Into The Fire

Take the trouble to decide the things you do
Will not be the things that don’t appeal to you
See the mess you’re makin’ can’t you see you’re fakin’
Gonna make it hard for you, you’re gonna–into the fire

Turn on the mandrake that was given to you
See if you can make it like the others do
Feel the blood a knockin’ when you’re finger poppin’
Gonna make it hard for you, you’re gonna–into the fire

Stop your bleeding mind before it’s over and done
Listen very closely to the message I’ve sung
Feel the blood a knockin’ when you’re finger poppin’
Gonna get a message through, you’re gonna–into the fire

Deep Purple in Rock is the fourth studio album by the English rock band Deep Purple, released on 5 June 1970. “Into the Fire” is the second song on the album. I still listen to some of this band’s albums, which I have on my hard disk.

When choosing the title, I was thinking of the massive devastation in Hawaii and the huge wildfires continuing in Canada, California and parts of southern Europe, including France. Such fires are increasingly dangerous, killing a lot of people. Many of the survivors lose everything, all the belongings of a lifetime. It may be reaching a point where it will be difficult to rebuild what was lost and get people to move back. Some of the photographs from Hawaii show devastation that looks more like bombing than fire damage.

September is back-to-school time. In France, la rentrée also means back to work. I hope you all had a nice summer. As I write, France is going through one of several summer heat waves. Some of them have broken records. I am lucky that my office stays cooler than the outside temperature even at the worst time of day.

France used to completely shut down for the entire month of August. This was called “Sleeping Beauty syndrome.” Although long-term residents may notice that each year it is increasingly business as usual in August, a nonchalant ambiance still reigns in Paris during the month.

I have not yet heard any discussion of a rentrée sociale, i.e., whatever actions the unions and the government plan to take in the fall. The COVID crisis changed this pattern, as it did so much else, to the point that many talk about a new normal.

A few things indicate to me that there could be a rentrée sociale this year as a reaction to some government decisions made this summer. There may be strikes and large demonstrations this fall, giving the impression that France is falling back into the fire.

The lyrics of the song could be describing what is going to happen, and maybe not just in France; there is reason to believe some court procedures may ignite some unrest in the USA.

At the end of the summer vacation, we should feel rested and enthusiastic for getting back to work. This year it feels gloomy. I hope I am wrong in my analysis.

THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT TAKES ACTION AGAINST FAKE SICK LEAVE
Proposed legislation to reduce fraudulent sick leave illustrates the power struggle between employee and employer, which is mainly about working conditions. French unions have lost a lot of representation in small and midsize corporations. Their presence in multinationals has also dwindled significantly, so employees are now often alone in an uneven power struggle. Remember that being an employee in France is by definition to be a subordinate, following le lien de subordination. This leaves little room for disagreement and confrontation. It is true that French employee status is heavily protected, but mostly this covers only causes and procedures for dismissal. Thus there is a fine line between passive job security and the risk of being dismissed for challenging an employer’s authority.

To balance this uneven relationship, employees often have recourse to sick leave. It may be the only way to disrupt the employer’s organization enough to force changes that benefit the employee. It is a way, in fact, to limit employers’ strength. An employee on sick leave cannot be fired for that reason and must be replaced with a temp. Temporary employment costs more and disrupts the organization. If the employee gets the sick leave certification renewed by the doctor several times, it aggravates the employer’s situation.

Calling such sick leave fraudulent is a serious accusation against the medical profession. In fact, the way I have described such leave above could be read as lying about an illness and making a medical doctor an accomplice to a fraud. But doctors exist to treat medical conditions. While completely fake sick leave may sometimes happen, and crooks are now operating criminal schemes, I believe the French government is slandering the French medical profession by proposing this legislation. Deplorable working conditions can lead to burnout, which is a medical condition. Here is what is at stake: Employers claim that employees get sick leave too easily when their conditions do not warrant it. Employees argue that what employers consider “normal working conditions” these days are in fact toxic environments in which it does not take long to reach burnout.

The reason the government is putting forward budget measures on this issue is that an employee on sick leave no longer gets a salary but instead is paid by Assurance Maladie as part of the French social safety net. Therefore, being put on sick leave costs the administration money. But it is clear that the measures now proposed are motivated by employers’ desire to make it much harder to take sick leave. The most likely way is to force doctors to detail the grounds for issuing sick leave (which would pose a risk of violating the medical obligation to protect a patient’s privacy) and increase scrutiny by the in-house doctors of Assurance Maladie, making it easier for them to contest the validity of such leave.

The government’s plans may give the opposition and the unions an opportunity to address the real problems: poor working conditions, stagnation of salaries and the possibility of abuse when employees work remotely. Given the feisty tone of the French parliament and the unions’ current ability to mobilize people to strike and demonstrate in the streets, France may well experience another round of massive unrest lasting for quite a while. The government’s proposals have all the ingredients to make this happen.

While waiting for legislation law to be passed, Assurance Maladie is already reviewing the records of general practitioners and issuing summons to those it believes are issuing sick leave too often or for what the authorities think is too long. Doctors reply that even if, medically speaking, an absence did not need to be so long, the delay comes from laboratories and other technical places, which are overbooked. In any case, the fight has started and should make headlines before long.

www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2023/08/01/le-gouvernement-a-l-offensive-contre-les-arrets-de-travail-de-complaisance_6184043_3224.html

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A GOOD MOTHER WHEN ONE LIVES ON A DIFFERENT CONTINENT WORKING AS A NANNY?
I received the message below from a Filipina when she was living in France, at a time when she had secured a good job and her own place.

