May 2011

THE TRAP

 

 

Too many foreigners constantly fear that there are people out there looking to take advantage of them. They are carefully trying to avoid all the traps and, as a result, often find themselves in deeper problems than if they would act in a more trusting way.

The six topics I have addressed this month make me think of this reaction either for excellent reasons such as domestic violence happening in foreign countries, as well as the latest French immigration guidelines, or for more imaginary reasons like the income tax declaration, or the excessive rights that French tenants have.

The foreigner needs to be able to trust the system enough and the people around them to function properly. This is probably one of the hardest things to do when nothing feels right.

 

 

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AGAINST FOREIGN WOMEN
As a member of the social concerns committee of the American Church in Paris I decided to attend a forum on March 25th concerning domestic violence. It was sponsored by WICE and Americans Overseas Domestic Violence Crisis Center, based in Oregon.

On occasion, our committee - now called Mission Outreach - is confronted with this kind of situation and a cry for help. The issue is so complex that there is no way I can even attempt to present all the topics addressed. A couple of things are particularly important to know when a foreigner is a victim and the spouse is French. The relationship is then so unbalanced that it can be extremely difficult to move out. It is almost literally like being a fish out of water: the foreigner will not survive very long without strong support.

About eight years ago I shared some of my knowledge with the MESSAGE Group, an association of English-speaking mothers, and advised them on organizing a support group for abused women and their young children, especially in regards to the crucial step of moving out of the home and going into hiding.

The first point I want to make is that although the Hague conventions considerably helped in the lives of people living abroad, for the spouse who is a victim of domestic violence they pose a deadly trap. Indeed, the Hague conventions address the issue by saying that the spouse who runs away is in effect kidnapping the children. The main consequence is that the parent who stays at home is seen as the one who needs protection. It is always possible to try to fight a legal assumption but such a provision makes the case a lot harder to win. If the case is lost, the foreign mother must bring the child or children back to France, and is sometimes accompanied to the airport by police who make sure they get on the plane. It also often means moving back in with the violent husband, in other words back to the lion's den.

In such a situation, the solution requires a lot more than making it possible for the wife to move out of the house, which in itself is quite difficult. She must also be granted the right by a French authority to leave the country with the children. This often means a court order, which almost always implies that the wife presses charges against the husband for acts of violence. Thus, moving out and traveling home seems something very close to impossible.

The second point is that the French police, especially in Paris, are now equipped and trained to handle reports of domestic violence. My experience, through the clients I have helped, is that most of the time the precinct has female officers specialized in this type of case, and that the entire police force takes the side of the victim of violence. Foreign women are doubly lost at such a time, and rarely feel the compassion and understanding from the police officer, but often acknowledge that the way the police handled the case convinced them that the police protects the victim.

The sad thing is that often the foreigner is so stressed that she does not function well in French, and assumes that everybody is against her.

I know it is relatively rare for a man to get involved in helping women with domestic violence. Another thing making my involvement more complex is that as a man I am initially seen as the enemy, or at best on the wrong side of the issue. But when I was in my late twenties, I spent the better part of two years expecting a phone call announcing the death of a good friend who was going through severe domestic violence after explaining to her husband that she intended to move out. When I learned at last that she had moved out safely, it was a huge relief. Shortly after that, our family helped two friends - one American, one French - move out of their homes, and organized some shelter. So my involvement with this issue is more than twenty years old.

 

 

OLD ENOUGH TO RETIRE AND ENTITLED TO UNEMPLOYMENT
For about twenty years many French multinationals have downsized by laying off older employees, with the government paying unemployment benefits until these people are of age to retire. In 1973, the retirement age was 65, and such employees had usually started working young enough that their pension plans were already fully vested when they were laid off at, say, aged 55, so they would get a full pension when it was time to retire. But the economy started to go bad in 1974 and employees' careers became less and less linear. With economic crises becoming more frequent and more severe, the government stopped accepting this practice in 2007. Nevertheless, France still has one of the lowest ratios of employed people between 55 and 60. There is no longer a national policy, but the reflex has persisted.

