In 1972, the French singer-songwriter Michel Delpech wrote and performed the song « Que Marianne était jolie » (How beautiful Marianne was), imagining the female symbol of France as a woman appearing during the French Revolution and an allegory of what should France look like. As Wikipedia tells us, Marianne is a national symbol of the French Republic, an allegory of liberty and reason, and a portrayal of the Goddess of Liberty. Marianne is displayed in many places in France and holds a place of honor in town halls and law courts. She symbolizes the Triumph of the Republic, a bronze sculpture overlooking the Place de la Nation in Paris. Her profile stands out on the official government logo of the country, is engraved on French euro coins and appears on French postage stamps; it also was featured on the former franc currency. Marianne is one of the most prominent symbols of the French Republic, and is officially used on most government documents. Marianne is a significant republican symbol, as opposed to monarchy, and an icon of freedom and democracy against all forms of dictatorship. Other national symbols of France include the tricolor flag, the national motto Liberté, égalité, Fraternité, the national anthem La Marseillaise, as well as the coat of arms and the official Great Seal of France.

I would like to wish you all
A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR
I am looking forward to the year to come, 2015.

SOME REQUESTS FOR TITRE DE SÉJOUR REQUIRE SOME KNOWLEDGE OF FRENCH/FRANCE!
It is well known that when a foreigner requests French nationality, he or she must prove complete integration and therefore demonstrate an excellent level of French and a good knowledge of what is happening or has happened in France. But that is not the only case where such knowledge is required. The other, which is almost as well known, is when requesting the carte de résident, which lasts for ten years. Since the issuance of the circulaire de régularisation des sans-papiers by Manuel Valls, at that time the Minister of Interior, on November 28th 2012, some fluency in French has been required to obtain this status, and it is measured according to the length of time lived in France. Recently in the waiting room at the Nanterre prefecture, I witnessed French helpers acting like teachers, quizzing applicants on the names of the members of the current French government, the French motto, the names of the various symbols of the French republic, and so on. It felt more like waiting for an oral exam in high school than an administrative procedure. I can testify that the civil servants are not really testing a level of French conversation but knowledge of French politics in the large meaning of the word. My advice to applicants: read a newspaper every day and start having those conversations about politics that French people love so much!

FYI, the questions and their answers:
The motto of France: Liberté, égalité, fraternité
The Minister of Interior’s name: Mr. Cazeneuve
The name of the female symbol of France: Marianne

AUTO-ENTREPRENEUR: THE SEQUEL!
April 2011
AUTO-ENTREPRENEUR: STATUS IN LANGUAGE SCHOOLS
A reader sent me a very long message reporting on what has been happening in many language schools now that self-employed status has been made much simpler. To make the long story shorter, I have boiled down and paraphrased much of my reader’s report.

-I have seen all kinds of weird and wonderful stuff going on in relation to business English or ELT [English language teaching] and the status of « self-employed » [auto-entrepreneur]. Maybe some of your readers will not be surprised to hear that URSSAF at the national level has heeded certain calls, since it is now enforcing new, tougher guidelines and has introduced a stronger requirement (tougher obligation on reporting, etc.). So regarding the point you make in your March column, about determining who is really self-employed, I agree that there is a lot to be said on this matter. For my two cents, I will describe what I have seen (of course, I am only one person so it is difficult to draw any valid generalizations). But it looks obvious to me that it is going to become a free-for-all. Here are some of my observations.

-The March issue of your column states: « What happens to some of my clients is that someone, most often an URSSAF inspector, audits the individual and the company to find out if the relationship is truly an equal one and therefore the self-employed status is valid, or if the autoentrepreneur is actually a subordinate and therefore should be an employee. »

-Actually, I have worked as an employee (2007/2008) in a training center. What could be considered the lines of subordination were relatively easy to identify, i.e., a formal contract, guaranteeing a number of hours, with a convention collective underlining the contract, a manager (pedagogical), a totally NON-transparent system for allocating the clients or determining which teacher went with whom, etc.

-And then you have a situation today which is more akin to what you and I would consider to be « free market » goings on:
-I have received emails from training centers with numéro de formateur or registered by the DRTEFP [direction régionale du travail, de l’emploi et de la formation professionnelle regional department of labor, jobs and continuing education] that have acted under what I would consider false pretenses. In other words, send a résumé (but really this is just camouflage for putting you automatically on their external list and mailing me), with no consent on my part, and that constitutes an offer. This goes as far as saying nous prêtons les supports

-Usually on the « independent » job boards you begin to see the same pattern and the same « usual suspects » who will never give an indication of what the « hourly price » is for the « course » and of course there is never any indication of what line of subordination exists.

-Another laissez-faire attitude is that NO one compels an individual, whether self-employed or not, to respond to any of these adverts. What can one say about all this? The person who runs this site is VERY EXPLICIT about what he wishes to achieve on the site and that the individuals who register or « announce » MUST not do it under a corporate status, etc.

-So, there is everything and anything out there. Quite how an URSSAF inspector is expected to keep a watchful eye on all of this is completely beyond me, since you would need a planning/coordination apparatus that would dwarf anything that was put in place by the USSR!

FALSE INFORMATION ON A REPUTABLE WEBSITE REGARDING STUDENT IMMIGRATION AND AUTO-ENTREPRENEUR: STATUS
More recently, here is what another reader sent me:
-I read your November newsletter with great interest and I think I know where you might have gotten your inspiration for this month’s topic! I wanted to share with you the website where I originally got the idea that I could teach English as an auto-entrepreneur while in France on a student visa.

-Here is a extract from this website: You can work as a freelancer as well as be on a contract in France. Nowadays some language schools prefer their teachers to be registered as freelancers « auto-entrepreneurs » in French. We show you how to set up as a freelance English teacher, get plenty of freelance work and do well at interviews. Think about getting a website and business cards done (both can be virtually free these days).

– “Remember”  if you are American or do not have an EU passport, you will need an official « student » visa to be able to teach in France legally. Once you have one you can teach here for up to a year and are treated just like a EU citizen. To get this visa you need to follow a French course at an official organization. We can help you arrange your French course in Toulouse with our friends the Alliance Francaise en.alliance-toulouse.org/ just mention this on your application form or contact them and ask for M All this should be done several months in advance while you are still in your home country.

-After my meeting with you this week, I realize how misleading their website is and that the important phrase I overlooked was you can teach for up to one year. There is no mention on their website on how to renew or extend your student visa!

Not all such sites give bad information. One an agency placing teachers has this to say regarding visas on its website:
For non-European candidates, a visa allowing you to work in France is needed. We are not sponsoring Working Visas The jobs we have being only part time positions, unfortunately, it is impossible for us to sponsor your requests to obtain a working visa.
Which types of visa allow me to work with Speaking-agency? Several types of visa allow you to work with us. Here is a list of the main ones:
– student visa
– working holiday visa
– vie privée et familiale visa
– resident card
www.speaking-agency.com/recruitment/work-program-in-paris/french-courses

I would have preferred a more accurate description but considering the overall situation, I am very happy to read this.

OFFICE TO CLOSE FOR CHRISTMAS
The office will close for a week for Christmas starting on Friday, December 19th, and reopen on Monday, December 29th. As always, I will be reachable by email for emergencies and important matters. The service I offer of receiving mail for clients will continue while the office is closed.

Best regards,

QUESTION

SEVERAL GROUNDS FOR OBTAINING A CARTE DE SÉJOUR MENTION VIE PRIVÉE ET FAMILIALE

I would like to react to the following statement in your November issue:
You now have a family in France, with a spouse and a child. But you three have not been a family long enough to qualify for the carte de séjour mention vie privée et familiale. Ideally you should be married more than five years to qualify for this status. So this is not a viable solution right now. How is this possible? I have been told that I, as an American PACSed to a French citizen, can qualify for the carte de séjour mention vie privée et familiale after showing proof I have lived with him under the same roof and shared the same bills after only one year. I am quite surprised, still, that they cannot qualify for something like this since they have a child born on French territory. Is your reasoning because they are non-EU citizens?

QUESTION

IS IT EASIER NOW TO OBTAIN FRENCH NATIONALITY?

We know that under the previous French administration, the conservatives did all they could to tighten up on immigration and to make it more difficult to get French citizenship, including adding things like a written French literacy test even though I believe it was illegal to do so. Have things loosened up under the current administration, and is it a little less difficult to get French citizenship?
I am in the middle of my second ten-year residency card in France and thinking about finally applying for citizenship. Will the length of time I have lived as a resident speak in my favor in this process? What about financial status? I know that you have to provide proof that your taxes are paid up, but do the authorities do anything like running a credit check to see what your financial status is before granting citizenship? Are they less likely to grant citizenship if your income has not been very high? If you are nearing retirement age, when do you become eligible for a French pension?

The song “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” by the English rock band The Who, written by Pete Townshend, is found on the 1971 album Who’s Next. Many consider it an anthem for the 1970s generation protesting the Vietnam War and the establishment in general.

Decades later, many people, especially foreigners, may continually feel that people out there are waiting to take advantage of them. As I often say, this impression is far from always being true. A recent example: at a branch tax office, at 4:15 on a Friday afternoon (minutes before closing time), the branch manager asked one of my clients to come back on Monday, after delivering what appeared to be a lecture about Americans coming to France and working without any authorization. My client felt personally attacked and feared a complete audit, and so was very afraid of what could happen on Monday morning. But all the manager wanted to do was offer a compliment about the fact that the business had been duly registered and everything was in order; she just wanted to express her appreciation for what, after all, should be the norm, i.e., compliance with the law.

Knowing the IRS, I fully understand how such an encounter could be completely misunderstood, leaving the foreigner worried sick the entire week-end.

AUTO-ENTREPRENEUR STATUS AND HOLDING A STUDENT CARTE DE SEJOUR
Some situations, however, may be the exact opposite: the foreigner feels reassured by what appears to be caring guidance, when in reality he/she is being advised to do something criminal with severe adverse consequences. Here again is a recent example: an American student taking an intensive French course is offered work as an English teacher by a small school. Instead of proposing the normal employee position that would be compatible with student immigration status, which comes with the right to work as an employee for 60% of a full-time salary calculated on an annual basis, the employer advises my client to become an auto-entrepreneur. The main reason put forth is that it is supposed to be simpler and cheaper, which is true for the employer but not for the employee. The worst thing is what the foreigner is never told: this self-employed fiscal status is completely incompatible with student immigration status. So when it is time to renew the student status, the préfecture easily finds out about the situation and refuses the request to renew the student immigration status even though the foreigner complies with all the requirements to obtain the student carte de séjour.

This major violation of the law regarding working in France is a very good reason to refuse such a request.

It is astonishing how often I am asked about this same situation through emails and phone calls as well as my sessions at the church. I have the feeling that I am confronting an epidemic of this wrong decision turning disastrous every single time. If you are a foreign student who is considered to be enrolled full time at a university or community college registered with the Ministry of Education, you have the right to obtain a student immigration card.

The news should be spread as quickly and thoroughly as possible. Way too many people are being misled into a disastrous situation, feeling secure in their choice, since the employer is advising them to do it and even helping them register (URSSAF issues the appropriate documents upon receiving the registration request). The foreign student is being completely fooled by what feels like the right thing and everything goes smoothly and nicely, which is a change for once when dealing with the French administration.

I repeat: the student carte de séjour only allows one to work as an employee and nothing else; there cannot be any kind of registration of any kind done by the employee in France. And French law requires teachers in a school or agency to hold employee status. So requiring auto-entrepreneur status for a teaching job is the second major violation of the law in such situations.