A young mother being a nanny far from home
1 – Hong Kong What was I doing, me a Filipina, in this maid’s room in Honk Kong, crying all the tears of my body and of my soul? In my country, in my generation, a girl dreamed of getting married, having children, and raising a family, everybody under the same roof. So I was a newlywed, I was also the mother of a newborn son, and I was stranded in this foreign country, being the maid, the nanny, in short, the servant, taking care of someone else’s newborn. What went wrong in my life? No need to explain that there are millions of women throughout the world who have experienced this hardship; we rarely have the chance of living our dreams even when they are reasonable. Loneliness is just a word; it does not describe this feeling of a hole growing inside, freezing everything, making life numb, which the young mother feels when the newborn is torn away from her. Loneliness is just a word; the newlywed misses her husband, and it hurts everywhere, the body and the soul feel shredded. Double loneliness, I was not the first one, but the first cut is the deepest, and it felt like it was the end of my life. I had just turned 20! I ended up getting to this new life with a heavy heart. Saw my family once a year and made a life in Hong Kong. It lasted 16 years. By the time I left I had created a Filipino fellowship with my employer’s help, which was in effect a church of its own. I felt like a phoenix when I looked back at all those years spent there.

2 – Paris
My last employer in Hong Kong had been assigned to a job in Paris so I traveled with them, with a three-month tourist visa. I trusted them. I had always trusted my employers and it did me good. Sitting in that plane, this new experience excited me more than it scared me. I thought I knew what I was getting into.

My comment
This statement touches on an issue that is rarely addressed. Nannies are often young women, almost always mothers themselves. They earn money by taking care of other people’s children, which means they cannot take care of their own.

Two situations can be identified:
1 – In the one described above, the children grow up barely knowing their mother. They live so far away that they only see her a few times during their entire schooling. The mother’s feeling of guilt goes deep and the pain is immeasurable.

2 – In some cases, nannies go to work and their children are waiting for them at home. After the workday, they revive the bond with their children. But they can be with them only a few minutes, either at the beginning or the end of the day, but seldom both.

Both situations are painful. The first and most destructive pain, which such women live with for the rest of their lives, is that they consider themselves bad mothers who have abandoned their children. It does not matter who is taking care of their children (usually their own mother or another close relative). At least when the mother and children live altogether, the bond linked to a personal presence is still there when they go home after work.

In both cases, the women wrestle with this dilemma: “Why am I taking care of someone else’s children when I should be taking care of my own?”

There is a glimpse of such situations in the movie The Help. Personal issues of maids and nannies with similar stories come up repeatedly.

WIKIPEDIA
The Help is a 2011 period drama film written and directed by Tate Taylor and based on Kathryn Stockett’s 2009 novel of the same name. The film features an ensemble cast, including Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Bryce Dallas Howard, Octavia Spencer, Jessica Chastain, Allison Janney and Sissy Spacek. The film and novel recount the story of a young white woman and aspiring journalist Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan. The story focuses on her relationship with two black maids, Aibileen Clark and Minny Jackson, during the Civil Rights Movement in 1963 in Jackson, Mississippi. In an attempt to become a legitimate journalist and writer, Skeeter decides to write a book from the point of view of the maids, exposing the racism they face as they work for white families. Black domestic workers in 1960s America were referred to as “the help”, hence the title of the journalistic exposé, the novel and the film. The Help brings to light the challenges and discrimination that African American people faced.

Filipinas have become the maids and nannies of the western world. Each one tries to support the rest of her family and pay for a good education for their children. This situation has become so commonplace that its scope has caused a global outcry.

THE FRENCH RIOTS IN JUNE MADE HEADLINES IN THE USA
It is vividly clear that the media lives on sensationalism when French unrest makes the news in the USA. Everybody showed the same scary images of cars and buildings on fire, implying that there was civil war in France. I would like to ask a basic question: “When has France not been rioting or demonstrating since 1900?”

The reason for the latest unrest can be compared (with a French twist) to the American protests over George Floyd’s death in 2020 in that a man with a criminal record is killed by a police officer using extreme force: in this case, shooting a young man who was in a car.

Many people sought to identify the origins of the disconnect between the police and the French population of second- and third-generation immigrants.

1962 marked the end of the Algerian war of independence and was a turning point in French immigration history. There was a massive wave of Algerians moving to France. Most were young men, in demand by French employers as manual labor. They had wives, and their children were born in France or came to the country at a young age. That second generation, as well as the third one, had a hard time adapting to French society, unlike previous waves of immigrants.

One early sign of this growing problem was the “Marche des Minguettes,” from October 15th to December 3rd of 1983. This national walk from Lyon/Vénissieux to Paris resulted in the creation of a non-profit called SOS Racisme. “Touche pas à mon pote” (Hands off my buddy) became the group’s official slogan in 1985.

An earlier sign occurred during the 1980 presidential election campaign. On prime-time TV, on March 19th, singer Daniel Balavoine confronted candidate François Mitterrand about the growing violence and anger this population was experiencing.

A further indication came in the movie La Haine (Hatred), for which Mathieu Kassovitz won the best director award at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival. I could add many more recent events. I believe that this is enough to show that this has been coming for a very long time.

To sum up, the current situation that led to the riots is that some French citizens, often for more than a generation, do not feel that they are treated like French citizens, especially by the police. That is the main point of comparison with the demonstrations linked to George Floyd’s death.