This is one reason the demonstrations in the summer and fall of 2010, against raising the minimum retirement age from 60 to 62, were so popular. The chances of still being working at the age of 60, never mind at 62, are extremely slim.

One tiny aspect of this situation illustrates quite well the political attraction of lowering the unemployment rate in France. Lately I have helped several foreigners who, upon turning 60, were told that they no longer had the right to receive unemployment benefits and had to start claiming their retirement benefits. None of them had worked enough to even get close to full retirement, so this would have been a financial disaster for them.

The goal is to make sure that they retain their status of being unemployed for as long as possible. The law states that if the accrued retirement credits would result in a pension that is less than the amount of unemployment benefits, the person should stay unemployed. The bad news is that this rule can be difficult to enforce, considering what is at stake.

The normal procedure is to get a statement from the Caisse Nationale d'Assurance Vieillesse (the equivalent of the American Social Security Administration) showing how much one would get as a retiree. The person must take this document to the Pôle Emploi, the unemployment office, which is then supposed to reinstate full unemployment benefits until they are exhausted.

In some rare cases everything works as it should, but in many others the Pôle Emploi does not act right away and it can take several repeat attempts to get full benefits back. Until then, the person receives nothing from either side, with the Pôle Emploi refusing to pay unemployment benefits and the person refusing to take retirement money, in order to avoid getting trapped in that status.

My advice: remain a salaried employee when you turn 60. This is often possible, and usually quite easy for Anglophone foreigners. You can use the services of a portage company, which grants employee status while enabling the individual to run an independent small business of some sort. As long as the unemployed person works some as an employee, it is called "un retour partiel d'activité," which prevents the person from becoming a retiree.

 

 

DISCRIMINATION AGAINST FOREIGNERS - ONE STEP BEYOND
Often people assume that a person who helps foreigners acquire status as immigrants should automatically be in favor of letting all foreigners becoming legal immigrants. This may be true for many, but not all, and especially not me. I have stated several times during the 17 years that this column has existed that I favor a stricter law, but one that is enforced fairly and interpreted consistently, rather than more lenient legal wording whose interpretation varies from one préfecture to another. In the end, however, I do not have to decide if the law is fair. When it comes to a particular foreigner hoping to obtain legal residency in France, my mission is to find a legal way for the person to get it. It has always taken a lot of time and paperwork, but for a long time the procedure was fair and one could count on the rules that would be applied after five years or ten years in France, which were the most common landmarks of the old law.

However, ever since Nicolas Sarkozy first became Interior Minister in 2003, the conditions of regularization have varied, and too often in a more restrictive direction. At the same time, the number of expulsions has increased, with the government setting quotas and penalizing préfets who do not do enough. There can be numerous reasons to challenge such quotas and the political motivation behind them. As far as I am concerned, if an undocumented alien is caught and sent back to his or her home country, there is some legal logic grounding this. In recent years we have seen tighter interpretation creeping in, increasing the number of foreigners who can be expelled because of losing their legal residency status from one year to the next as the guidelines changed, usually without their even knowing about it. It is this last point that is the most despicable: being sneaky about it means there is nothing fair in the application of the law, and the renewal meeting at the préfecture becomes a trap and ends with a pair of handcuffs.

Last month, on April 15th, the new Interior Minister explained not only that the number of expulsions will be increased to 28,000 people a year, but that at least 20,000 foreigners will not acquire the right to live in France and will have their immigration visa application denied. The objective is for the number of new immigrants to go from 200,000 to 180,000. Everything in this announcement is abominable. There is no mention of which requirements will change to reach this goal, and therefore it sounds totally arbitrary. One used to be able to trust that, if one presented a perfect dossier, the French consulate would approve it. This is no longer the case.

Another likely outcome is that this move will scare many foreigners, who will fear a negative decision every time they go to the préfecture to renew their immigration status. If they believe something could happen to make them lose their immigration card, for whatever reason, many of them may not even try to renew the card, regardless of their chance of success.

