Moving to France

Making the decision to move to France is much easier than making your way through all the official paperwork necessary to live there legally. That requires patience, tenacity and a pretty good sense of humor, so adapt a flexible and creative frame of mind before embarking on your visa adventure. If you cling to linear thinking and appealing to logic as necessarily effective communication tools, you’re going to run into more than one difficult-to-circumvent roadblock and probably provoke a few migraines, not to mention a few French civil servants.

Why? Because the usually overworked, under-experienced, few in number and often very young French Consulate personnel treating your visa request will more likely than not discard anything you have to say before it even leaves your lips. Never mind that you are older (even much older), more experienced and possibly wiser.

I was lucky enough to deal with a delightful and very knowledgeable woman when I applied for my visa. She was the Visa Section’s supervisor. The young woman working with her, however, fit the stereotype for a young, attractive French fonctionnaire (civil servant). Haughty and self-important, she made no effort to hide her disdain for those seeking visas. She seemed to consider us all guilty of some crime and our very presence in the Visa Section as an inexcusable, offensive intrusion into her own personal space.

West Coast Americans are generally far too polite and too easily intimidated when faced with this kind of behavior. That’s probably true of Americans in general, who tend towards excessive politeness, at times even to the detriment of realizing their goals. North-Easterners, who can be aggressive in their interactions, would be an exception to this generalization. This is an observation I allow myself as a native New Englander who lived many years in the Northwest and several in the South.

At any rate, the interaction between a “typical” French fonctionnaire and a “typical” American can be a tricky dynamic to negotiate. If you overreact, you’ll never get anywhere, but if you present yourself as willing to be walked all over, you won’t get anywhere either because you won’t be respected. In France, it’s your job to elicit [read: impose] respect. This is a generality, of course. Know that the French person with whom you’re interacting is not necessarily going to treat you with respect simply because you yourself are well mannered and respectful. Unless you’re already familiar and comfortable with this dynamic and/or are an older, charming and well-dressed man, I suggest that you just take a deep breath and keep your comments to yourself, while inwardly chanting your mantra of vouloir c’est pouvoir, “where there’s a will, there’s a way.” If you have the required documents, there is no reason for your file to be refused and therefore you can consider the visa process as a series of hoops through which to jump, gracefully or not. Some hurdles are directly linked to French culture, but most are simply the result of typical administrative exigencies. Bureaucracy is bureaucracy; the visa process for non-Americans asking to stay in the States is just as unclear and bumpy a road to travel. Chapeau to all who make it through the ordeal intact, in their country of choice.

Some important details about a visa for France
Americans are allowed to remain in France for up to three months with just a passport. Anything beyond that requires a long-stay visa and a carte de séjour (a green card). Make your life easier by following this inviolable rule of order: first comes the visa, then the carte de séjour. In the past, if you were tenacious enough and knew the right people, you could sometimes score a green card without a visa, and even do it while in France. Nowadays, though, you absolutely must have a visa first and your visa request must be made while you’re in the United States. The subsequent request for a carte de séjour must be made within eight days after your arrival in France, visa in hand. Be sure to open your passport to the page where your visa is affixed so the French authorities see it and stamp it when you go through customs.

Both the visa and the carte de séjour require almost identical paperwork. You’re perhaps tempted to think that this goes towards efficiency, the assumption being that the branch of the French government that treats your visa request forwards your file to the authorities that will process your carte de séjour request. Erreur! Yes, that seems logical; nonetheless that’s apparently not what happens.

You submit your paperwork twice: first, in the United States to the French Consulate, who sends your file off to France for a yea or a nay. The files are only expedited to France every two weeks, not systematically as requests are made, and not electronically as you might think would be the case, given all the technology at our disposal nowadays capable of dramatically facilitating bureaucratic procedures.

In the eventuality of a yea from France, you’ll then submit pretty much the same documents to your local Préfecture when you arrive in France. If you live in a small village like I do, you can leave your file with the Mayor’s Office. They’ll either send it off to the Préfecture by mail or the mayor himself will deliver it in person. This is one of the many real advantages of living in a small convivial French community. I lived a long time in a fairly cosmopolitan American city and am amazed and delighted by the mayor’s genuine availability to his constituents here in the village. He even stopped by late one night after a long day of work and meetings to counsel Jean-Paul and me about the paperwork with which we were faced. Perhaps there are still towns in the USA where that happens, but I’ve never experienced it.