SHIP WELCOMES ITS SECOND TENANT IN SEPTEMBER 
The second tenant of the Survival Home in Paris (SHIP) is to move in on September 15th. This renter fits the profile I had in mind. There is no need to address an immigration issue. The person was one of the candidates who contacted me early April. They should rent the studio until the end of 2023 and possibly beyond. I am now welcoming enquiries for rental starting in January 2024 or later. Depending on what happens this fall (there may be another increase in electricity prices), I may have to increase the rent amount. Also, the Olympics will make rental rates shoot up in Paris. The monthly rent will increase to 1,400€ for leases starting in 2024.

Best regards,

QUESTION

THE SELLER IS BULLYING THE BUYER

My French boyfriend and I are buying a house in the countryside. This house is fantastic, but the seller and the real estate agency are not. I used to deal with lawyers when I bought properties in the USA, but I knew nothing about buying real-estate in France. So a friend advised me to have our own notaire and I see the difference it makes dealing with the sellers. Yesterday morning I approached the real estate agency with several questions and with a desire to streamline all exchanges concerning the setting of a date for signing.
We all agreed on having a visit of the house before signing, so we would be reassured of its good condition and cleanliness (at least a minimum). This is what the presale contract stipulated. Now there was a big difference of opinion about this visit. When we signed the presale contract, it stated that the visit should occur well in advance of the day of the closing to leave time for the owner to react and fix things that don’t fit.
The owner, through the agency, asked if it was okay with us for them to leave stuff in the workshop for a week or more, maybe the entire summer, as they are finalizing the purchase of their new place after the closing and there is a small conflict of schedule on their side. Also, the inspection of the house was scheduled in the morning just before the 2 p.m. closing, leaving no room for us to do anything if the place does not comply with the terms of the presale contract.
Do you have any advice? We feel trapped and bullied. We’ve already firmly refused their request to store their stuff in the workshop!

QUESTION

RENEWING A FRENCH BUSINESS IMMIGRATION STATUS WITHOUT HAVING A FRENCH BUSINESS

About a year ago, I got my business visa to move to France. I settled in Paris and I am doing well; business is good. Before leaving the USA, I moved my LLC to Delaware for tax reasons and it did me good since my sales have continuously gone up since I arrived in France. I was told when I registered my visa that I should be looking to renew it two months before its expiration date. I looked at the list I found on the internet and it must be wrong, so I am looking for the one that fits my situation. It asks for French bank statements, and I do not have a French bank account and an INSEE registration and I have no idea what it is. So do I need to book an appointment just in case before I find the right list to renew?

I would like to wish you all you a great summer and a very nice vacation, enjoying the freedom of the moment. I will close my office on July 7th

“When I’m Sixty-Four”

When I get older, losing my hair
Many years from now
Will you still be sending me a Valentine
Birthday greetings, bottle of wine? 
If I’d been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door? 
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m sixty-four?

You’ll be older too
And if you say the word
I could stay with you

I could be handy, mending a fuse
When your lights have gone
You can knit a sweater by the fireside
Sunday mornings go for a ride
Doing the garden, digging the weeds
Who could ask for more? 
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m sixty-four?

Every summer we can rent a cottage in the Isle of Wight
If it’s not too dear
We shall scrimp and save
Grandchildren on your knee
Vera, Chuck and Dave

Send me a postcard, drop me a line
Stating point of view
Indicate precisely what you mean to say
Yours sincerely, wasting away
Give me your answer, fill in a form
Mine forevermore
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m sixty-four? 
Ho!

Wikipedia
“When I’m Sixty-Four” is a song by the English rock band The Beatles, written by Paul McCartney (credited to Lennon-McCartney) and released on their 1967 album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. McCartney wrote the song when he was about 14, probably in April or May 1956, and it was one of the first songs he ever wrote.

Yesterday I turned 64.

Each of us has our own way of handling getting old. In the 1950s, turning 64 meant one had turned really old. Today many sixty-somethings are still in good shape and one could argue that the equivalent of being 64 in 1967 is now experienced at 74. The notion of aging, of being old, being young, feeling young, or feeling old, is very personal and depends on so many things. On the other hand, once you add the kind of job you do to the picture, thoughts turn to retirement, of the time when one stops working before dying. Common sense should dictate that manual workers retire earlier than people working in offices. In France, when retirement programs were linked to certain industries, that was common practice. One of the numerous reasons so many people demonstrated against the latest French retirement reform, which added two years to the age at which workers have the right to full retirement benefits, was that the measure did not differentiate among all the different situations in the labor force.

Then there are economic immigrants, whose bodies are often abused from an early age. For many, retiring at 64 means having worked for 50 years. Once they arrive in a Western country like France, they usually start out working at horrid jobs. After several years, they obtain a legal stay and can settle a tad more comfortably, but they often still work as manual laborers. The saddest thing I have seen in this regard is that many of these people worked for so long under the table, a.k.a. undeclared, that their credit with the national retirement system is insufficient for them to live on. Thus, they must continue to work, even if they are retired. This has become common enough that the media in France, the USA and other countries are covering this evolution of society.

THE OTHER IMMIGRANTS
About ten years ago, I helped a Filipina woman facing several major challenges at once. She held a carte spéciale because her employer was a diplomat in France. Her health insurance policy covered only the absolute minimum required. When I met her for the first time, she was battling breast cancer. In a matter of nine months, she obtained a private-life carte de séjour, gained access to the French public health care system, and started treatment for her cancer. For close to two years, her situation was my focal point until everything was settled and her remission from cancer confirmed.