It is very, very hard for foreigners to differentiate between people who are genuinely helping and those who are deceitful. The worst part is that the biases we too often bring with us from the home country can create a false sense of security or danger. In short, as a foreigner in France, do not trust your gut reactions: they can be wrong more often than right. You are most assuredly a fish out of water.

ATTESTATION URSSAF DE COMPTE À JOUR FOR CMU INSURED
The following situation may sound odd, but it illustrates a much bigger issue. The préfecture always prefers getting confirmation that an applicant for renewal of immigration status is up to date on all necessary payments. In one recent case, the applicant had registered with the French public health coverage as not working in France. This program, part of the Assurance Maladie, is called CMU, which stands for Couverture Médicale Universelle. The payments are made to URSSAF, even though CMU registration is for private individuals rather than self-employed people. This oddity creates some difficulties. The préfecture’s view is that because it is paid to URSSAF, the normal procedure for the self-employed should be followed and the applicant should have a special statement from URSSAF that there is no outstanding debt. URSSAF rightfully considers these people non-professionals and therefore is very reluctant to issue such a document since a private individual does not need to prove that no money is owed, especially since the coverage remains whether the money is paid or not. Thus, even though this health coverage is well accepted by the préfecture, obtaining the payment document has become an unpleasant task, as one often has to go to a nearby URSSAF branch and explain in order to obtain it (it is very rarely sent in the mail). This illustrates quite well the difficulties one has to deal with when two divisions of the administration ignore each other’s policies and requirements, leaving the individual too often stranded in the middle.

OFFICE TO CLOSE FOR THANKSGIVING
My office will be closed from the end of Thursday November 20th until 9AM on Wednesday December 3rd, instead of for the usual Christmas vacation. As always, I will be reachable by email for emergencies and important matters. The service I offer of receiving mail for clients will continue while the office is closed. I will let individual clients know how to receive or retrieve their mail during this period.

I will also close the office for one week over Christmas since I will be celebrating out of Paris with my family.

Best regards,

QUESTION

CARTE DE RÉSIDENT – ISSUE WITH CURRENT STATUS & LABOR CONTRACT

I need some advice regarding how to obtain the carte de résident, which has a ten-year validity. I have been living in France holding a carte de séjour called « scientifique, » and have had several ongoing CDDs, all for the same employer and in the same lab, for more than five years now. During that time I got married and my wife is an non-EU citizen who worked in IT for more than three years in France. We also have a one-year-old daughter born in France and my wife stopped working to take care of her.
My CDD contract is ending soon and I do not have a definite answer for another job right now. We would like to continue to live and work in France. So we thought of applying for a carte de résident on the grounds that I have lived in France for more than five years. I do not speak good French but my wife does and she has also taken language courses.
I want to know our chances of getting the ten-year card given the condition that we both are going to be jobless soon. Do you have any advice on how can we increase our chances?

QUESTION

TONTINE AND CHILDREN OF A PREVIOUS UNION

My husband, a British citizen, and I, an American citizen, have been legal and fiscal French residents for years. My husband has children from a prior marriage, and I have too. We purchased our home in July 2010 en tontine, having been told that should either of us die, the home would pass to the surviving spouse as if he/she were the sole purchaser at the time of sale. That surviving spouse would have the right to sell the house without any need for agreement by any children or could live in it until death and then it would pass to the surviving spouse’s children. Now we are told that this is not the case: that yes, the surviving spouse can live there until death; but no, the surviving spouse cannot sell the property and retain the proceeds as his/her property. Can you please clarify this for me? The house is paid for. I am feeling very vulnerable right now.

The expression « get the message » is used in many different ways and situations. This month’s first two Q&As raise the issue of passing information on or retaining it and getting in trouble for doing so. The two issues raised in the introduction deal with the continuation of poor behavior.

I would say that when someone screams, « Get the message, » very often the message is in fact not clear. Instead of focusing on the message being received, we should probably focus a lot more on how clear, useful and safe the message is. Regarding the first topic below, the status of interns in France, management should understand that the exploitation of interns in France is over. As for celebrations of past events, there is a risk, when creating shows that talk loosely about these events, of the message getting lost altogether. Concerning the first Q&A, about the French healthcare system storing information in the carte vitale, if the insured person does not update the card, it creates problems. And regarding the second Q&A, about giving self-incriminating information to the préfecture: surely it is only common sense to refrain from saying too much to the police!

UNPAID INTERNSHIPS IN FRANCE – AN ODDITY THAT SHOULD DISAPPEAR OVER TIME
Because of the rigidity of the French labor market, it is more difficult for a student to get a summer job or part-time job than in, say, the USA. Therefore, higher education in France often includes internships so students get some work experience before taking a full-time position and starting their career. This was originally a good idea that worked very efficiently, and business schools used such arrangements successfully to allow students to learn a lot and get meaningful experience.

But the fact that internships were only loosely structured and the employer did not have to pay a salary meant that for the last twenty years or more, companies have abused the system, with young people (and until recently, not always actual students) working for free or almost free and taking the place of regular employees. Interns generally agree to such arrangements in hopes of being hired at the end of the internship. Now steps are being taken to limit such abuse. Without describing them in detail, the main goal is to give schools some power to control the terms and conditions of internships so that they can only be done as part of a school curriculum.

Last April 26th in Le Monde, I read about an intern at the Institut Gustave-Roussy cancer hospital in Villejuif trying to poison his boss out of desperation. This was not the first time the media had mentioned this type of incident involving an intern, but it illustrates how far the abuse sometimes goes, as well as how difficult it is in the French job market to get that all important first full-time position.

A bill approved by the Chamber of Deputies last February 13th and expected to be voted on by the Senate is intended to improve the situation. The main provisions are:

– An internship cannot last more than six months.

– The minimum monthly compensation is 523, which is not considered salary and therefore incurs no taxes or social charges.

– No more than 10% of the staff can be made up of interns.

The bill has caused debate between employers and schools. Some in the former camp believe these requirements go too far, so that employers will stop using interns. This argument says that their work is often poor, that they are not worth the money spent on them, and that the job experience itself has considerable value and should be promoted rather than constrained. On the other side are student unions and employee unions, along with the political parties of the left, which want to keep employers under close reins to stop abuse that is still far too common.

I feel there is a need for balance between the two sides. More specifically, I believe that French labor law distorts the relationship between the two parties, that French employers and employees are so entrenched in their old, sterile positions that no solutions are in sight soon, and that passing a series of laws does not address the root of the problem, which is the deep distrust between the two parties distrust that this kind of legislation only exacerbates.

Only time will tell if the latest law will do any good or will have more negative than positive consequences. After all, the goal is for students to have meaningful internships and for schools and employers to work together for the wellbeing of all parties. I get the feeling that too many people on both sides of the issue have lost sight of that!

PRESENTATION OF THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF PARIS’S LIBERATION
Sometimes I receive very short messages. They can be quite specific and need an answer. This one is an excellent example. It had no text at all, just a link, and I had to figure out what it meant.

THE MESSAGE
70 Ans de la Libération de Paris “MONUMENTAL”SON et LUMIERE le 25/08/14 PARIS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtrbRYUF9Ic.

MY RESPONSE
Thanks to the sender. Indeed, it feels like all French media outlets have been talking about this year’s two anniversaries: the beginning of WWI (1914-18) and the end, at least for France, of WWII (1939-45).

Countless newspapers and magazines have written about the Libération of Paris, which occurred August 19-25 in 1944. Some aspects of this fight were heroic and I am glad that several commemorations were scheduled. But even before the celebrations started, I was getting turned off by poor media coverage and poor choices regarding how to commemorate the event. All this is subjective, and my response to this person, adapted below, makes clear there are two sides to the issue. This said, D-day and the Libération of Paris, are the ones everybody has been talking about and rightfully so.

Although I have not given much thought to the question What else should we remember in France about what happened in 1944 during WWII? I would celebrate the following:

La Bataille du rail, which has been shamefully ignored in the American media. To add insult to injury, some American groups are suing the SNCF for its role in the deportation of Jews. But there were also courageous efforts by French railway workers to sabotage trains carrying Nazi reinforcement troops. The story was told in René Clément’s 1946 movie La Bataille du rail (The Battle of the Rails).

Le Maquis du Vercors a misguided but still very important military action led by the high command of the Résistance. As Wikipedia explains, The Maquis du Vercors was a rural French Forces of the Interior resistance ( maquis ) group who fought the 1940-1944 German occupation of France in World War II. The Maquis du Vercors used the prominent scenic plateau known as the Massif du Vercors (Vercors Plateau) as a refuge. Many members of the maquis, called « maquisards » died fighting in 1944 on the Vercors Plateau. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maquis_du_Vercors) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maquis_du_Vercors)

Oradour-sur-Glane, which you should be sure to look up if you have never heard of it. Oradour is a village in the Limousin region of west-central France. The original population was destroyed on 10 June 1944, when 642 of its inhabitants, including women and children, were massacred by a German Waffen-SS company. A new village was built after the war on a nearby site, but on the orders of the then French president, Charles de Gaulle, the original has been maintained as a permanent memorial and museum. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oradour-sur-Glane)

One last detail: the height of this celebration was held on the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville because it was convenient to use the facade of this huge building as a movie screen. But historically, it is simply quite inaccurate. True, blocking the Porte d’Orléans and finding some way to have screen there of similar size would have been virtually impossible. But it would have been a lot more historically accurate.

Who cares?

I do.

If you are wondering why I would choose the Porte d’Orléans:

-On 24 August, delayed by combat and poor roads, the Free French General Leclerc, commander of the 2nd Armored Division, disobeyed his direct superior, American field commander Major General Leonard T. Gerow, and sent a vanguard (the colonne Dronne) to Paris with the message that the entire division would be there on the following day. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_of_Paris)And they did indeed arrive as promised, on the Nationale 20, entering Paris through the Porte d’Orléans where General Leclerc’s statue stands tall today in the middle of the place.

OFFICE TO CLOSE FOR THANKSGIVING
My office will be closed from the end of Thursday November 20th until 9AM on Wednesday December 3rd, instead of for the usual Christmas vacation. As always, I will be reachable by email for emergencies and important matters. The service I offer of receiving mail for clients will continue while the office is closed. I will let individual clients know how to receive or retrieve their mail during this period.

Best regards,

QUESTION

FRENCH HEALTH COVERAGE AND THE CARTE VITALE

I have been living in France for the longest time, have a French husband, and a job here. A few months ago I was rushed to the hospital for a small accident nothing major, but still, medication and physical therapy were needed. The hospital processed the bill through the system and I paid my portion, mainly the TV and the phone. This said, when my husband went to the drugstore with the prescription and my carte vitale, they refused to use it, saying that it was dead and that I had no credit left. So he paid the entire amount in full, which by the way was more than the complete week in the hospital. Nobody can explain this oddity. The hospital clearly thought that I was covered and the pharmacist said that I had no coverage left. Can you explain this?

QUESTION

GIVING TOO MUCH INFORMATION TO THE PRÉFECTURE

After a couple of years studying French in Paris, I wanted to change my status to start a career as a Pilates instructor. So I contacted the préfecture and I got an appointment five months later. It was so much later than I expected that I ended up staying with only the convocation for this appointment as proof of my legal stay in France. I never managed to get a récépissé from the préfecture and I tried all the branches and locations I knew about.
At the end of the appointment, the préfecture refused to give me the carte de séjour and, even worse, the letter stated that I had 30 days to leave the country. I am positively furious because while I was presenting, the civil servant was very impressed by the quality of the proposal and indicated that I would have no problem obtaining this self-employed status. The reason for the total refusal is that I worked during these several months after the carte de séjour expired. Did they expect me to starve and give up before the meeting? Of course I had to work to support myself. I have never imagined such a bad faith excuse for denying my request when it was perfect according to their own evaluation. Can I appeal such a lame and awful decision?