If you live on the West Coast of the US, you have to travel to San Francisco to file your visa request in person. This can be costly if you’re out of state, so be sure your file is complete. The Consulate usually won’t accept incomplete files, although they’ll sometimes allow you to fax supplemental information post-visit. Check the web site for a list of documents required and take at least 3 photocopies of everything. You’ll need several visa request forms – not photocopies -- each filled out identically; you can download the forms from the web site. The San Francisco Consulate requires four, if I remember correctly. Contrary to logic, not all the French Consulates require the same number of forms; information you find on their individual web sites does not always match… Va comprendre.

If your original documents are in English, translate them into French and make 3 copies of the English translations. It doesn’t seem to matter if the translations are perfect. Two of my students planning a long ski vacation in the French Alps did all their translations themselves. They contained errors of grammar and syntax, but were quite understandable and were accepted by the Consulate. Be aware, however, that some French agencies demand professionally translated, officially notarized documents. It all depends on the type of request and file being made.

Three passport-size photos are required for the visa application, then four for the carte de séjour. It’s practical to have the copies made all at once, but if you forget, as I did, you can easily have more photos made in France. Don’t waste your money on a photographer – just look for a Photomaton at a local supermarket, shopping mall or train station. It’s quick and cheap: six color ID photos for about four euros. Be sure to press the right button, though: the machines take several kinds of photos and the Préfecture requires photos specifically formatted for legal documents. Click on the photo d’identité button or you’ll find yourself back there popping more coins into the Photomaton.

As of September 2006, you need an appointment in order to file a visa request with the San Francisco Consulate. This is an easy step if the Consulate’s web site is up and the links are all working. Access the English page for visa info and you’ll see a link to click on to make an appointment on line, the one and only way to make a visa appointment, at least with the San Francisco Consulate. Be sure to print the information once you’ve set a date, and then take that paper with you to San Francisco; you won’t get past the guard without it. Don’t count on the Consulate’s having a copy in case you forget yours. They probably do have a record of your appointment, but since their site instructs you to print the appointment document and take it with you, showing up without it will be clearly perceived by the Consulate as your error – never a strong negotiating position from which to begin, especially not for dealing with fonctionnaires.

Try to wrap your mind around this irritating reality: despite the fact that the phone number and email address for the Consulate and Visa Section appear on the Consulate’s web site, the Visa Section in San Francisco does not answer the phone, nor does it respond to emails. Once you’ve filed your request, however, you may be given the direct desk number of someone working in Visas. This won’t necessarily allow you to speak with anyone, but at least you’ll be able to leave a message and may receive a return call. You can also fax the Visa Section, although you’re unlikely to receive any acknowledgment of your fax.

In case you forget to buy the catastrophic health insurance required for your visa (and carte de séjour) or in case you don’t have all the photocopies you need of your documents, there’s a travel agency next door to the Visa Section where you can purchase insurance and/or have photocopies made for $1/page. They probably have to frequently replace their copier, judging from all the visa applicants I saw heading over there for additional copies of essential documents.

Once your file is accepted, you’re fingerprinted then asked to pay for your visa -- you pay before the visa is granted, not after. Hmm… You’ll be given a receipt that you’ll be asked to reproduce later on when you go to pick up your visa (no appointment necessary for this step). That caught me off guard, although as I hopped on the BART and headed for the Consulate the day before I was planning to leave for France, I had a sinking feeling that I should have grabbed the receipt out of the file I’d left on my hotel room bed. It didn’t make any sense since I’d already paid, wasn’t returning anything, had submitted numerous pieces of identification, had been summoned by the Consulate…

Nonetheless, when I presented myself at the Visa Section, the haughty young woman I’d met during my first visit told me in a condescending voice to present my passport, my plane ticket … and the receipt for the visa. It was the one thing I didn’t have with me. The Visa Section was not open that afternoon, I wouldn’t have time to go back to my hotel room for the receipt and was supposed to fly out the next morning. I stated these facts in a polite yet assertive fashion and was met with a steely regard and a repeated demand for the receipt. I certainly was not going to re-schedule my departure to France because of this absurd detail. Of course the Visa Section had a record of the transaction. On top of that, I had been told in a phone conversation with the Section Supervisor two weeks earlier that the only documents I would need to present to pick up my visa were my passport and a travel itinerary (plane ticket). This was the next information I politely yet assertively gave to the younger fonctionnaire. She wouldn’t budge, so I calmly reiterated that I had been told by her supervisor to bring my passport and itinerary, that indeed I had the receipt but not with me, adding in a surprised tone, “Vous n’en avez pas de copie ici au Consulat?” [“You don’t have a copy of it here at the Consulate?”] She didn’t respond, merely shrugged her shoulders and told me not to bother about the receipt. I understood that she indeed had a copy and that I had trumped her by invoking her supervisor’s name and instructions.

Off to the right stood the supervisor,smiling.