Once she was declared to be in remission, I asked her if she could help me once a month by putting my column into HTML so it could be uploaded to my website in addition to being sent by email. Since June 30th, 2015, she has helped me do this except when she is in the Philippines or on a pilgrimage. She also works as a nanny and a cleaning lady, with seven employers scattered throughout Paris and its suburbs, and this is hard on her body. Our monthly meetings have changed the way she sees both her work, including what she does for me, and her worth. She came to be really good at this job. During the COVID curfew restrictions, her face beamed when I gave her the professional authorization to be out late, mentioning on my letterhead that computer assistant was her position.

This is the quote from the June issue that sparked some reactions which I found to be very interesting and I would like to share them.
“For what it is worth! At one point, one has to say that it was worth it. It meant going after dreams, and personal goals. In the eyes of many, it might not look like much. For them, it was not worth the effort. ‘For what it is worth, it was worth it for me.’ This is what I like to hear. Immigrants often never regain the social status or comforts that they had in their home country, but many tell me nevertheless that it was worth it. Let’s leave it at that.”

Last month, as we worked on sending out the June issue, she was quite moved when she read it.

That gave me the idea to ask her and other Filipina women to express how they feel about the statement “It was worth it.” I have always seen the Filipino motto as:
“Keep a low profile and get the job done.”

When Filipinas live away from the Philippines, whether in France, the USA or another place, they are there to work, earn money and support the rest of their family. In 2018, financial transfers from expatriates accounted for over 9.8% of the Philippines’ GDP.

Here is what my computer assistant told me about her own experience:
“Five years! My plan of staying here in France? I just wanted to try and see what life I could have here and then I planned to go back to the Philippines. Others say I am one of the luckiest people because I got a chance to come here to France, so I am giving it a try. It is not easy to be away from my family, but my income is much higher than what I earned at my job in the Philippines, so I guess it is worth it for me to stay for that time period. I didn’t know that five years could pass so fast and I got used to staying here. Many more years went by before I got sick. That time was the lowest point of my life as I was battling with my illness, trying to get my immigration status (legal papers) and was separated from my family. I kept asking myself if it was worth it to stay, given my situation, and then I met someone with the help of my employer. He guided me and helped me to cope with and overcome all my fears and problems until everything went well again in my life. Now I receive all my health benefits for free while holding nice, proper jobs at the same time. Is it worth the life that I chose? Yes, it has been WORTH IT! It is my choice to be in France; it is not just by chance.”

The hardships such women experience is mostly unknown. It is very rare for them to express how hard their life is. Even so, they almost all end up affirming, “It was worth it.” I respect and admire them for coming up with this evaluation. It is their life.

A MESSAGE FROM URSSAF REGARDING INCOME TAX DECLARATIONS
People commonly use the term “auto-entrepreneur” for working as an independent and running one’s own business. But it really just refers to a choice regarding how to pay social charges to URSSAF. There is a choice between the classic way, which is the normal way URSSAF collects money, and the “auto-entrepreneur” way, which involves a quarterly declaration and the payment of the related social charges, usually amounting to about 23%, for services related work. This side of running a business has evolved a lot in recent years. Before President Macron was elected, the classic status required two income declarations to be done: one sent to the tax office to calculate the income tax owed and one to URSSAF to calculate the social charges based on the profit made the year before, with some catching up done in the fall.

Since the spring of 2021, however, there has been only one income declaration, submitted to the tax office. That information is shared with URSSAF, which relies on it to make its calculations. When Americans think about how the Internal Revenue Service and the Social Security Administration have worked together for decades, they are often stupefied by the level of distrust that once existed between the two French administrative divisions. Mr. Macron promised during his 2017 presidential campaign to simplify and unify different entities of the administration doing the same thing. This proved true of health coverage, which was unified under the CPAM system as of January 1st, 2020. The retirement unification is still being worked on.

URSSAF recently sent a memo to everyone on its mailing list, regardless of the status the recipients have, explaining how the information from the tax office is used and how the social charges are calculated. This disturbed and worried a lot of people who think “auto-entrepreneur” is the only status that exists.

Here is a translation of the memo from URSSAF:
“Understanding the calculation of your contributions following your tax returnhttps://info.urssaf.fr/l/6521/500199940/22016/106423/294868/11f8de51

Between April and June, you declare your 2022 income on impots.gouv.fr. As soon as your declaration has been validated, the tax authorities forward it to URSSAF.

You will then receive the 2022 regularization document and the 2023 call for contributions. URSSAF has set up a dedicated website to help you understand the information contained in this letter.”

THE GENESIS OF THE FRENCH BUREAUCRACY
A client recently sent me this email:
“I really enjoy the history lessons you provide me. But overwhelmed by being at the Prefecture, I can’t remember the person who you told me was the father of French bureaucracy and taxation. I think you referred to Louis XI, but if you wouldn’t mind just pointing me in the right direction, I’ll really enjoy the research.”

My reply, “This king is rarely mentioned because he did nothing flamboyant. He did not build castles. During his entire lifetime, he acted as a statesman, building France as a unit, by defeating all his rebellious vassals and by creating a centralized structure, which later became the French administration.”

On May 1st, 1890, French unions commemorated these events by demonstrating in the streets to ask for an eight-hour workday. May 1st became a national holiday in 1948. The day is so protected by French law that any employee who is required to work that day gets three times the normal wage. Over the years, the holiday has been celebrated in various ways but it always ends with people marching down one of the large avenues or boulevards in Paris and most other cities in France.