« I’m a Long Way from Home » was composed by Hank Cochran and sung by Waylon Jennings on his third album, Nashville Rebel, released in 1966.It was also sung by Shooter Jennings, his son, in Walk the Line, James Mangold’s 2005 film about Johnny Cash’s early career, with Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon. Everyone living in a foreign country, whether for a short or a very long time, deals with longing for home. First comes a craving for something very specific that is missed, often food. Over the years, such cravings often diminish but are replaced by memories and longing for the days when life felt simpler. The very notion of what is « home » can become very blurry, depending on the situation. Going back to work after a vacation means going back « home » to the « foreign » place, such as Paris, where one now lives. And the vacation itself may have meant going « back home » to where one grew up, which does not feel much like home anymore. The longing cannot be dismissed, since everyone needs to go back to their memories; immigrants just deal with an extra thick layer of it. Yet the successful immigrant must let go of all those sorts of cravings and get more involved in today’s life in the new country. This month’s column deals with what it is to be a successful immigrant: a poignant testimony, a statement of failure, a misconception of where home is, and the anguish of losing one’s new home and new life in France.

Walk the line while a long way from home – that could be every foreigner’s motto in life, especially in France while waiting in line!

« THE AMAZONS »: THE UNDOCUMENTED ALIENS WHO MAKE IT IN FRANCE
Over the years I have helped many undocumented aliens get legal status in France. There is always an element of shame because of the illegal status and the constant fear that goes with it. There is also a feeling of being degraded because of the gap between what they were in their home country and what they become here, doing menial or less well-paid work, as well as the outcast status of being illegal. There is also a desire to get out of this situation: for some it is a realistic goal and they work at it day and night, making it their top priority in life; for others it is an unreachable dream that can only be obtained after so many years that it does not feel reasonable to seriously hope that it will ever come true.

French immigration law currently offers the possibility of having one’s status regularized after being in France for three, five or seven years for work, or after five or ten years on grounds of private and family life.

The legal requirements explain the vast diversity of cases, ranging from those who arrive in France, soon meet the conditions to be regularized; they build their file accordingly, and those who take years to even learn about regularization and its requirements, then take many more years to get settled and comply with the requirements for a given status. There are people who after fifteen years in France still cannot qualify, usually because they lack sufficient proof of living or working in France – the préfecture currently demands at least one document per quarter for every quarter of every year, plus proof of employment for all those years in sufficient hours to constitute the equivalent of full-time work.

So, yes, it takes either a very long time or a considerable amount of energy and an iron will to secure the appropriate living conditions, both personal (proof of French residence in the form of utility bills, bank statements, tax documents, health coverage and so on) and professional (pay slips, for starters).

I would like to share with you a statement from someone who managed to get legal status in a relatively short time, about five years. Between the lines one can read the pain and anger this person felt, once it was all done, thinking of those years. It is extremely rare to get such an account expressing such personal feelings, and I feel very honored to have received it:

THE TESTIMONY
I read your July issue and it seems that the foreigners [you write about] are mainly nannies, cleaning ladies, cashiers, etc. Are they the only ones you have helped? I find it disturbing that you categorize people who do not have legal status in France. Not everyone who is caught in this situation (no legal status) planned or expected it for themselves, but yes, you are right, most of us tried very hard to obtain legal status. It could take either a few years or ages to get it, depending on the person, whether it is their priority to be legalized. The waiting (fight) is very tormenting but having legal status is worth the wait (fighting for).

Do not forget that not all who are working with your category are non-professionals. They are professionals back in their own country but because of the opportunity of higher income abroad, they choose to work as such. Why is it mostly women working abroad rather than men? Because it is easier for women to find any kind of job.

MY ANSWER
These few paragraphs touch on so many issues:

1 – Nurses, engineers, accountants and the like from Asia and Africa, for example, (a majority of the people I help come from there) prefer working as undocumented aliens in a foreign country to trying to have a career in their country. This says a lot about the huge economic gap between the developing regions and the industrialized world. Extreme poverty in developing countries fuels illegal immigration, with the second cause being various forms of persecution.

2 – Then there is the impossibility of getting equivalent qualifications in France, which would help them get a better job once their expertise is recognized. When regularization does come, after so many years, most of those involved have given up on their careers or on using their diploma even now that they have immigration status to do it. The alternative – going back to school in France to obtain a French diploma so as to avoid the sort of low-paying jobs that they have done before getting their papers – is rarely chosen. Who has the courage, past the age of 40, to stop working and go back to school?

3 – The realization «  and of course the disappointment that goes along with it «  of finding out that having legal immigration status does not change their daily life much (including work), so that all their dreams of being happy once they are regularized turn to a sour taste and a deep source of frustration.

4 – Concerning the trend in which most immigrants from poor countries are women, I disagree with the idea that it is easier for women to find jobs as undocumented aliens. Clearly the nanny and cleaning lady positions are mainly held by women, but restaurant and construction jobs are held mainly by men, while the sweatshops are about 50-50. But I would identify two factors that make women immigrants different. First, they are often mothers, ready to make more extreme sacrifices than men for the sake of their children. Second, they believe they will have a better life because Western societies are generally much less conservative and patriarchal than those they are leaving behind.

I believe the combination of these two factors explains why so many women choose what I have termed the « Amazon » lifestyle. Sadly, once they reach the goal of becoming legal immigrants and can settle with their children, often brought to France through family reunification procedures, they are drained and exhausted, sometimes lacking the courage and energy to take care of themselves. The downside of self-sacrifice is that there is always something that has higher priority than themselves.

At the end of the day, where does one find the energy, money and desire to go to nursing school, after a couple of years of being legal, when working two jobs (within the limits of French labor law) and with a child starting college in France? The prospect must be especially demoralizing when one already has a nursing degree obtained in the home country 20 years ago.

A READER GIVES HIS REASONS FOR LEAVING FRANCE
Hi, Jean. A comment on the new law requiring the notaire to examine the accounts of the condominium as supplied by the syndic .

-We are in the process of selling our apartment and unbeknown to us the condominium decided to change syndic . The old syndic refuses to supply the paperwork to the new syndic and therefore our notaire can’t get the paperwork required. Our purchaser has been very patient but it is now month three with no result. The old syndic is talking about taking the condominium to court. As I have witnessed over many years of property ownership in France, the foreigner suffers while two or more parties fight it out in court. No common sense, no damages and no feeling for assisting any party with completing the transaction. This is another reason why we’ve decided to sell all our properties in France. It just becomes too hard and there is never any compensation for all the inconvenience, pain and suffering.

-There comes a point where all the history, glamour, intrigue, beauty, etc., doesn’t [offset problems with] quality of life. Whether it’s Australia, the UK or America, it makes a huge difference when you can send a meal back, without fear, when it’s not up to standard or in the case of, say, purchasing clothing you can return it because you just changed your mind. No questions asked. Real life example: bought a zip-up fleece from Au Vieux Campeur. Got home to find the zip broken. Returned, with receipt, to have it replaced. Instead of here’s a new one or money returned it was « we’ll send it back to the manufacturer. » We’re talking 35 euro. How does an attitude like this make living in France a pleasant experience? I’ve loved the place for years but everyday happiness has a value and sadly most French people don’t even realize that there are many other places in the world where these simple but everyday battles simply don’t exist.

-By way of background, I’ve bought and restored a farmhouse in the Sarthe, a Paris apartment and a village house in Provence. For many, many years we’ve enjoyed the country culture, people and countless other aspects of France. I’m a long-distance trekker and still do at least one 100-km trek every year, in France along with Italy, Germany, England and many of the other beautiful countries that make up Europe. Perhaps, now that I am in my 60s, I’m looking for a simpler and less complicated life. It just appears to me (research sample one!) that a lot of the charm, especially in Paris, has departed over the last 10-12 years. For the last 3 years I’ve been spending more time in a village in SE England where I detect that community spirit is still very strong. After 3 visits to the local pub you become Tony the Aussie and you are literally welcomed into their community. I never achieved this in rural France. People were friendly enough but under the surface we heard stories of petty jealousies, criticisms because we didn’t conform to ancient rituals, etc. If you can detect a sense of disappointment you would be correct. I love France very much but I find that staring from my terrace at the Luberon Mountains, although they are amazingly beautiful, doesn’t make for a complete life.

MY ANSWER
In response, I must point out that France is made of French people as much as it is made of landscapes and cities that have been shaped by French people. There is a point where one cannot state, « I love France but I do not like the French, » because it is an irreconcilable contradiction. I will not dispute your description, because you point out something that is true. The question is, what do you do about it?

Do you accept being left out of the life of your town and complain about people’s unwelcoming attitude? Do you ignore their attitude and go about your business? Do you make a point of getting involved in the life of your town and a militant attitude that, no matter what, you will be a cornerstone of the community’s life in due time?

Each person is different. My experience indicates that those who take the first approach do not stay very long in France, because being left outside wears one out very quickly. You have very well described what goes through the person’s mind in reaching the decision to leave.

The people taking the second or, especially, the third approach usually stay in France and love it. While it is quite true that French people are not friendly to foreigners who are newcomers in rural France, this is also true for French people moving to the country from the big cities. It is not discrimination against foreigners. The newcomer must make all the efforts, for countless years, to create the needed living space in the community and be accepted as someone who, even as an outsider, is involved in the community. While the outsider label never wears off, there comes a point where it simply does not matter.

This is how rural France and, until recently, French cities as well functions. It comes with the territory, so to speak. It is also true that France is still terrible at customer service, by the standards of English-speaking countries, but it has hugely improved over the years, and French merchants increasingly take a different approach to this issue, so that once in a while more often that most foreigners think you get much, much better quality service in France. The thing is that you cannot count on getting it. Customers in France have to adopt a more humble attitude instead of standing on their rights.

Here is a little illustration of what it can take to fit in. When we moved to the Paris apartment that we bought before our oldest child was born, my American wife wanted to host a housewarming party and asked me to invite the other people living in the building. I told her two things:

– In those days, it was unthinkable that all the residents of a building would come to such an event, as it would mean the owners of the large apartments on the lower floors who have to mingle with the people living in the maids rooms on the top floor.

– Since I am French, the other people in the building would consider it an inexcusable faux-pas for me to make this ridiculous invitation, and would not even consider coming.
My advice to her was that, because she was American and a foreigner, she and only she could approach these people one by one to invite them for an afternoon coffee or an aperitif. That is what she did, with a strong and long-lasting determination, and after several years she had managed to get nearly all of the neighbors to come to our place.

In short, if you are going to live in France, you need to do it the French way if you want to enjoy it. Yes, it feels weird and unnatural because you are not used to it, but the bottom line is that you are the only one who can change the situation.

OFFICE TO CLOSE FOR THANKSGIVING
My office will be closed from the end of Friday November 21st until 9AM on Wednesday December 3rd instead of the usual Christmas vacation. As always, I will be reachable by email for emergencies and important matters. The service I offer of receiving mail for clients will continue while the office is closed. I will let individual clients know how to receive or retrieve their mail during this period.