This trend of tightening the rules will continue, but I am quite certain the changes will only marginally affect North Americans asking for a long-term visa, for renewal of the carte de séjour, or even for a change of status. You may be thinking, "Why do you care? Your business is not really affected by these changes," and you would have a point. But I believe they change what my country, France, stands for. They weaken its heritage as one of the few countries of the world built on immigration and carrying a worldwide message of protecting freedom and democracy. For two centuries, the U.S.A. and France have, in their very different ways, led the fight for democracy and freedom. Today I see one major difference: the U.S.A. has never targeted new legal immigrants, or new American citizens, nor made scapegoats of the second generation. Never, during the fight against terrorism since 9/11, have the American authorities crossed that line. I just wish France could act the same way. As the son and grandson of immigrants (3 out of 4 grandparents were foreigners), this matters a great deal to me.

 

 

FRENCH INCOME TAX
TIME TO DECLARATION AND TO PAY
Regarding the more mundane topic of income declaration, I remind everybody that the paper version must be filed in France before May 31st and the second partial income tax payment is to be paid before May 15th Midnight. The forms have been available since April 26th on the same website, since it is now possible to do it with this website www.impots.gouv.fr . provided that it is not your first time, since you need your tax ID number and some access codes.

The government has sent, by email, the schedule for declaring this way. The deadline depends on the location, which is defined by the zip code of the département.

  • From nos 1 to 19: Thursday June 9th,
  • From nos 20 to 49: Thursday June 16th,
  • Higher than nos 50: Thursday June 23rd.

 

 

OFFICE SPACE AVAILABLE FOR RENT
We are still offering my former office space for rent. It is about 35m2 and the rent is €1,110 a month TTC, payable quarterly. It has two rooms of about the same size and a small hallway. It is located in a courtyard and is very quiet. The address is 52 rue Notre Dame de Lorette, 75009 Paris.

 

Best regards,

 

Jean TaquetJean

 

Q & A

IMMIGRATION - THE RIGHT CHOICE OF VISA FOR THE RIGHT GOAL

QUESTION
I am an American living in the U.S.A.. Over the years I have visited and worked in France (as an assistant de langue), and I am very interested in moving back soon.

I just earned a master's degree in political science, speak French fluently, and very much want to move back to France (where my girlfriend resides) as either an employee or an intern. I nearly had an internship lined up in Germany and at the last minute it fell through because of visa problems, and I am aware that being an American makes the visa issue quite tricky.

As of right now I have applied to be a lecteur de langue in several universities, and am waiting to hear back. I would love to eventually work for a humanitarian NGO based out of France, and have applied for several internships and positions in these organizations but I get the impression that they are not looking to hire people from outside of the E.U..

I would greatly appreciate any advice you have.

ANSWER
The main issue I see here is that it seems there is some inconsistency between your long-term immigration goals and the type of immigration status that you plan on seeking in the short term. To put it differently, for right now it is "How do I obtain the right to get into France and the right to work?" and for the future it is "How do I keep the right to stay, work, and live in France?" The first one should strengthen the second one.

One point illustrates this very well. The immigration status for a lecteur in France, in English - the position of teaching assistant - is very easy to get, but the foreigner must leave France after two years, and it is virtually impossible to change this status. In my view, choosing this route would mean losing two years in your longer-term immigration plan.

One way for you to stay in France and continue to have the right to work is to obtain a carte de séjour mention vie privée, based on your relationship with your girlfriend. Either you could marry her, or you could get PACSed and live together for at least a year, if she is French or an E.U. citizen. Then you would comply with the requirements for regularization under this status. If you choose this option, you should start preparing your request for the change of status immediately after arriving in France, since proof of living together for a long time is crucial. Then you might have a decent chance of having the right kind of file for this procedure.

But assuming you are prepared to work hard pretty much from the beginning of your stay in France to secure this change, why not put the same amount of energy right away into securing a more definitive status, so that your romantic relationship is not the only thing that enables you to stay in France with the right to work? In other words, the better alternative, in my opinion, is to prepare, while still in the U.S.A., a request for a working visa. This entails drafting a personal and professional plan, with goals and steps, so that once you acquire the right to live and work in France, you can carry out your professional plan and have a chance of being successful.

As you can see, these are two very different procedures and you need to choose between them. There is virtually no way you can successfully change your mind once the process has been launched.