Wikipedia
Louis XI (3 July 1423 – 30 August 1483), called “Louis the Prudent” (French: le Prudent), was King of France from 1461 to 1483. He succeeded his father, Charles VII.

Louis entered into open rebellion against his father in a short-lived revolt known as the Praguerie in 1440. The king forgave his rebellious vassals, including Louis, to whom he entrusted the management of the Dauphiné, then a province in southeastern France. …

When Charles VII died in 1461, Louis left the Burgundian court to take possession of his kingdom. His taste for intrigue and his intense diplomatic activity earned him the nicknames “the Cunning” (Middle French: le rusé) and “the Universal Spider” (Middle French: l’universelle araignée), as his enemies accused him of spinning webs of plots and conspiracies. …

Without direct foreign threats, Louis was able to eliminate his rebellious vassals, expand royal power, and strengthen the economic development of his country. He died on 30 August 1483 and was succeeded by his minor son Charles VIII. ….

Legacy
Eager to obtain information about his enemies, Louis created, from 1464, a net of postal relays all over France, which was a precursor to the modern French postal service.

Louis developed his kingdom by encouraging trade fairs and the building and maintenance of roads. Louis XI pursued the organization of the kingdom of France with the assistance of bourgeois officials. In some respects, Louis XI perfected the framework of the modern French Government which was to last until the French Revolution. Thus, Louis XI is one of the first modern kings of France who helped take it out of the Middle Ages. ….

Through wars and guile, Louis XI overcame France’s mostly independent feudal lords, and at the time of his death in the Château de Plessis-lèz-Tours, he had united France and laid the foundations of a strong monarchy. ….

Despite Louis XI’s political acumen and overall policy of Realpolitik, Niccolò Machiavelli criticized him harshly in Chapter 13 of The Prince, calling him shortsighted and imprudent for abolishing his own infantry in favor of Swiss mercenaries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XI

OFFICE CLOSED FOR SUMMER VACATION 
The office will be closed for six weeks over the summer holidays, starting on Friday, July 7th, in the evening and reopening on the morning of Monday, August 21st. 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. Unlike in recent years, I will be in the USA from July 19th to August 3rd. Of course, Sarah or I will honor the prefecture meetings already scheduled, as well as a couple of other engagements. It is also possible that my daughter, Lucille, will handle some situations as she is getting more and more involved in my business.

I would like to remind everyone there will be no August issue.

Best regards,

QUESTION

THE QUESTION OF CUSTODY IN FRENCH DIVORCES

I have been married to a Frenchman for several years now and I recently filed for divorce in France. I want to move back to the USA with my children as quickly as possible as I have professionally and personally no future in France. We just had the first hearing and the judge decided that we all must stay as it would be best for my children if they lived in France. This is scary as heck! I am now a prisoner of France. This should be illegal.

QUESTION

SHOULD YOU RENEW YOUR CARTE DE SÉJOUR OR ASK FOR A CARTE DE RÉSIDENT?

I got a passeport talent visa in the USA and moved to France during the summer of 2019. The visa lasted one year and I got a carte de séjour as a performing musician, which was valid for four years. It will expire in June 2024, My family and I are still living here and we are doing well. As the first request demanded a lot of documents about my career, I would like to know as soon as possible what the necessary steps are to apply for a renewal.

“Backlash” is the first track on Notorious, the eighth studio album by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, and was the label’s first choice for a single. The album was released in 1991.

I had it made, I never strayed
From a course that somebody else laid
I clenched my fists, I never miss
One nite (one nite) you find that ya can’t turn back
So it’s goodbye to the past
Here it comes, here it comes, feel it comin’
Backlash backlash backlash
Oh yea, it’s too bad now it’s a backlash

Your time ain’t long you don’t belong
Maybe so but you hope that they’re wrong
Thin skin gets thick it happens quick
Like a baby turn her very first trick
Hold tight (hold tight) hold tight for the ride of your life
And the lovers go by so fast
Here it comes, here it comes, feel it comin’
Backlash backlash backlash

Used to love me used to care (do you care?) used to want me
Here it comes, here it comes, I guess that’s fair

Now, do you love me, do you care, do you want me
One nite (one nite) we find we’re outta, outta time
Here it comes, here it comes, here it comes a c’mon

Backlash backlash backlash

I have been seeing backlashes in many parts of the world for quite a while now. Just to mention the most obvious, several demonstrations took place in the 11th district (arrondissement). It is hard to say what events are the most striking, with the longest-lasting effect or the most diplomatic impact. There are many issues which I carefully follow to stay abreast of what is happening in France, the USA, China and Nigeria. I did not feel like commenting on any of them.

Right now, I just want to enjoy spring, family and friends, as we have visitors for the first time since COVID. I also want to make sure everything is ready for my tenant, who is coming in early May, so that this adventure can really take off.

Recently at church I heard a sermon titled “The Bridge Test” about how to reach out to people. I was quite touched by it. I chose a long time ago to build bridges between people, hoping to avoid violent and too common backlashes as much as possible. How many bridges do we need to build to make a difference?

50 STATES & 95 FRENCH DÉPARTEMENTS 
In explaining the French immigration procedure anchored at the prefecture, I often tell clients that mainland France has 95 states. I know this is a terribly imperfect comparison, but the American states and Frenchdépartements share quite similar duties, including vehicle registration, professional licensing and building permits. Each also has a local government with an executive, a legislative and a judicial authority. In France these are the préfet, the Conseil Général now called the conseil départemental, and what used to be theTribunal de Grande Instance, now it is the tribunal judiciaire.