TAX OWED ON 2013 INCOME IS DUE SEPTEMBER 15th
The income tax payment schedule in France has three notable dates each year: February 15th, May 15th and September 15th. The system is set up so that on each of these dates, people pay part of the total tax due, usually in three approximately equal installments. The first two payments are each equal to one-third of the taxes owed the previous year, since the tax collection agency, the Trésor Public, does not know the amount for the current payment year until it is notified by the Centre des Impôts, which receives the income declaration of the previous calendar year in the spring. There is a special office in the Parisian suburb of Créteil for residents of Paris. Last but not least, the income tax declaration requires information about your primary residence; you must state whether you are the owner, a tenant or a guest. Then there is a section to be filled out if you moved during the previous year or the current year. The fact that half a page is dedicated to the address shows how important this matter is to the tax office. Among other things, it enables the tax officials to levy an appropriate taxe d’habitation (local tax) in the autumn.

Best regards,

QUESTION

AUTO-ENTREPRENEUR WITHOUT IMMIGRATION STATUS

Could you please tell me whether I can obtain auto-entrepreneur status as a non-resident of France? I am a Canadian resident who lived in France for many years and I will be back in Marseille for the whole summer, and would like to work for my old employer teaching English. I would like to go ahead with the process of getting set up as an auto-entrepreneur as soon as possible. Can you please clear up this question for me? Can I use a friend’s address?

QUESTION

AUTORISATION PROVISOIRE DE SEJOUR (A.P.S.) AND OBLIGATION DE QUITTER LE TERRITOIRE FRANÇAIS (O.Q.T.F.)

I am an American who has been living in France for five years. I completed my master’s degree here and was granted a one-year autorisation provisoire de séjour (APS) a couple of months ago. I am starting to worry that I will not be able to find a full-time job before it expires. How long would I have to wait after the end of my APS to come back to France (as a student, for example) if I do not find a job before it runs out? I have done some research and found some stuff on the obligation de quitter le territoire français (OQTF), but nothing about when I would be eligible to come back to France. I was also wondering if leaving before the end of my APS would help my chances of being able to come back sooner (because it would mean I would not get the OQTF).

According to Wikipedia, the Amazons were a nation of all-female warriors in Greek mythology and classical antiquity. Herodotus placed them in a region bordering Scythia in Sarmatia (modern territory of Ukraine). Other historiographers place them in Asia Minor, or sometimes Libya. I realized that all the topics in this issue involve women and show how fearless some of them can be, often taking leadership roles. After the June issue titled BODYGUARD, I thought it is only fair to make sure that women were included this month.

My experience, mainly through my ministry at the church, is that many women from Africa and the Far East who arrive in France alone or with children, but without their husband, will fight and sacrifice just about everything «  money, energy, time, effort «  to get a legal stable status in France. In their way of handling extremely difficult times, they remind me of female tigers protecting their cubs. This can be true even when their children are not with them.

I have no right to judge if this sacrificial life «  rarely for a couple of years, and sometimes for ten or more » is worth it. I have a deep respect for them, for what they achieve and for the opportunities they give their children.

I am often asked my thoughts on illegal immigration and things like people being smuggled into France and other Western countries. I feel very uncomfortable when the topic is presented in terms of political versus economic refugees, or contrasting illegal immigrants with people who arrive with full legal immigration status. I prefer to look at people’s goals, how fast and well they adapt, what struggles they encounter, and, more importantly, their determination of obtaining and maintaining a legal immigration status.

To me, immigrant women are the invisible amazons almost nobody sees; they are the nannies, the cashiers, the cleaning ladies, the seamstresses, the women who run those tiny shops. It happens that they, among others, give a good name to immigration in France, in the USA and elsewhere.

FRENCH WOMEN WON THE RIGHT TO VOTE 70 YEARS AGO
France granted women the right to vote on April 21st, 1944, and the first time they were able to vote was in the municipal elections of April 29th, 1945.

The government had been expected to commemorate the 70th anniversary with a fair amount of celebration. All I saw was a short article in one newspaper, Le Monde. I do not call this « commemorating. »

It is often pointed out that the French are a Latin people and somewhat sexist even today. I have to chuckle as I remind my readers that this legislation was passed, when WWII was not over yet, on the sole initiative of General de Gaulle, never known as a keen supporter of women’s liberation. But appearances can truly be misleading: his action had a lot more impact than any number of speeches and articles. A conservative general proved himself capable of using common sense to repair a disgraceful situation.

FEARLESS IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY: AN AMERICAN LIVING IN FRANCE
I recently received this communication from a reader about my June 14 column:

READER
As I was reading your introduction to this month’s column, something struck me. At first I didn’t realize that you were speaking about fear concerning [one’s] actual physical safety. What struck me was how much my French partner and many others in my circle of French friends live in a constant state of fear a Kafkaish (Kafkaesque) kind of fear of the state. I found it rather paranoid at first until I started seeing strange problems arising from clerical errors or sudden policy changes or ignorance on the part of government employees small errors that left friends owing great amounts of money or losing benefits. This is something I’ve never feared in the US and still don’t spend time worrying about here in France. Never overconfidence perhaps.

I’m very interested by what seems to be at least two conversations that have emerged. I find your perspective from your life experience fascinating. I’ve never thought of safety in this way, but then «  I’m not sure why «  I’m not easily frightened by physical danger. I know that this fear is very real for most people. To go a little deeper into the American attitude towards « guns » and « visible security, » I think about having lived in NYC during 9/11. I wasn’t afraid afterwards. I was sad and at the same time I felt secure because of the reactions of New Yorkers. The strength, resilience and courage of New Yorkers made me feel more safe than the new machine guns on all major subway platforms. The Americans that came to volunteer to help from all over the country gave me security. I was living in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and could see the Twin Towers from my window. Immediately after the towers fell, all the subways and bridges into the city were closed, cell phones were almost useless and bank machines and credit cards went offline. Like many New Yorkers, I lived day to day for food with not much cash in my pocket. The deli owner in my neighborhood let me take what I needed with the promise that I’d pay when I could access my money again. This was incredible! As I walked down the streets, we all looked in each other’s eyes. It is the most profound experience of the very best in humanity. It made me sad that it had to come from the very worst of humanity. I know many people were absolutely terrified afterwards, especially those who lived in the rest of the country. I don’t know how to explain exactly why I feel safe in one of the most dangerous cities in the world, but I do. It’s not the obvious « security, » although NYC police are amazing. It’s the people. Living in NYC is dangerous all the time. You have to watch your back. You have to be smart. You have to be courageous or you’ll never leave your apartment.

In France, I’ve felt more fear than ever before in my life. Nothing personal … but I don’t trust French men (physically). I find the unclear « grey » overly sexually charged relationship between men and women very unsettling. My experience with French women who believe they’ve been wronged is even more frightening. It’s not really a fear of physical danger. It’s a fear of being tricked into « confidence, » into opening up and then being attacked on a deep psychological level that can really mess you up. I describe it by saying the French have the ability to plant tiny psychological seeds in your mind and then they nurture these tiny seeds slowly over time until they grow into a full blown neurosis. Americans have no defense against this. LOL!

The other fear I was hinting at before is the fear of the government or administration in France that I see in my partner and many others. Coming from a family of lawyers in the USA, I don’t have any fear of « justice » in the USA. I believe our system to be just. Of course there are always problems and it’s not always easy to get justice, but it is possible. I don’t see this in France. I see a system that leaves the average person without a reasonable pathway to justice. Take something simple like customer service; if SFR makes a mistake on your contract, somehow as the customer it’s your fault and, well, « c’est pas grave » and « c’est comme ça » and you must « laisser tomber. » I’m so surprised to watch people receive bad food at a restaurant or the wrong plate and say nothing. I watch people who are afraid to ask a question at a bank about their money, because they feel they are disturbing the employee of the bank. Of course, as an American, I have absolutely no tolerance for bad quality and bad service and am greatly surprised at the tolerance of customers in France. I’m sure it comes from very old historical/political roots. In contrast, I find French teenagers incredibly frightening in their lack of fear of authority, confrontation and violence.

Ok … with that I’ll stop. I greatly appreciate this conversation because there aren’t that many people around me who have your understanding of this fascinating difference between our cultures. It’s subtle and vast at the same time and I find a nice yin/yang. I just wanted to share this little observation inspired by your column.

MY RESPONSE
I served as an officer in the French army. I have been a member of the American Church in Paris for over twenty years. For the majority of that time, I have been an usher specialized in security issues, and I was especially active after 9/11 for about 10 years. So I have some meaningful training and experience when it comes to securing a building or facing a crowd, and I am very rarely scared by situations. But the experience in Oslo made me think once again about what makes people feel safe, and why?

Long ago I concluded that people in some countries do not trust their government or officialdom, and therefore they fear official misconduct and errors of judgment, with the result that the population feels this danger. With the rise of terrorism in the 20th century in Europe, the initial response was to build undercover intelligence forces like the FBI. The latest surge of terrorism made people question whether undercover police forces were adequate to fight this danger. Therefore public opinion seemed to favor visible police forces with uniforms, metal detectors and so on to make sure that terrorists and criminals could not get in. People find this reassuring. Without this visible security presence they feel in danger. I see this presence a lot in the USA and in France, among others.

What I described in Norway was the result of a completely opposite political decision. The surveillance is not visible and this could give the false impression that no one was there to protect a building or a crowd. I could see what was used to monitor security; there were cameras, and not that many of them. During my last stay in Copenhagen, I experienced the same thing but it was several years ago.

Your comment is extremely interesting and goes along with discussions I have had in the USA. Often people ask me if I have guns or firearms in my home in France, and I say, « No! » So they explain that they feel safe because they have the right to bear arms and this makes them unafraid. Not everybody thinks this way in the USA, but many do.

For reasons that are very complex I would not know where to start French people do not easily trust the French administration as well as pretty much any kind of authority. Interestingly, firefighters come first in rankings of civil servants, probably because they save lives in so many different ways. They can be trusted to arrive quickly and do the right thing. My personal and professional experience with the French administration is that it is quite efficient and reliable when the files are perfect. But its track record is quite poor when it comes to fixing mistakes, most often made by individuals who in all good faith have followed guidelines issued by the administration. This creates an impression that the individual is always considered wrong and the French administration is unreliable since it does not do what it is being asked.

Then there is another aspect of the issue: French people rarely believe that the future will bring good things, that the situation will improve, and so on. This pessimism leads to a tendency to reject change, as it becomes synonymous with something bad happening. So yes, there is fear of things and of people, for that matter that are different, strange, unknown.

I will always remember my very first boss in the USA. He clearly stated that, in his view, the fact that I had immigrated to the USA indicated that I was daring and ready to work hard. This is the perfect incarnation of the true American dream, and I owe this man my deep love for the USA. I have never heard anyone making a similar comment in France regarding an immigrant. That is a difference worth digging!

I wanted to share this with you to show that this issue has so many facets that it is very hard to state that such and such is right or wrong. Yet I agree with you that French people express their fear and are afraid of many things, while Americans express their lack of fear and their trust in the future, or at least they did so until recently.

ALUR – THE NEW LAW ON REAL ESTATE IN FRANCE
The loi pour l’Accès au Logement et à l’Urbanisme Rénové sponsored by the former minister for housing, Mme. Cécile Duflot, was published on March 26th 2014 and went into force the following day.

It is the latest step in an evolutionary process in French property law that started a very long time ago. In the beginning, when the Civil Code was established on March 21st 1804, the two key moments in any sale of real estate were the sealing of the agreement between buyer and seller and the closing, which documents the transfer of ownership. The presale contract in those days was short identifying the parties and their respective obligations. The mission of the notaire was and still is, to research the ownership history and secure the soundness of the legal rights to the property. As things have evolved, the right of ownership has become more and more complex. There was the creation of condominium associations, and the continual increase in the information the buyer must have to ensure that he knows everything he needs to know regarding the property. A quick makeover can hide countless problems and lure a buyer in.