However, there might be a more "middle of the road" way to address this issue. You could first acquire the right to live in France, with a visa/carte de séjour mention visiteur, and once in France add the right to work afterward.

These are the requirements:
Financial means = I believe that the minimum should be $22,000 in any type of account; if necessary, your girlfriend can vouch for you for part or even all of it.

Lodging in France = you can live with her and she vouches for you, this is very simple.

Health coverage in France = the cheapest policy I know costs about $500 a year, but once you work you are covered by your job, even if you are self-employed.


This requires some serious planning, since it pretty much means that you would not have the right to work for about a year and you must be able to fund your stay in France. Living with your girlfriend can lower the cost some.

A side issue is that getting and keeping position as a salaried employee is difficult for non-European foreigners: it is a huge challenge to acquire a carte de séjour mention salarié. However, self-employed status is easy to get and fairly easy to maintain.

There are two other forms of status you should not overlook, given your profile: compétences & talents and scientifique. Yes, both require a lot of work at first, but both confer the cherished right to work as a salaried employee, and allow the holder to change easily to something else. Bear in mind that the compétences & talents card is valid for three years and can be renewed once, so you would have potentially six years in France before having to change your status.

With all these options, make sure that you document your relationship so that it has legal validity and you have proof of living together. Indeed, you never know what lies ahead, so you should be in a position to prepare a request for a change to a carte de séjour vie privée if need be.

Your question also raises a different and potentially major problem: each E.U. country has its own regulations on immigration, so if you think you can acquire the right to live in France by getting a job and immigration status in Germany or some other E.U. country, you are quite wrong.

Holding an American passport grants you as much right to be in France as residency in another E.U. country would, so you would not gain anything by this. Should you submit an immigration request at the French consulate in an E.U. country, you would be seen only as an American and face the same challenges described above. Living 500 or 600 miles away from Paris so you can be closer to your girlfriend is not close enough to do you any good. You have absolutely no reason to choose this solution.

Finally, regarding your statement that French-based NGOs did not seem interested in you: if you approached them with an American profile, this could alienate them. On the other hand, some French groups are now as big as multinationals, with representation all over the world. Thus, your profile might interest them if you can adapt to the French way of working. I always say that looking for work or building a business in France means functioning the French way if you want to be successful. The sooner you can do that, the sooner you will succeed. But it is a lot easier said than done, and that is a huge understatement.

Good luck.

 

Q & A

LINKS BEWEEN HEALTH COVERAGE, INCOME TAX, AND MARRIAGE

QUESTION
I am American woman and my fiancé is both Irish and American. The complication is that he works independently for an American company that is not based in France (works at home, via the Internet). I would like to know all of the particulars and to figure out how he can get his carte vitale after we get married. (I have a job here in Paris and hold a carte de résident.)

ANSWER
In many ways, answering your question regarding the carte vitale - the card issued by the French national health system proving that a person is insured - is very simple. But there are side issues that can create serious problems and be complicated to solve. Thus, the carte vitale question is a non-issue: you have an account with the Sécu as a French employee. Right now they know you as single. Once you are married, you inform them of the wedding with a copy of the marriage license and a copy of his birth certificate translated into French by an official translator. Then the Sécu adds him as your dependent. At this stage he does not have a carte vitale yet, but later he will have one, with your ID number on it.

Now, I would like to raise some very serious issues, which you did not mention, so I assume that you may not be aware of them. The biggest problem I see coming very quickly is the income tax situation. France taxes a complete household, be it a single person, a couple, a family with children, a family with children and other dependents, or whatever the case may be.

Eventually you will have to file your French income tax declaration (form 2042). If I am right in assuming that he has never declared anything in France, the first issue is whether to mention him on the form. If you continue to declare yourself as single, you are lying on an official form, which is not a good thing to do. If you state that you are married, you need to give all his information. And then, if you declare that he did not earn any money in France, both of you are guilty of tax avoidance - not just him, as it was when you were single. But if you declare his earned income without the necessary business registration, it will trigger a nasty tax audit, particularly as regards to URSSAF.