Some historical perspective helps in understanding how France came up with this setup. In France, the number of départements is not linked to the addition of new territory, as France’s borders have not radically changed for the last 400 years. The main reason for the creation of this level of local government after the French Revolution of 1789 was that the historical provinces (corresponding roughly to today’s regions until recently) had been ruled by powerful aristocrats. Administratively erasing the provinces took that power from those enemies of the Revolution. When the revolutionary government established 83 départements on February 26th, 1790, the guideline was that it should take no more than one day on horseback to reach the prefecture from anywhere in the département . The revolution also determined that the new divisions should be numbered in alphabetical order starting with 01 for the Aindépartement . The system was more or less stable with 89 départements until France lost the Franco-Prussian War in 1871.

A new département called Territoire de Belfort was added in 1871 since the city of Belfort had resisted the Prussian army. On July 10th, 1964, a law was approved to split the Seine (75) and Seine-et-Oise (78) into six départements , a transformation that took full effect on January 1st, 1968.

The Paris département kept the old Seine postal code (75), with the capital city getting its own governmental status, which is not the case with Washington, D.C., the capital city and federal district of the United States. Yvelines kept the Seine-et-Oise postal code (78). This measure altered the numerical-alphabetical order, with the new départements being Essonne (91), Hauts de Seine (92), Seine Saint-Denis (93), Val de Marne (94), and Val d’Oise (95).

After the 1981 election of President François Mitterrand, the policy of centralizing everything in Paris was abolished. Laws passed on March 2nd, 1982; January 7th, 1983; and July 22nd, 1983 created 22 régions whose borders pretty much mirrored the provinces that existed when France was a kingdom. The best-known of these, because of their weight in French history, are Brittany, Corsica, Burgundy, Aquitaine and Alsace-Lorraine. The January 16th, 2015 law reduced down to 13 through consolidation, although many of the traditional names, such as Auvergne-Rhone Alpes, were retained.

Among the many reasons for decentralization, the one most mentioned at the time was that it was becoming impossible to handle all decisions in Paris, although that was where the national authorities and central administration offices were located. Spreading the administrative decision-making centers throughout France was a win both for Paris and the cities in which those centers were relocated. Also, everybody agreed that local authorities, being closer to the issues, could make faster, more pertinent decisions.

There was another reason that is seldom mentioned. Although France was no longer a kingdom with powerful nobility, the regional council président is a civil servant and therefore obeys the central state. While the regions got a lot of authority over important issues, the cornerstone of the French administration has always been the préfet, who represents the central state at the département level. I cannot see this ever changing, even if it would be better to make the region the center of authority, with the département becoming a more local authority answerable to the region.

It is interesting that the French administration designates département 99 as the code to use in filling out numerous forms when the person is foreign or born in a foreign country.

A recent reform is radically changing the French administration, and this is becoming more obvious every day. Online procedures completely disrupt the way the administration traditionally worked. There used to be two absolute fundamentals of administrative procedures, dating back to Napoléon: 
1 – providing original documents and 
2 – showing up in person.

This helped the civil servants in their mission to work for the best interest of the state, notably concerning the need to prevent attempted fraud. The COVID pandemic made both of these prerequisites impossible. The administration had to switch to digital quickly to continue operating. There had been a trend toward online procedures, but it was mostly peripheral to the old-fashioned routine. Now, in just three years, so much administrative work has gone totally digital that there have been court decisions against the government on grounds of discrimination related to lack of access to online procedures.

This development ended the old requirement of showing up in person with original documents and a set of photocopies that the administration keeps. Now, increasingly, decisions are being made without the public knowing who decided, where the office is and which administrative division it belongs to. I believe this makes the mild rivalry between département and région outdated, for the most part.

France still faces several challenges in this regard. Just to mention the most obvious ones: 
1 – Having 100% of the population on board with the digital procedures, either by themselves or with help and support from civil servants, 
2 – Ensuring that the websites work properly and reliably all the time,
3 – Making information and explanations readily available in paper form at designated locations.

I believe this is a hidden revolution. It has led to huge changes that have been happening for at least two years, without the extensive media coverage they deserve.

CORRECTED DATES FOR THE INCOME DECLARATION
In last month’s column, the item about declaring French income was wrong because the tax authorities changed the schedule at the last minute. Here is the item again with the correct information.

FRENCH INCOME TAX DECLARATION TIME IS LOOMING
On a more mundane topic, I would like to remind everybody that the paper version of the 2022 income declaration must be filed in France by midnight on May 22nd, 2023. The declaration forms will be available at www.impots.gouv.fr on April 6th. You can start filing your declaration on April 13th on the same website. To do so, you need your tax ID number (numéro fiscal) and a password.

If you are making your first income declaration to the French tax office, you should do so using the paper form and checking the “first-time” box on the form (CERFA #2042) where it says Vous déposez une déclaration pour la première fois cochez (“Check here if this is your first declaration”). It is possible to get the tax office to give you the information needed to declare for the first time electronically, but I tend to advise against it because using paper documents makes it much easier to see and understand how the system works.

Note that the deadline for online declarations is later than that for paper declarations. The schedule depends on your postal code:
• Départements 01 to 19 must file by midnight on May 25th.
• Départements 20 to 54 by June 1st.
• Départements 55 and up by June 8th.