The process entered a new phase when the Loi Carrez was passed on December 18th 1996, making it illegal to lie about the size of a property. The seller had to guarantee to the buyer that the apartment was as big as it was stated to be. That started a trend of the seller having to undertake an ever-growing number of tests and statements so the buyer would know the exact characteristics of the apartment and the building itself (the common area) managed by the condominium association (syndicat des copropriétaires, also commonly called la copropriété) and its representative, the syndic de copropriété, the property manager.

The latest law opens a new era, too, since it grants the right to know about the financial and legal well-being of the condominium association. This kind of information is fairly easy to find in recent minutes of annual meetings. So now instead of making the buyer responsible for due diligence, the onus is on the seller, with the help of the syndic (property manager), to provide this information, as well as the bylaws and minutes of the last three annual meetings.

There was a time when the presale contract could be signed about a week after the seller accepted the buyer’s offer, even in a notaire’s office. But now, with syndics being slow to give documents to the seller (or, better, the seller’s notaire), the signature of the presale contract often does not take place for three weeks or more. This delay lasting several weeks weakens the sale; this comes in part because the seller is not signing anymore the buyer’s written offer. Indeed real estate agents, eager to get the presale contract signed quickly, have advised for over ten years the sellers not to sign, in order to avoid the first seven-day cooling off period. This period of seven days for reflecting on this offer looks small and pale compare to the much longer delay that this new law has created. One can hope that the profession will soon push for the seller signing the offer so that at least there is one binding document that seals the transaction during this long wait before the presale contract can be signed.

The complexity of the new presale contract and the seller’s legal obligations toward the buyer are such that even De Particulier Particulier, the leader in France when it comes to facilitating real estate transactions between private individuals without any intermediaries, now strongly advises having the presale contract signed with a notaire.

SOME OF MY SERVICE FEES WILL GO UP IN SEPTEMBER
My fee structure involves more than just the initial retainer and an hourly rate. It includes other fees for specific services, and I have not increased their rates for about 10 years. When I first started, I calculated how much time the tasks would take, on average, but the correlation no longer exists. Therefore I will increase the following fees starting on September 1st:

– Handling mail in my office: from 20 to 30 euros per month.

– Handling mail received at my home: from 30 to 40 euros per month

– Surcharge for out-of-office meetings: from 20 to 30 euros.

I am also raising the only flat fee I charge, for obtaining full residency status as an employee in France. In such cases the employer pays me to do the complete procedure, so the prospective employee gets the right to work as an employee, then the long-term visa and finally the carte de séjour. My fee for this procedure will rise from 800€ HT/1.000€ TTC to 1,167€ HT/1,400€ TTC.

OFFICE TO CLOSE FOR SUMMER VACATION
My office will be closed from the evening of Friday July 25th until 9AM on Monday August 25th. As always, I will be reachable by email for emergencies and important matters. The service I offer of receiving mail for clients will continue while the office is closed. I will let individual clients know how to receive or retrieve their mail during this period.

As usual, there will be no August issue.

Best regards,

QUESTION

ACQUIRING FRENCH NATIONALITY THROUGH A FRENCH SPOUSE

I have just married a French citizen and successfully renewed my titre de séjour on that basis, changing status from travailleur indépendant. We are now starting the plan to naturalize my wife in the US and myself here in France.
For me it seems the path is four more years of being married, after which I can apply and, demonstrating understanding of culture, language and society, perhaps be granted citizenship. For my wife, we must move to the US for three years, with me as her sponsor, after which she can apply for citizenship. The US authorities require me to be an official resident of the US to sponsor her, otherwise I would just officially maintain my residence in France and pay taxes in France.
Ideally, we would want to first move to the US for three years to get her done and then move back to France to finish mine off. Finally, the question: Is it possible to maintain French residency in some form or another while being a primary resident in the US? And if not, does not maintaining residence in France derail the naturalization process and reset the clock on the number of years required?

QUESTION

CHANGING SCHOOLS AND GETTING THE STUDENT CARTE DE SEJOUR RENEWED

I arrived in Paris a year ago to study French and art history since I have a very specific project dealing with ancient clothing, costumes, and preserving ancient garments in museums. I explained this to the French consulate, and I chose a French language school based on an advertisement I found on the Internet. Within the first month it was obvious that choosing this school was a complete mistake. So at the end of the first semester, I looked for a more appropriate school. I found one, but the courses will only start in September, when my card is up for renewal. This means that I will have spent more than six months not attending a school. I am afraid that the préfecture will deny me the right to renew my immigration status because of that. I do not see any solution. Please help.

This is a 1992 movie staring Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston. She plays the threatened pop singer and he plays the bodyguard trained to protect presidents who becomes frustrated by the singer’s lack of understanding that her behavior is dangerous; she thinks that she is supposed to live a normal life and that he was hired to deliver just that. Eventually she understands that being safe requires changing her lifestyle and adapting to the new environment.

Several different plot elements illustrate aspects of the foreigner’s struggle to feel safe in a foreign country – the search for a protector, the need for « bodyguard » type of help, and the realization that a complete adaptation to the new environment would get rid of most of the fear. An example of this is the following exchange:

• – Professional: You are acting as if you fear that every new day brings another catastrophe.
• – Client: Yes, this has been my experience since I moved to France.
• – Professional: Do you feel the same way in your home country?
• – Client: Absolutely not, there I know that I am not in danger.

It is rare that it is expressed in such a candid way, but countless foreigners end up being crippled by this fear that is much bigger than what the issues should generate. In a society where security is getting to be one of the main concerns of people worldwide and particularly in the Western world, losing this sense of safety feels absolutely unacceptable.

Without opening the philosophical debate of what brings inner peace to people so that they feel safe, it is clear that the foreigner must have a much more objective evaluation of the situation and therefore must realize that he is facing nothing more than the same problems that he had in his country. The difference is simply that he knew how to fix them in his own country and, in the new country, he needs to learn new ways of fixing them. Seeking the ultimate bodyguard is a dangerous thing, and the professionals who help foreigners are often confronted by this impossible expectation.

VISITING OSLO AND THE SECURITY IN THE CITY
I would like to share the experience of visiting the capital city of Norway a few weeks ago. I was there about 30 years ago and a lot had changed since then, but the historical downtown, which extends from the Royal Castle to the Central train station and is several centuries old, has remained pretty much the same.

The Scandinavian way of life is visible and very poignant, even though the country has changed in three decades. The complete absence of visible security checks, including the fact that uniformed police do not bear arms, is the one thing struck me more than any other. No public buildings, including the castle, the parliament, museums or the city hall, seem to have visible built-in security. The only building in the downtown area that does is the old American Embassy! In short, in our day and age there was a place in the Western world where the shift to omnipresent security has not occurred.

People asked me if I felt safe in this environment, and YES, it felt good not to be surrounded by security personnel and devices. I could see cameras so I knew the security was monitored this way, and it did not interfere with our wandering and visits. Has Oslo made an unusual choice? Considering how many countries have gone the opposite direction, the answer is yes. This is especially true when one remembers the horrific attack by Anders Behring Breivik that killed 77 people in 2011. It is not up to me to decide whether their choice was right or wrong; clearly it was their choice and they stand by it.

ALUR – THE NEW LAW ON REAL ESTATE IN FRANCE
The loi pour l’Accès au Logement et à l’Urbanisme Rénové (law for improving access to housing and updating town planning), sponsored by the former minister for housing, Cécile Duflot, has ended up being a lot more pervasive that most people had anticipated. It changes a lot of things regarding renting and purchasing, including the notaire’s obligations, the duties of the syndic and how the French condominium association, la copropriété, now works.

For now I will just deal with some aspects of the landlord-tenant relationship. The ALUR law makes the rules for furnished and unfurnished apartments (location meublée vs. location murs nus) even more similar. It also attempts to put more limitations on the landlord regarding the contents of the lease and the amount of rent sought.

This change, which can be seen as counterproductive, took place because of a long history of abuse in the furnished-apartment rental market, which dates back to a time when short-term rentals barely existed.

In those days, the legal definition of a furnished apartment was one provided with a table, a chair and a bed. The law did not specify what kind of condition the furniture should be in. Landlords benefited because the protection given to tenants of unfurnished apartments did not exist for tenants of furnished ones. The critical issue was that landlords had the right to ask tenants to leave at the end of the lease, for any reason. Furthermore, protective clauses linked to the French concept of domicile did not exist for furnished flats. The logic was that anyone renting a furnished place had a true, stable domicile elsewhere. And yet, from the late 1970s on, almost all furnished apartment rentals were long term and the people living there considered them their home.

Law 2009-323 of March 2009, the so-called Loi Boutin (mobilisation pour le logement et la lutte contre l’exclusion), changed the situation radically. Among other things, it extended domicile-related protection to whatever address a person used to declare his/her income to the tax office. In addition, the requirement that landlords could give notice to a tenant of an unfurnished apartment only for very limited reasons was also applied to furnished apartments, as long as the rental length made it a residential lease and not a vacation rental.

The new law goes even further in this direction, defining what a tenant should be able to expect from a furnished apartment: « un logement décent équipé d’un mobilier en nombre et en qualité suffisants pour permettre au locataire d’y dormir, manger et vivre convenablement au regard des exigences de la vie courante. » Translation: « a decent lodging equipped with enough furniture in good condition to allow the tenant to sleep, eat and live there properly in terms of the expectations of daily life. »

As you can see, France has come a long way from its original definition of « furnished » as « containing a table, a chair and a bed. » Nevertheless, I am sure it will still be a long time before French landlords renting to local people realize that times have changed, and that they owe their tenants a decent place and some customer satisfaction.

Just as an aside, without going into a topic which is still a nasty can of worms, I believe that the spread of short-term or vacation rentals in Paris targeting foreigners, tourists who expect things to work perfectly to get their money’s worth showed that there were some benefits to requiring quality service.

Another change in the law, which has been described as minor but in reality is huge, is that the walk-through (état des lieux) at the beginning and end of a tenancy must now follow a strict procedure involving the filling out of a special new form. This is an effort to eliminate the classic speedy walk-through when the tenant moves in, where everything is described as in perfect or good condition without really examining the state of the rooms. The change will not eliminate complete bad faith on the part of landlords, but since it forces the use of a detailed form signed by both parties, it offers as a starting point an opportunity to go down the list and look at the condition of the floors, ceilings and walls. With the new walk-through form comes an even longer list of mandatory tests, les diagnostics, also applied to furnished rentals.

One last thing to mention, one that came from a purely political decision, is an attempt to monitor the amount of rent paid in an effort to regulate this in terms of market price. We are all waiting to see what the procedure will be, and many have expressed serious doubt that it will actually work. As a Frenchman, I am not automatically against government regulation, since this is the way France functions, but I do not see how a new monitoring body can have more power than the law of supply and demand. So I just hope it will facilitate catching the most unscrupulous landlords, which would be an improvement.

In a next issue, I will address the new rules that the law imposes regarding buying real estate.

A NEW NUMBER FOR THE PARIS PREFECTURE
Foreigners living in Paris who want to change their immigration status can only get an appointment by making a telephone call. The complaint I hear very often is that getting anyone to pick up is virtually impossible. I find it very hard myself, even when I hit the redial button as soon as I hear the busy signal. In May, the Paris préfecture made the system more difficult still, combining the information and appointment services with only one number for both. I have not tried the new number yet, but my guess is that the office is still vastly understaffed for the volume of calls received. Here is the new number: 01.56.95.26.80. Be very patient, and equally stubborn, if you need to call in the near future.