The worst consequence for you is that you will be considered a tax cheat, and, if caught, you will be liable for his taxes, penalties, fines, interest and so on. The two spouses are considered a single unit. The only way to keep this from happening is for him to declare his professional status in France and pay the related taxes. This is done by registering the creation of the activity with URSSAF. Then he will have his own Sécu account and number.

So, the initial choice is this: either you do not declare to anyone that you are married to him and he does not get his health coverage, or he gets it and then there is a clock ticking against the two of you. He MUST have professional status in France BEFORE the two of you fill out the income tax declaration form together.

 

 

 

BUYING A RENTED APARTMENT

QUESTION
Throughout the years I have purchased several apartments inside and outside Paris and feel like I know the procedure quite well. I buy empty, I renovate some, I give it to an agency and they find the tenant. So I have always thought that the tenant has the first right of refusal when the apartment is sold, and the buyer only acquires the right to purchase the property when the tenant has left, which creates a problem when the tenant is slow moving out.

A real-estate agent has proposed that I buy an already rented apartment at a very competitive price and has assured me that the tenant has no right to buy in this situation. Then I met the tenant of this apartment, who assured me that she will have the funding to buy the place very shortly and that her rights take precedence over mine.

I have no idea what to think and the agency is pressuring me to make an offer. Who should I believe?

ANSWER
You are confusing two different situations, and I admit that it is easy to do. Often a landlord wants to sell a property at its highest price, which means it has to be empty and so the tenant has to either go or buy it at the market price.

The landlord can refuse to renew the lease in only three cases:

  • 1 – He wants to live in it himself or put one of his children in it.
  • 2 – He wants to undertake massive renovation.
  • 3 – He wants to sell, in which case the tenant has the right of first refusal.

So, as far as that goes, you are absolutely right - except that this is not the situation in which you are with the property in question. In this case, for some unknown reason, the landlord does not want to wait for the end of the lease and is selling right away. He must sell the apartment with the tenant in it, and you are obliged to keep the tenant as if you have always been the landlord. This is why it is sold at such a competitive price.

Now, let's look at what is in your best interest here. The most obvious thing is that you are buying at a discount, which is a good bargain for you. As you were going to rent it anyway, the fact that there is already a tenant in it is not necessarily a bad thing for you.

What you need to do is weigh up the discount in price, which is a sure thing, against the fact that you or your management company did not choose the tenant and thus have no guaranty against this being a bad tenant.

I believe you would do well to buy the place, especially if the tenant has been paying rent regularly for a long time.

If, however, the tenant is determined to buy the place, the situation is somewhat more complicated. There is no law against the tenant making an offer to the landlord; her money is as good as yours. But if her offer had been high enough, the landlord would have accepted it rather than going to the trouble and expense of selling through an agency. So if this goes through in your favor, you could have an angry tenant who might retaliate by not paying rent or just by paying late or irregularly.

The last thing you want is a vindictive tenant. So I advise you to adopt a conciliatory attitude, stating that you are extremely sorry that the previous owner did not sell to him and that you would not be opposed to selling to him as long as the price is right - that is, as long as you receive the selling price, plus the agency fee and all the money you paid to the notaire, so that you do not incur a loss on the transaction.

Then wait and see if the tenant can raise this kind of money; give him plenty of time, with no deadline. Either he will, in which case you get out of a potentially tricky situation that could be very costly to you (it now takes about three years to expel a non-paying tenant, so that is the last thing you want to happen), or he will not, and then you can use all the empathy you possess and tell him you are very sorry about the outcome. If you do it right, conveying honest feelings, you should be able to lower the tension between you considerably. You might even earn the tenant's trust by being supportive of his effort to fund the project.

If you play it right, you could turn the entire thing to your advantage. I hope you have excellent social skills and have mastered French culture, as you are going to need all the expertise you can get to navigate safely through this purchase.




DISCLAIMER
Please forward this message to all those who would be interested in its contents. The information contained in this newsletter is intended only as general information. I strongly urge readers to seek professional guidance concerning the legal and tax matters mentioned. This newsletter is intended as a general guide and is not to be taken as professional advice.