Bonnes et mauvaises nouvelles
Tuesday July 1, 2008
Salut mes amis ! Je viens de recevoir une lettre de la Délégation de Marseille avec la date de nos visites médicales et d'autres infos sur nos demandes de carte de séjour. La mauvaise nouvelle ? Nous devons payer encore 275 euros chacun. En fin de compte, passer un an en France est une procédure longue et chère, mais c'est presque terminé. (J'allais dire « passer légalement un an en France », mais avec le coût actuel d'essence et de billets d'avion, il serait beaucoup plus cher de faire la danse de trois mois [c'est-à-dire, de passer 3 mois en France avec un visa de touriste, quitter pendant quelques jours et puis rentrer en France pour encore trois mois], donc je ne devrais pas trop m'en plaindre.)
English translation
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Comments
Laura,
Do you have to go to Marseille for your carte séjour? If so have you been to the prefecture in Maeseille before? If you need to go to Marseille prepare yourself for 7 to 8 hours of waiting in a fairly crowded less than pleasant environment.Make very shure you have all your ducks in a row.Believe me you dpnn’t want to do this more than once!
Rich
Salut Richard -
No, we did all the application stuff here in Hyères. We just have to go to Marseilles for the medical exam.
Laura K. Lawless
Learn French at About
Good! The medical part was pleasant,easy,not a lot of waiting.Did you know they will evaluate your language skills? Those of us that are not fluent are now required to attend language classes, the number of hours being determined by the degree of your proficiency.You could probably look into teaching.
Rich
I heard that rumor somewhere, but not from anyone I’ve dealt with officially re. the visa/carte, and I haven’t see it anywhere online either. Do they pay for the classes, or how does that work?
Re. medical visit, the letter says I’m supposed to bring vaccination records and lung x-rays – um, don’t have those and no one ever said I did. Is that just because it’s an all-purpose letter do you suppose?
Laura K. Lawless
Learn French at About
Hi Laura,
My wife and I were in France a good part of the last two years. We had our visa from the consulate, applied for the carte de sejour, did the medical exam, and received a recipisse. We arrived end of August 2006 and in the spring they stamped our recipisse until July 2007. The prefecture doesn’t tell you when the carte de sejour is ready (at Nanterre anyway). You have to check every once in a while and waste a morning in line. We couldn’t even find out by phone. Long story short after that I let it go and never had any problem and saved 550 Euros for my wife and me. I found that our passports were rarely stamped upon arrval or departure. We left France April 2008 and never obtained the carte de sejour. When we left Paris the douane didn’t even open my passport much less stamp it.
Steve
Laura:
Our medical exam and x-ray were done the same day. Upon arrival at the medical center we were handed a slip of paper and sent a few blocks away to anothe center for the x-ray then returned with the x-ray in hand. The medical exam went easy but with travel takes a good part of a day.
Steve
When I lived in Paris for 6 months, I visited friends in Basel, Switzerland for a weekend at the end of 3 months. It was fun, not a “dance”. Is this not a good option for avoiding the 3-month limit?
Steve – thanks for the info about the xrays. The letter says we’re supposed to bring them, so that was confusing. Re. going through customs, we had trouble a couple of years ago, when we were in France for exactly 90 days – from 4 January to 3 April. The guy kept saying it was four months, not three, and it took a while to help him do the math correctly. So I’m definitely not taking any chances.
David – some people do that over and over for a year or more, and it’s not really legal. It’s possible to eventually get caught and get in trouble.
Laura K. Lawless
Learn French at About
I didn’t have x-rays or vaccination records either.It was a non-issue.
The language classes were free. I went regularly for about 8 weeks,3 days a week.I’ve learned more French on your website in a month.Fortunately for me I got my titre sejour while the language classes were still optional.
You will also be required to attend a 1 day civics class.
Rich
I vacationed in France 3 times before I moved here.Never was my passport stamped.I spent 8 hours at the “zoo” at the préfecture in Marseille to file my application.3 months later I got a letter demanding my airline ticket stubs.Since there were no stamps on my passport it was the only thing they would accept to prove that I was in France legally.I no longer had ticket receipts and could not obtain copies without having the ticket #s. Eventually I had to leave the country,return,demand that my passport be stamped and go through another 8 hours at the préfecture.Incidently the stamp was so light as to be illegible.After appealing to a supervisor my app. was approved and a couple of weeks later I was notified to return to pick up my carte.That line is infinetly shorter.
Rich
If you can find any Irish ancestry (or recent ancestry from another EU country) in your family you’d be better off applying for citizenship from them. Luckily I’m dual UK/US so I had no trouble at all. I even asked for a carte de sejour and was refused (despite their alleged love of bureaucracy, if they don’t have to do it, they really don’t like doing it!), and they’ve not been required for EU citizens for about 3 years now. I had more trouble with the UK tax authorities (mostly trying to get the correct forms) than from any functionnaire here.
I have been told by several people including an attorney that applying for citizenship is faster and easier
Rob – Believe me, I tried, but no luck there.
Rich – You can’t apply for citizenship until you’ve lived in France for at least 5 (or is it 10?) years.
Laura K. Lawless
Learn French at About
@ Laura,
I had gone on short -term visa. I had to pay around 50 or 550 more euros… I dont remmber.
I was staying in Nimes and I was informed I might have to go to Avignon for the exam which was eventually held in Nimes itlsef.
It was just a routine checkup : blood, Xray etc ; the report which i had to submit @ Prefecture and got my visa extended for another 6 months.
The lady who took my report said my visa could be converted to a work visa if i got proper employment letter. This was in 2003/4.
Ps: I had sent u an email… did u receive it?
Would like to get a personal reply from my mentor (Really after my prog @ Alliance)
Ah! Sorry Laura,you are right.I forgot,I’m an exception to the time limit as I am married to a French citizen.
I’m a Chicagoan married to a French citizen and am surprised at the complicated rules to get the Carte de Séjour. It’s true that it was easier to obtain the French citizenship. I was told by the U.S. Embassy in Paris that since I am married to a French citizen, lived in France over 25 years (at that time, now 34), have a family (four children, both nationalities) and intend to spend the rest of my life in France, then I could have both. That was ten years ago and I’ve never regretted it.
Joanne
I am a Chicagoan also, though I lived in Tucson for 40 years before moving to France.I did 2 interviews with people from French immigration and both told me that the carte process is often much easier than at the préfecture in Marseille