SOME OF MY SERVICE FEES WILL GO UP IN SEPTEMBER
My fee structure involves more than just the initial retainer and an hourly rate. It includes other fees for specific services, and I have not increased their rates for about 10 years. When I first started, I calculated how much time the tasks would take, on average, but the correlation no longer exists. Therefore I will increase the following fees starting on September 1st:

– Handling mail in my office: from 20 to 30 euros per month.

– Handling mail received at my home: from 30 to 40 euros per month

– Surcharge for out-of-office meetings: from 20 to 30 euros.

I am also raising the only flat fee I charge, for obtaining full residency status as an employee in France. In such cases the employer pays me to do the complete procedure, so the prospective employee gets the right to work as an employee, then the long-term visa and finally the carte de séjour. My fee for this procedure will rise from 800€ HT/1.000€ TTC to 1,167€ HT/1,400€ TTC.

OFFICE TO CLOSE FOR SUMMER VACATION
My office will be closed from the evening of Friday July 25th until 9AM on Monday August 25th. As always, I will be reachable by email for emergencies and important matters. The service I offer of receiving mail for clients will continue while the office is closed. I will let individual clients know how to receive or retrieve their mail during this period.

As usual, there will be no August issue.

Best regards,

QUESTION

FIGHTING NOTICE GIVEN BY THE LANDLORD

I have been a tenant in my Parisian apartment for decades and have been enjoying it. The building has changed ownership several times, from being owned by a single old man then by an S.C.I. Société Civile Immobilière. Recently my apartment changed owners again and it now belongs to the son of the initial owner.
About three years ago, the son, as the manager of the S.C.I., gave notice for the apartment just above mine so that his son, the grandson of the original owner, could move in. I told the tenant that such a notice done by an S.C.I. was illegal, but nothing was done. This young adult moved in and stayed no more than a couple of months. Then a new tenant came in. Now the place is empty. I recently received a similar notice, stating that the same son wants to move into my apartment. Clearly this is a scam.
I saw a lawyer, who told me that it is impossible to stop a landlord from evicting in this situation since everything is being done legally this time. I want to fight this crook big time. Can French lawyers fight this kind of case in court?

QUESTION

A THIRD WAY TO DISMISS AN EMPLOYEE – RUPTURE CONVENTIONNELLE

After obtaining a French master’s in marketing, I accepted a low position as a junior graphic designer in an advertisement agency, for lack of better offers. I quickly hit it off with my immediate boss and I was allowed to work on more sophisticated projects, and I put in some very long hours at the office. He told me that he would ask senior management and HR to upgrade my position to cadre (management) status and redesign my job description.
I took a three-week vacation earlier this year, and when I came back, my immediate boss had been fired. So I went to see his boss, and the discussion turned very sour very quickly. All I got was a cold thank you for the passionate work I did, but my job description was never changed and I do not qualify for the so-called promised promotion. I hate them now. Even worse, they turned my workmates against me. I call this being harassed and persecuted. So I complained to my new boss, who hates me, and to HR, which answered that my disappointment created all this and I should fix my attitude. About a week ago, I told HR that I wanted a rupture conventionnelle, and therefore they should start the paperwork. They answered that this was not on offer but I could resign any time and they would accept it.

Now I want to report them to the authorities for harassment on the job, to get them to realize that what are doing is illegal. Do you think it is a good idea?

The album A Space in Time was released in August 1971 by the British blues-rock band Ten Years After. I am a fan of the music of this period, as you can tell from the number of issues that take their titles from it.

This month I continue to address the statement I made last month that France, as a nation, « runs on grey » by sharing a couple of interesting comments I received. The « grey » French way of life can also be defined as getting some space or tolerance to make things happen. Foreigners have a hard time understanding when this grey area is available. It is clearly possible to negotiate before any definitive decision is made; after that, the official process starts which seals a given situation. Several foreigners have experienced this while submitting their requests submitted to the préfecture or the consulate.

One of the illustrations there is of what I mean by France, as a nation, « runs on grey » is, in effect, the use of this “wiggle space” at the right time, not too early and not too late. That is how I came up with this month’s title.

TWO READER’S COMMENTS : ON FRANCE, AS A NATION, « RUNS ON GREY »
1. As one who has lived between France and SE Asia (Malaysia and Indonesia) I am quite comfortable with grey, but I find so many others, particularly Americans, very uncomfortable with not doing something that they believe the law says. Of course, most Americans are naive about their own country and its history, yet they have trouble releasing these feelings and hence get frustrated with life abroad. Well done, Sir.

2. Fascinating. Do the bureaucrats have a school to go to, to learn how to be « grey »?
MY RESPONSE
My answer to the latter question could be,  French people learn « grey » from the cradle onwards! Every aspect of French life has a « grey » aspect. French children generally learn “grey” first at home, then in kindergarten.

In French, it’s called le système D, where D stands for « débrouille. » A reasonable translation of this would be artfulness, since it has a somewhat devious connotation.

Interestingly, the specific training French civil servants get, focuses exclusively on the technical aspects of a job and explains little if anything about management, team cohesion, or problem-solving techniques, since individuals do not count only the system matters.

READER’S COMMENT ON FRENCH BANKS
My introduction
This is an interesting comment since it comes from a senior lawyer. Even this legally-trained reader acknowledges signing documents without reading everything, and discovers that unpleasant consequences can follow. It might not make people feel any better to learn that this reader got treated in a « slimy » way and could even be challenged. Indeed, should an employee’s loyalty be with the employer or the client? Until recently this question was not conceivable in the USA. More and more often, clients are confronted with situations that give the impression that customer satisfaction is nothing more than a slogan in commercials aired on TV. This is true in France, and increasingly in the USA as well.

THE COMMENT
Just as your column came out, I was writing a short note to my charge de clientèle, who phoned me for an appointment to get to know me usually a banking euphemism for trying to sell you another product.

After nice beginnings, things turned sour for me when I made payments to the US FICA/SSA as a freelancer in the 1980s. My instructions clearly indicated that the bank, which issued the check and sent it directly to the IRS from NY, should put my SS number on the check. At the time of signing the request for the third transfer, I thought to ask the clerk (the same one as for the others) to make sure that the SS number would be on the check. « Ah, no, » she replied, « that’s not possible on a French check; there’s no space. » Well, having used French checks for more than a decade, I knew that that wasn’t true. I reassured myself by asking whether my order was in fact transferred to their agent bank in NY, in which case they «  as Americans or at least US-based »  would certainly know the importance of putting the SS number on the check. Yes, she said.

Well, a few months later when I was back in the bank, the same clerk said, « Oh, Mr. xx, this message in English came in a while ago; it might have to do with your transfers. » Indeed, the IRS was asking my bank from whom these payments were coming, and they requested a reply by a certain date, which had already gone by. And of course the clerk hadn’t thought to use a telephone to call a client whom she knew well. (She wasn’t my chargée de clientèle.) I managed to clear up the matter, and soon moved my major account to another bank, Citi, later to be disappointed by them. As banks do.

But I maintained accounts there because a checking account is supposedly free if you keep a positive balance (not true nowadays), and the chargée de clientèle had had me buy into a couple of privatizations of 1986-88 (public corporations going privately owned), which were being held at their bank. So I continued to use this bank to participate, very marginally, in privatizations as they came up. Even when my bank wrote to me about various things related to my stockholdings at their bank, the letters always said to contact my branch for further information. On the few occasions when I did this, the agency said they didn’t know what I was talking about, and would I please fax them the letter from their own bank.

After a while, they started charging droits de garde for the stock that they « helped » me buy. In fact, their advice was wrong on one particular privatization, when I told them I wanted 100 shares, got eight, and was told that if I wanted 100 I should have asked for 1000 or more. That’s the kind of advice one would like from a bank that’s charging you for holding your shares.

After several complaints about paying a quarterly fee for a checking account and droits de garde (except on the shares of the bank), they finally came up with a « solution » for me which was to change the other shares into SICAVs issued by the bank, for which there would be no droits de garde. But they « forgot » to say that the droits d’entrée for purchasing the SICAVs was equal to about 1.5% of the value, or about two years of droits de garde for a 1275 purchase. The same week, my US bank, which holds shares and makes purchases and sales following advice from my local financial adviser, bought a bunch of mutual fund shares and the charge was $9 for about a $22,000 purchase.

In any case, my new chargée de clientèle had been quick to point out my savings on droits de garde, without informing me of the droits d’entrée, whoops! And, as to the charges for keeping a checking account (where I almost never draw checks), she’d cut that in half for one year, she said, but couldn’t promise more.

As you point out, there were forms of long texts to sign for this, and somewhere in there was certainly this thing about droits d’entrée. I nearly joked with her as I was signing the various pages, along the lines of Of course, I’ve read all this before signing. But I refrained from making that « joke. » I have just sent her a note, though thanking her for her welcome and advice (on avoiding droits de garde), but pointing out the difference in acquiring shares between the cost in the US and in France, adding that this might perhaps explain French aversion to being share owners, whereas Americans (50%) are quite happy to own stock. Oh, well.

THE FRENCH LOCAL TAX – TAXE D’HABITATION
There is a lot to say about the local tax since it is tied to so many things. This tax is levied on the primary or secondary residence of the inhabitant on January first and must be paid for the entire year. It is not paid on resorts, vacation places, or hotels. The primary residence is supposed to be the one mentioned on the previous year’s French income tax declaration. On the first page, there is a box to declare if the taxpayer moved before January 1st and a different one if a move occurred after that date. This is the most common way the tax authorities determine whom to tax for which lodging.

As often, everyday life rarely fits those forms. My daughter finished her bachelor’s degree last September with an exchange program between her French school and a university in the USA. She had rented a studio for the previous years and we paid her taxe d’habitation for the years she was there on January 1st. It happens that the second semester started on January 3rd so she left Rennes, where she went to school, on December 23rd to celebrate Christmas with us, and left France on Dec 27th and did not go back to Rennes for school for the rest of the year except for two days in June for administrative issues. As a young adult who was very rushed to get everything done, she did not terminate her lease and give the keys back to the landlord. On January 14th my wife did the inspection of the place and turned turned in the keys.

When the 2013 taxe d’habitation bill came, I contested it, providing the plane ticket, the registration with the American university and her transcripts. Clearly she did not have her primary or even secondary residence in Rennes. The tax office asked me for the état des lieux de sortie, which is the final walk-through document, and the last electricity or phone bill. Since this happened in January 2013, my request was denied because my daughter had kept the usage of this place and she could have come back to it regardless of the distance.

As often happens with French administrative decisions, at the end of the letter there was an explanation of the various ways of appealing the decision. I chose the most amicable one, writing to the conciliateur fiscal, a mediator, who is part of the French tax administration. My strongest argument was that my daughter had taken everything that belonged to her out of the studio so how could it be her residence? After a while, I got a positive answer. Nevertheless, the opposite argument was just about as valid: as long as the landlord does not have the keys back, the tenant keeps the ultimate right to use the place.

The sticky issues with this tax are most often related to moving in late December or early January, especially for those who move out of France. Indeed, anyone who moves within France does not mind paying for such a short occupation of one residence, since the new one is exempted until the following year.

FRENCH INTERNET PROVIDERS
This is another of those situations where the client feels trapped, and rightfully so. Most Internet contracts are for either one or two years, and the client cannot get out of the contract without severe penalties. According to the providers logic, clients do not need to terminate the contract even when they move to a new home.

The main penalty is having to pay, in one lump sum, the monthly fees until the end of the contract. So, changing providers becomes costly unless you are patient and focused enough to do it at the right time.