PARIS PREFECTURE ALLOWS RENEWAL OF THE RÉCÉPISSÉ 
Ordinarily I would not go into a lot of detail about such a procedure, but I need to now for two reasons:

1 – The récépissé and especially its renewal can be critical to foreigners who hold low-paying jobs. The employers are often strict and require employees to hold a document at all times proving that they are in France legally. But because of the sloppy job often done by the prefecture, the delays frequently exceed the documents’ three-month validity. Some appointments at the prefecture are scheduled two months or more late, so some foreigners do not have the meeting until after their current immigration status expires.

2 – The prefecture has repeatedly had to change its online procedures and many are still severely dysfunctional. It has reached such a point that I seriously wonder if the remaining pitfalls have been put in place to make it even more difficult to maintain legal status. The procedure for renewing the récépissé illustrates this magnificently. Right after choosing “foreigner” (étranger), one has to choose “COVID information”. That’s right: the process for renewing the récépissé is hidden in the information the prefecture gives about COVID! To be very clear, on the cover page, one must choose “Information Covid” after having chosen “Ressortissants étrangers” icon on the Paris prefecture website. However, the question of having apass sanitaire or a pass vaccinal has no bearing on récépissé renewal.

In retrospect I understand what happened, but the situation is now so insane that I believe someone must have decided to keep it that way intentionally. During the COVID crisis, especially when the prefecture was closed, the website had diverse and useful information regarding the consequences of COVID when it came to retaining a legal stay in France. A new use of the autorisation provisoire de séjour (APS) appeared for tourists who were not allowed to fly home. Such unfortunate souls were stuck in France and needed some kind of French ID. The APS was emailed as a PDF! For a short time, the récépissé was sent the same way. So it originally made sense to have the information listed under COVID.

However, the pandemic is over when it comes to the prefecture. I have not seen a civil servant wearing a mask in a long time. Now the procedure involves filling out a simple form asking for renewal, but the récépissé is sent by registered mail. The latter is much more complicated for both the prefecture and the foreigner, and registered mail only stays at the post office for two weeks. I cannot believe that whoever puts together these policies and procedures is purposefully mean. At the same time, the prefecture follows its peculiar logic and established procedures. A registered letter can only be picked up if the person signs for it and shows a valid ID at the post-office. That makes the prefecture happy because it has proof that the foreigner who needs the document is the one who picked it up. The in-person rule is a cardinal one for the prefecture. In this case, it means signing at the post office in front of a postal employee who has checked the person’s ID first.

For those who need this service, you can either go to:
www.prefecturedepolice.interieur.gouv.fr/demarches-et-services-en-ligne/accueil-demarchesand click on “COVID information” or use www.prefecturedepolice.interieur.gouv.fr/demarches/informations-covid.

You must establish your right to stay while waiting for your appointment to renew your permit or the decision on your application. This means showing that you have a receipt for your application for a residence permit (first application or renewal) that has expired or will expire within 15 days.

While waiting for a response to your application, you can request the renewal of your receipt online athttps://contacts-demarches.interieur.gouv.fr/etrangers/renouvellement-recepisse.

NEW ROADBLOCKS IN ASKING FOR THE RIGHT TO WORK
The process of obtaining the right to work is evolving and it is difficult to keep up with it. There is before COVID and after COVID.

Before 2020, each Direction Régionale des Entreprises, de la Concurrence, de la Consommation, du Travail et de l’Emploi (DIRECCTE) had a branch in every département that issued papers conveying the right to work for employees (salariés) while the prefecture issued the related carte de séjour.

On April 1st, 2021, a huge government reform created the Directions régionales de l’économie, de l’emploi, du travail et des solidarités (DREETS) as well as Direction régionale et interdépartementale de l’économie, de l’emploi, du travail et des solidarités (DRIEETS). The latter now issues working papers. I am not certain what the logic was or exactly what other responsibilities each one has.

At first this change did not affect the passeport talent carte de séjour whether it was based on an employee position or the creation or operation of a French business. Now, however, DRIEETS evaluates the business project for an artisan-commerçant carte de séjour and even the following sub-categories of the passeport talent carte de séjour need its approval:

– Passeport talent carte de séjour Nº5 mentioning “business creation”:
Request for a certificate recognizing the real and serious nature of a business creation project
– Passeport talent carte de séjour Nº1 “Employee of an innovative company”:
Request for a certificate recognizing the innovative nature of your company (the request must be made by the employer)
– passeport talent carte de séjour Nº7 mentioning “Economic investment”:
Request for a letter of recognition of an investment project, which must be valued at a minimum of 300,000€.

The goal is to ensure that the prefecture continues to issue cartes de séjour and review applications in what are considered to be sensitive applications, such as requests for regularization (giving a legal stay to foreigners who are illegal immigrants), those involving a sole proprietor of a French business, or a specific family status, etc. My perception is that the civil servants working on files sent through the DRIEETS website are like machines and their responses give no indication why they refuse documents. With in-person meetings, no matter how unpleasant the civil servant reviewing your file might be, when someone is sitting in front of you at the prefecture there is at least a possibility of dialogue, getting an explanation, explaining your situation.

Whether it is DRIEETS or the Agence Nationale des Titres Sécurisés (ANTS) on its Étrangers en France website, this dialogue does not exist. Furthermore, the prefecture rarely answers emails. Since people’s lives rarely make it possible to perfectly fit their standards, it is increasingly difficult to secure immigration status so the carte de séjour can be issued.

Furthermore, ANTS-Étrangers en France requires the “proper documents” to be submitted within one month, and DRIEETS expects them within 15 days. In short, there is hardly any time to fix the situation once the initial request is submitted.

