nationals five years for everyone else you need to show you haven't been absent for more than 270 days if it's the three year or 450 days if it's the five year um that's and so that's what the absences that you're listing in the form are designed to that question's designed to find out whether you meet that requirement so here i'm just putting in yes if you meet if you say no uh you have you're asked to give reasons why you don't meet them and that of course isn't the end of the story you can still apply for naturalization even if you are above the the absences threshold you will just need to ask the home office to exercise discretion in your case and you need to explain why they should exercise discretion and the the best place to look in terms of whether the home office will just work side discretion in your case uh for example if you are out of the uk for exceptional compelling circumstances um for example because of a pandemic or because you have to travel for work there's different reasons that the home office will accept depending on how far above the absences that you are and so you know you need to look at is the the policy guidance or for these for this application which sets all of this out so i'm going to say yes here though i do meet the requirement and then i'm going to just me ask these other questions here basically ask similarly are there any reasons why you can't meet the british citizenship um requirements uh and then just to explain if you don't how do you not meet them and why are you still applying or what basis are you still applying so in these uh in these questions i would usually gives you the opportunity to uh to provide further details and what i always do in these applications is refer to a covering letter and then in the covering letter you can explain in kind of greater detail um whatever the issue is we're not going to cover covering letters in this presentation we're going to look at covering letters and how to prepare one in the next video which is going to also cover the upload process and also the uh the kind of evidence that you can provide have a closer look at the evidence that you can provide in support of the various aspects of the citizenship application so i'm just going to say no to both of these and then the final question in the form is also kind of a catch-all do you have any other details that you'd like to be considered and again if there are then i normally put c covering letter but here there's no other issues and it will then come up with completed here and you can move on to across your checklist at the top so i'm gonna it would normally take you to the documents section here and it gives you the list of documents that you should be providing it doesn't go into a lot of detail about exactly what evidence you should provide for each of the different requirements uh and that's why there's going to be a separate video where we're going to look at that a bit more detail and you have to take these boxes even if you haven't got the relevant document so um and what you do in that situation is you'd explain in a covering letter like i've had to take this box uh but you know i haven't been able to get this document for for whatever reason and explain the position so the other thing that you'll need to provide is a referee declaration and you will you are able to download that from the from the form itself um and here you would put in your photograph and your name and then the referee would complete the rest of the document sign and date here and again it's a it's a digital upload process so the physical document doesn't need to be sent anywhere you just need to have a scan of the of the signed copy of the document which will then be uploaded with the rest of your evidence so uh here we've got uh so we've got that box ticked and then for example i've take that i'm self-employed so it's asking for my res my most recent tax year account statement and hmrc tax return um again we'll look at the the evidence that you would normally provide in the in an application like this for different types of application in our next video so as i say we'll we'll look at the other documents that you can provide in support of these meeting these requirements in that separate video and which is not going to be falling part of this presentation so let's move on here through the declaration this is just saying that you confirm everything's true and correct the basic knowledge and belief and you will then move on to the payment screen here where you pay your extortionate fee and it will take you then to a payment page and after which point you can't change any of the answers so basically until this point in the application you can go back and change anything that you want but after you paid then essentially the application has been filed and if you want to change anything substantially as in it's a it's going to cause an issue in terms of whether it's going to be accepted or not then you'd need to withdraw your application and ask for a refund once you have um paid you'll be taken to this last step further actions which is where you'll set up the uh your portal with sopper stereo or uk vcas which is the home office's corporate partner which managed the biometric booking and the document upload process um you just need to remember that if you haven't got all the documents that you need they need to be uploaded before you attend your biometric appointment so there's no good paying on the monday attending your biometric appointment on the tuesday because you need to have all your documents uploaded by by the time you attend your appointment so that will be an issue if you don't have all your documents ready at the time you apply in terms of the the what i would normally do is download a pdf of the application form and and it'll come up something like this uh so you can check all your uh answers uh and the good thing about this is that it also calculates your absences days so it means you don't necessarily have to do it yourself so if you can just put everything into the list of trips then it will calculate the the number of full days absences that you've had i think the form allows you to enter 30 absences if you have more than 30 over the your relevant period then you can put the excess in for in a covering letter on a separate sheet of paper and then upload that in support of your support of your application in terms of uh when we when clients approach us to ask us to review their applications normally they'd send us a download of the pdf of the form plus they're supporting documents plus a list of their queries that they've got if they do have any issues with the application and they're worried about this aspect or that aspect and then we would then get together on a kind of zoom call and we'd go through the form and share a screen and then i'll go through all the documents with them so if that's something that you feel like you need then then get in touch let me know and we can arrange a one-off consultation you can have a look at the one-off consultation link which should be below this video if you feel like you need further help with the document upload process or the the evidence collection and what the evidence looks like in terms of when you make the application um and putting that all together with the covering letter then look out for the our next video and subscribe below and you should get a ping when that comes through but either way i wish you the best of luck with your application and i hope you've found this session helpful you