There are several legitimate reasons to cancel your contract without penalty, but the client has to prove, the French way, his or her compliance with these. The most common grounds are:

• 1 – Moving to a foreign country
• 2 – Bankruptcy (surendettement).
• 3 – Unemployment
• 4 – Long-term medical care

Each provider has its own contract that offers more or fewer of such conditions. So you should read the contract very carefully before giving notice, which must be done by registered letter. When this exceptional request is approved, the notice period only lasts for ten days from the day the letter arrives. Then there is the issue of returning the equipment to the company, when often the client has left France by then. The alternative is to terminate the contract several weeks before departure to take into account the ten-day period plus the postal delay for sending a registered letter and receipt of the documentation the company sends so the equipment can be sent back.

The real problem involves what each provider expects as proof, especially for moving out of France. Some ask simply for a document that proves the use of an address in another country, such as a utility bill or a bank statement. Others, including Orange, ask for proof less than three months old, establishing not just that you have secured the address but that you actually live there such as the first page of the IRS 1040 form. Bringing this proof when you are in the process of moving back to the USA, for example, is impossible; it takes a few months to gather these types of documents and sometimes longer if you are staying with friends or family members at first, which happens quite often.

In other words, these corporations are violating their own contracts by making it almost impossible to comply with the level of requirements they have established. The client moving out of France needs to determine what is the cheapest and simplest thing to do: pay for the contract until its expiration date or have the residency in the USA fully secured at least a couple of months before moving there.

American internet providers do not have a good reputation, and the French ones are not really much better. Through my clients I have some experience with several of them when it comes to cancellation, and there is a wide range in the quality of their services.

Best regards,

QUESTION

ANY TOLERANCE WHEN SPEEDING IN FRANCE

Anne-Claire Bocage, founder of www.MyAmericanMarket.com, an online grocery for hard-to-find American products in France, asked me about four years ago if she could publish excerpts from my column in the MyAM newsletter. I received this question through her.

I got a ticket for doing 91 km/h in a 90-km/h zone. Isn’t there any margin at all? Can this be contested? Seems pretty ridiculous as I thought I was doing exactly 90 (according to the setting on my cruise control).

QUESTION

LENGTH OF STAY ON THE VISA APPLICATION BOX #27

I am an American and I am getting ready to ask for a long-stay visa to come to France. Does it matter what we put in box 27? We intend to stay only five or six months each year. Maybe I should check the box that says six months to one year?

QUESTION

CARTE DE SEJOUR COMMERCANT & K-BIS

I work for a small multinational and I have been appointed the Senior Manager of the French branch located in Paris. I asked for a long-stay visa at the French consulate in Chicago, and after several trips there, waiting a long while and giving an impressive amount of documents, I finally got it. Upon my arrival in France, I had to redo exactly the same thing, giving the same documents but this time to the préfecture. The French staff helped some. I thought the last meeting would be the final one but the préfecture stated that I needed to come once again with an updated K-Bis. I do not get it  the current one has my name on it and the address of the company’s headquarters in France where my office is. What more do they want?

« A Horse with No Name » is a song written and first recorded by the British band America. It was released in early 1972.
The lyrics are very poetic and describe an epic journey in a desert. This line is repeated numerous times through out the song: In the desert you can to remember your name
I associate dealing with the French administration and numerous other large French corporations with being confronted with the desert. This comes from the sense of dryness, the absence of human connection, the frightening feeling of dealing with an organization of gigantic size that moves with a lot of power.
Almost all the topics this month are related to this aspect of French life. There are objective reasons why the initial contact is so cold and distant, why the service rendered feels so overwhelmingly anonymous.
At the same time, we have all at least once experienced unexpected relief at the moment when a civil servant steps out of his glacial attitude and becomes really helpful, showing care and concern, becoming surprisingly eager to fix the problem, to find the solution, even asking his colleagues, who are also happy to get involved. These people are now functioning under the “French grey area rule” – strict compliance with the regulations is temporarily not applicable.
France, as a nation runs on grey, which is very scary for foreigners who can only feel safe when they know that they are obeying the law. France needs a minimum of informal flexibility and, currently, this can only come with a “grey” approach.
Mastering the art of living safely in the grey area is an essential skill to acquire in order to enjoy the beauties associated with a certain « joie de vivre » in France, and, therefore, with the French way of life.
Until then, foreigners often find themselves obliged to listen very carefully, while waiting anxiously to be called, hoping to remember how the French pronounce their names or the numbers they are holding as they wait for their appointments.
My last issue spurred a lot of vehement reactions of very different kinds badmouthing the French banking system, standing with the French against the French bashing that Americans often do, and so on. I chose one negative and one positive to illustrate this as well as to show how misconceptions can be hurtful.

READER AS COMMENT ON FRENCH BANKS
“I always enjoy your explanations of French ways that so mystify the Anglophone. This time, however, you’ve done your countrymen a great disservice.

“In justifying the way this man’s bank handled his rental security deposit, you state that a caution through a bank is simply a lien on an asset. So far, so good. Next, you say the bank charges a fee for providing this service. Fine. But that is where it all falls apart.

“Fees should be clearly spelled out in any documentation. And, a lien is simply a legal document that requires no ongoing management. Presumably, then, the fee for a bank to handle a caution should be a nominal, one-time charge. Whatever the fee was, it should have been made clear at the outset and there should have been no surprise at the back end.

“You rationalize what happened to this tenant by saying expressly that as far as the bank was concerned,; everybody knows how the system really works so they didn’t need to tell him. On that basis we can rationalize all manner of mischief, can’t we? Anyway, this man was obviously a foreigner. If his language skills weren’t a dead giveaway, how about the fact that he needed the bank to handle his caution in the first place? A bank is a highly sophisticated institution. Caveat emptor doesn’t wash here.

“Perhaps if you are French and understand how French banks really work then you are better equipped to deal with this sort of situation … although as you point out it’s a situation a French person by definition would never encounter. But you are far more sophisticated than the average French person. Dollars to donuts (as we Americans say), the average French person would have no idea the money they understood to be safely on deposit was actually being placed in a CD or money market fund at risk of personal loss to them.

“The facts presented by this man are that he requested no investment, and that the contract specified no investment. You are arguing that the contract didn’t really mean what it said because, well, this is France and everybody here knows that things work differently. Is that the message you really wanted to convey?”

MY RESPONSE
The origin of this painful situation was that this foreigner did indeed sign documents that he/she did not understand. This is a bad thing to do and everybody knows it. However, almost daily we engage in contractual agreements that we have not read, and therefore we operate on pure assumption. Most of the time, this does not create serious problems because the odds are that nothing bad will happen and the normal line of action is simple, not to say basic. Think of going to the grocery store and walking out after having paid for what you wanted to buy: in 90% of cases this is all you need to know. The same thing can be said about, using public transportation, ATM machines, phones, etc. The truth is that we all live in societies where business agreements are neither negotiated nor signed. The few times there is a real need for signature, the common thing done by huge corporations is to give you a form to sign with clauses on the back in small print that are virtually impossible to grasp even by an average native speaker. A foreigner in such a case is totally trapped unless someone goes over the clauses and explains them. The professional should do this in order to be fair, but how often is this done?

Therefore, I can easily see how this client of the bank signed, trusting the professional working there, without checking anything for him or herself.

Now, the most fundamental jobs of a bank are to safeguard the money clients deposit in their accounts, and to lend money to clients who need it. The loan can be secured or unsecured. This is banking 101. Ever since the first bank was created, this is what the banking industry has done. A bank guaranty is nothing more than a promise to pay money in certain circumstances, the promise being secured by a lien, on the car, or on a portfolio, or a mortgage, which is the specific one for real estate. The bank guaranty is a mechanism very close to a loan. There is nothing complicated here for a bank. The client may be confused because this is not commonly done for individuals. The best way I can explain this is by using the comparison with buying a car with borrowed money. As long as you pay, you keep the car. Should you stop paying the loan, the car is repossessed. That is what a secured loan is.

I am really not sure that the client had a problem with this set-up as such. He/she understood the lien and the need to leave money in the bank. I believe that what he/she did not understand was that the bank charged a fee every year, a tiny percentage of the amount of the guaranty, and that the money would not be in a traditional savings account but invested in a mutual fund, called a SICAV in French.

To specifically address your question:
The facts presented by this man are that he requested no investment, and that the contract specified no investment. You are arguing that the contract didn’t really mean what it said because, well, this is France and everybody here knows that things work differently. Is that the message you really wanted to convey?

What I am saying is that a bank in France offers a range of services that Americans are not used to, even though the evolution in the USA is going in that direction. This means that at your local branch in France, the client has access to all basic banking services, and can also trade on any market, give instructions to the portfolio manager, invest in mutual funds, invest in annuities, and buy homeowner, health and car insurance policies. Most foreigners do not expect such a large range of services to be available at a local branch. Furthermore, in our case, the client never gave written instructions not to invest money, and I am sure that the bank had given this client all the documents needed to set everything up and that all the information was there, provided the client had the ability and the time to read all the fine print.

So yes, it is very clear that, for numerous things, things are done differently in France, just as in most countries.

The message I wanted to convey when choosing this topic was that getting all the information is critical for foreigners living in France, or any other foreign country, for that matter. Making assumptions in a foreign country is an extremely dangerous thing to do. This sad situation would have never happened if the client, before signing, had asked all the questions needed to understand the mechanics and the steps that a bank takes to implement a bank guaranty in France.

SECOND READER IS COMMENT REGARDING PARDON MY FRENCH
Thanks as always for your great column. I read this one with great interest because I often hear this expression in the USA. This drives me crazy because it perpetuates an unfair stereotype of the French. My husband and I purchased a home in Menton two years ago and plan to retire here just under 6 months every year. The rest of the time we live in Florida. We have found our experiences with the French to be wonderful. From visiting our bank, to working with our real estate agent, to renovating our apartment while still living 5000 miles away in the USA, we have had great experiences. Sure, once in a while we encounter a rude person, but that certainly happens in the US as well. It is the exception rather than the rule.

For the past several years, whenever someone says pardon my French to me, I stop them in their tracks by simply saying, I did not know you spoke French and then I start speaking to them in French. It really makes them think twice about what they are saying. Sometimes folks just do this out of habit, other times out of ignorance. Either way, it is wrong and I hope someday this will stop. After all, imagine if people said, Pardon my English prior to using an expletive – Americans and Brits would be up in arms!

Keep up the great work on your column! And no, you have nothing to apologize for in being French. The French are magnifique!

Best regards,

QUESTION

NO NAME TAGS IN FRANCE WHY?

It’s always with great interest that I read your newsletters. They are very informative. One small question that you may want to address in the future: why are French employees always so reluctant to give out their names? They often look offended and will refuse to do so. I always like to keep track of people’s name for my records and, as you know, it’s a very common practice in the US. In fact, many employees have name-tags, which is probably illegal in France  French employees may not want to give out their names but if you call back and say, “someone in your office or on the phone told me ,”, they will immediately ask you “Qui vous a dit ça ?” = Who told you that?

QUESTION

WHO MANAGES FRENCH RETIREMENT FUNDS?

It’s always with great interest that I read your newsletters. They are very informative.I have been working in France for a large corporation for several years now and once in a while I receive documents I do not understand. A couple of times I asked my colleagues what it was and their answer was,It is for your retirement, without any more explanation. My problem is that it comes from many different sources. I have identified two, C.N.A.V., and Malakoff Médéric. The last thing is that my employer opened a bank account without my permission, and I get a statement once a year. I still cannot make any sense of all this. Can you help?

First of all, I would like to wish all of you a very happy and prosperous 2014! French custom dictates that New Year is wishes can be expressed until the end of January, so I have managed it a few hours before the deadline.
Most English speakers know the expression I have used as my title. This is what Wikipedia says about it:
Pardon my French  or  Excuse my French  is a common English language phrase ostensibly disguising profanity as French. The phrase is uttered in an attempt to excuse the user of profanity or curses in the presence of those offended by it under the pretense of the words being part of a foreign language.”
A possible meaning is suggested on phrases.org.uk, which suggests that the phrase derives from a literal usage of the exclamation. In the 19th century, when English people used French expressions in conversation they often apologized for it presumably because many of their listeners (then as now) wouldn’t be familiar with the language. The definition cites an example from The Lady’s Magazine, 1830:
Bless me, how fat you are grown! absolutely as round as a ball: you will soon be as embonpoint (excuse my French) as your poor dear father, the major. Embonpoint  is French for plumpness; state of being well-nourished.

Most English speakers know the expression I’ve used as my title. This is what Wikipedia says about it:

I want to take this meaning a step further, especially thinking of the very long and quite complex Q/A of this month. Such bashing of French people makes me feel that maybe I should apologize for being French. In the mind of the person writing the question, being French ends up being a kind of profanity. The legal question in itself is not that complex. What makes the writer react so emotionally is rudeness on the part of the French professionals concerned and an almost total lack of reliable information.

I just hope most of my readers pardon me for being French no matter how much France may get on their nerves once the initial honeymoon years are over.

MORE LENIENT RULES BUT HARSHER EVALUATION OF FILES AT THE PREFECTURE
Since January 1st 2014, citizens of two of the poorer European Union countries, Romania and Bulgaria, have had full rights to work in any capacity throughout the EU, after seven years in which France and several other EU countries imposed transitional rules limiting those rights.

At the same time, people submitting requests at the prefecture are getting the feeling that obtaining work and/or residency papers is harder, that the civil servants are more demanding, that even when the file is exactly the same as it was last year, the prefecture now finds the documentation to be incomplete. I admit that I expected the civil servants to take a more understanding attitude after the May 2012 election of a more liberal government. The reality is that the prefecture is now interpreting the regulations more strictly. There is nothing personal in this, even though many people trying to get or maintain their immigration status in France feel they have been singled out and victimized.

The case of one of my clients provides an illustration. Until recently, only people on welfare, such as those benefitting from the type of public health coverage called CMU complementaire  available for people who earn less than 8,000 euros a year were automatically refused any request for immigration. All other social aid programs were considered part of normal life; indeed, some of them are available to high-income people. Everybody assumed that receiving most types of social aid was part of the system in France and that there was nothing wrong with this. So I was quite surprised to learn that a branch of a Paris suburban prefecture had decided that someone on maternity leave, receiving a subsidy to compensate for the absence of the normal salary, had a precarious status not compatible with securing residency in France. When you know how workers are protected in France and what a strong obligation French employers have to take back employees after maternity leave, even if it lasts more than a year, this does not sound reasonable at all. I do not know all the ins and outs of the situation, as I was not there, so this may have been just an initial effort to avoid dealing with an odd request which happens way too often, both at the prefecture and more generally. In France, when one doesn’t know the answer to a question, the tendency is to reply No, that s not possible instead of I don t know. This is why I advise foreigners never to trust an initial No : they should challenge it by checking at a different time or with a different person, and so on.

A few days later I was able to help a client, an American citizen, faced with a similar situation. The person arrived at a branch of the Paris pre fecture at about 9AM, the opening hour, and the line was extremely long. It was 11AM when my client entered the building, and 12:05PM when this American reached the reception desk. This is an idea of the conversation that followed.
Preecture:  What are you here for?

Client:  To submit a request based on an illegal stay of ten years in France.

Prefecture: Sorry, those requests are only accepted in the morning. It s past noon. Come back tomorrow.

Client:  But I was here at 9AM.

Prefecture: Show me your passport. You can t submit this request anyway you left France last July. Next!

That was it. So my client asked me to come.

At 2:15PM, when the civil servant was back from her lunch break, I checked with her to see if she was the person who spoke to my client. She said yes. I explained that in my client s situation, leaving France last July was irrelevant. That started a short conversation, which ended with, OK, go upstairs and meet with the manager. Within minutes, my client had the file reviewed and could expect to receive an appointment confirmation in the mail.

Putting these two situations back to back illustrates very well that requests are really reviewed case by case, and a response can come out of the blue, leaving one unsure if this is because of a true change in the regulations or an attempt to push away an odd request as those for regularization so often are.

NEW WAYS TO DECLARE PAYING AN EMPLOYEE THROUGH THE CESU PROGRAM
The system called ch que emploi-service universel (CESU) was created to discourage payments under the table for work done in the home by undeclared people such as nannies, cleaning ladies or tutors. The regulation French payslip is so complex that it requires an accounting degree to understand how it is set up and professional accounting software to issue it, with all the mandatory taxes and deductions. Since private individuals found it next to impossible to issue proper payslips, their employees were not declared. CESU was established to fight this situation, with two attractive features.

The first was a special checkbook comprising checks for the employee and easy-to-complete vouchers about the number of hours worked and net salary paid. With this information, URSSAF could issue payslips to the employee after calculating the taxes and deductions the employer needed to pay.

The second feature was that the total amount paid in salary and taxes became a tax credit for the employer, so the final cost was significantly reduced. This provision was the true incentive, which made CESU very popular.

Now the special checkbooks and vouchers have disappeared, so the only way to declare is through a special URSSAF website. The main consequence is that there is no more obligation to pay the employee by check it now can be a wire or even in cash. The tax credit is not as good as it used to be, but it still there.

One incidental aspect of this change is that people without a French social security number can be paid this way, since the new software allows the employer to declare the amount paid using the employee s date and location of birth (the French social security number is composed almost exclusively of information related to the date and location of birth). Consequently, the CESU system does not identify employees who are undocumented aliens.

Of course, it is illegal to employ and pay undocumented aliens. This must be stated again and again. However, the penalty for not paying the taxes related to an employee s salary is much higher than the penalty for employing an undocumented alien. Between these two risks, paying the taxes on the salary is the best way to limit the liability in this situation. Furthermore, a regulation issued on November 28th 2012, the circulaire Valls, defines the requirements for undocumented aliens to obtain legal status in France. They include being able to prove that one has worked for several months or several years, depending the situation.

So yes, hiring an undocumented alien is a felony, but the entire French legal system makes it a small problem compared to the various benefits linked to declaring and paying taxes for this employee: i.e., for the employer, the tax saving, and for the employee, proving the reality and the seniority of the employment.

This might seem to be completely illogical in that an illegal deed creates some benefits for the parties involved. But the French government picked its fight: it prefers the taxes to be paid rather than trying to totally stop illegal immigration. Furthermore, for about twenty years French law has created the right to obtain legal status even as an undocumented alien. All the conservative governments that have ruled France for over ten years have not stopped this, but just changed the requirements, making it either easier or harder. The message France sends to undocumented aliens staying in France can be seen as, Behave like a good resident, work honestly, pay your taxes, put your children in school, and you will be rewarded with legal status in France. Once one looks at the situation this way, the logic of the system becomes a lot easier to follow.

FRENCH INCOME TAX REMINDER
French income tax is generally paid in three installments: on February 15th, May 15th and September 15th. Everyone should have received the applicable tax statement by now. If you have not received it, but you know that you owe French income tax in 2013, you must pay the required amount, which is one-third of the total tax you paid on your 2012 revenue. Errors made by the French tax authorities never exempt the individual from complying with the law.

Best regards,

QUESTION

BANK GUARANTEE FOR FOREIGNERS RENTING IN FRANCE

Help! Why do some owners want a twelve-month caution when renting through a real-estate agency? What follows is the explanation of why I am asking the question.
Our first apartment in France required a caution. We paid it. The setting up of the caution involved me, our real estate agent and our bank representative, who was the caution expert at the bank branch where we first opened our checking account. This expert spoke very good English.
The owner of our apartment provided us with a letter stating the amount that she wanted the caution to be. It was 10 months of rent. All went well, the contract was generated and the bank representatives signed it, as did I and the real estate agency. I asked the bank expert if I would, indeed, get all of the caution back. He told me, yes, I would get it all back (the law required it, he said). Subsequently I asked our real estate agent when I could get the caution returned and he told me only when we vacated the apartment. I was also told, at the bank, that the caution had nothing to do with possible damage claims by the owner and was only for paying unpaid rent.
One question the bank representatives asked me was if I wanted the caution money invested. I told them no, do not invest the money. The contract stated (they showed me where) that the money would not be invested.
About a week after the contract was signed I received a letter from our bank stating that, without asking me if they could do this, they had taken additional funds from my checking account to apply toward the caution. What they took without asking me was around 3,500 euros! I went to the bank and talked with the caution expert and asked him why the bank had taken this money. He told me he did not know but he would inquire and get back to me. A day or two later he called and said it was to cover possible changes in the rent. I asked him if I would get all of these funds back, too, and he said yes.
We had the caution for the four years we lived in that apartment. I had spoken with people who told me that a caution should be returned within three years and they had never heard of cautions lasting for the entire time one lived in an apartment. We met Americans who had received their cautions back from one to three years after they had rented. One woman whose rent (and caution) were relatively large had told her bank to go ahead and invest the money and at the end of three years her bank contacted her and returned the caution with the investment return of around 20,000 euros! Her bank was not our bank.
After four years we were evicted when the owner decided to sell the apartment. I went and talked with our bank representative about when we would get our caution back after we vacated our apartment. This was a different bank person than the expert, who had moved on to another location. I received a letter (it may have been an email) from the bank stating that we would get our caution back when the real estate agent provided me with the paperwork stating that the apartment had been vacated. The amount the bank was going to return to me, the contact said, was an amount that I noted was about 1,300 euros LESS than what I had given the bank, in total, for the caution.
In my attempts to discover what happened to my money I finally went and spoke to our new (to me) bank representative with a friend who spoke fluent French. My friend and the bank representative had a long conversation in French. The bank person told my friend that although the bank and the contract had told me that my caution funds would not be invested, they in fact were invested. The bank person told my friend that NO MATTER WHAT THE BANK SAID OR WHAT THE CONTRACT SAID, THE BANK ALWAYS INVESTS THE CAUTION MONEY! The investment lost money. The bank person told us that while the bank was required to return all of the caution funds it was clear that the bank was not going to do that. The bank person told my friend that, yes, you were being cheated and she was sorry but there was little that I could do about it, nor could she. And that is what happened. Our bank cheated us. That is our caution experience and my French bank experience.
Our present owner did not want a caution, or a lease. He is an accountant; he has been an excellent landlord and we, of course, are excellent tenants. When I told him about our caution experience with a French bank, our new owner said, Jim, always remember this fact: WHEN IT COMES TO MONEY, NEVER TRUST THE FRENCH! I suspect that it is good advice.
Now our present owner must sell this apartment so we must find a new place to live and, of course, owners who deal through the real estate agencies always want a caution. I had an opportunity a few years ago to talk with a woman who had once been a real estate broker here in Paris. She told me that the original purpose of the caution, to protect owners, was a good thing but it had degenerated into a racket complete with bank kickbacks to the agents. Considering that our previous bank essentially stole some of my money (and the fact that our agent did everything he could, for no apparent reason, to delay our getting the caution returned to us and we finally had to contact the owner, who kindly told the agent to release the caution immediately), I am left with little choice but to believe that the caution is, indeed, a racket.