I find it both ironic and sad that the ANTS Étrangers en France office does answer its phone number (‭08 06 001 620),‬ so it should be able to help. But not really, because the people answering cannot do much more than look at the computer screen and tell you if the file is open or closed.‬‬‬‬‬‬

OFFICE CLOSED FOR SUMMER VACATION 
The office will be closed for six weeks over the summer holidays, starting on Friday, July 7th, in the evening and reopening on the morning of Monday, August 21st. 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. Of course, Sarah or I will honor prefecture meetings already scheduled, as well as a couple of other engagements.

Best regards,

QUESTION

CHANGING IMMIGRATION STATUS WITH THE NEW ONLINE PROCEDURE

I have a carte de séjour passeport talent salarié qualifié valid until September 2026. I have asked the prefecture of the Yvelines located at Versailles to change my immigration status to passeport talent créateur d’entreprise. I have added avis positif of DRIEETS and proof of 30k euros. I want to check if my request is valid or if we can only do changement de statut toward the end of the visa (four months before the expiration). … Am I obliged to spend 30k in the first year? Or is just having an avis positif of DRIEETS enough? I will be doing freelance work and I have asked for a visa for that.

QUESTION

THE DEFINITION OF BEING A FRENCH FISCAL RESIDENT

I enjoyed reading your April 23 Q/A column this morning. I have one comment on France tax residency. If your primary residence is in France, you become a France tax resident on the day of your arrival regardless of how few days you live here in the first year.
We moved here on August 30th, 2021, a few days after selling our house in the US. We mistakenly believed the 183-day rule applied and didn’t report our 2021 revenue in 2022. Last month we received a notice of Non depôt de déclaration – Impôt sur le revenue. We’ve since filed for the 4 months and 1 day we lived here in 2021.
From the Strictly Fiscal Facebook Group:
FISCAL RESIDENCY GUIDE 4 – FRANCE TAX RESIDENCY
France has a relatively simple set of tests for whether you are tax resident here. An official explanation of these can be found both in English, and French, here:

The title of this month’s column can be understood in many ways. As an expression, it has come to mean the end, after which people leave.

I admit that I like challenges. This one started when a reader commented in an email, “You don’t include the Band or Eric Clapton in your music choices!”

I am not a fan of The Band or Clapton, although I acknowledge that they are great artists. I consider The Band to have been very underrated, deserving of much wider fame. What I like so much about this comment is that Clapton admired The Band and it was an influence on his career, even though just looking at their respective fame, many would guess it was the other way around.

This short statement shows that my reader is a pretty savvy connoisseur of that era and musical style. I am also interested in them, as the titles of my column show. I am always curious and want to learn more about what was happening between 1965 and 1975 in England and the USA. Not long ago I watched several biographical films on musicians including Marc Bolan, David Bowie, Eric Clapton, Ian Anderson and I must add the Irishman Rory Gallagher, to mention some of the best known. They had a definitive impact on the international rock and roll scene in the 1970s. That is how I ended up choosing this title.

From Wikipedia:
“The Last Waltz was a concert by the Canadian-American rock group The Band, held on American Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976, at Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. The Last Waltz was advertised as The Band’s ‘farewell concert appearance’, and the concert saw The Band joined by more than a dozen special guests, including their previous employers Ronnie Hawkins and Bob Dylan as well as Paul Butterfield, Bobby Charles, Eric Clapton, Neil Diamond, Dr. John, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Ringo Starr, Muddy Waters, Ronnie Wood, and Neil Young. The musical director for the concert was The Band’s original record producer, John Simon.

“The event was filmed by director Martin Scorsese and made into a documentary of the same title, released in 1978. Jonathan Taplin, who was The Band’s tour manager from 1969 to 1972 and later produced Scorsese’s film Mean Streets, suggested that Scorsese would be the ideal director for the project and introduced Robbie Robertson and Scorsese. Taplin served as executive producer. The film features concert performances, intermittent song renditions shot on a studio soundstage, and interviews by Scorsese with members of The Band. A triple-LP soundtrack recording, produced by Simon and Rob Fraboni, was issued in 1978. The film was released on DVD in 2002, as was a four-CD box set of the concert and related studio recordings.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Waltz

It happens that I saw the movie when it was first in theaters in France, and took some high-school friends with me.

As an expression, “the last waltz” in English is similar in meaning to “le dernier tour de piste”, or last lap. It seems as though every day brings another piece of news that makes this feel like the end of an era. The USA as a nation, has already gone through similar crises, such as the Civil War, throughout its history. The recent news of the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg adds to the impression that the USA as a nation is closing a chapter of its life and is ready to open a new one. However, each side of the political spectrum seems to be looking at a very different chapter.

THE DUBLIN SYSTEM REGULATING ASYLUM PROCEDURE FOR REFUGEES
People living in France rarely know the Asylum procedures. This series of international instruments started with a logical approach to the refugee situation by stating that refugees seeking asylum should have their cases heard only in the country where they first entered the EU. The key assumption was that each country would be able to handle all such requests. People can fly into any EU country, but the reality is that people are coming by foot, by sea, by road, etc., and it is the countries on the EU’s outskirts that are most affected by waves of immigration, without any help from the other countries.

www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2020/09/16/sante-environnement-minorites-ursula-von-der-leyen-devoile-son-plan-de-bataille-pour-l-union-europeenne_6052412_3210.html

PACS IS STILL DIFFERENT FROM MARRIAGE
In everyday life, marriage and the pacte civil de solidarité (PACS) look alike, since both give many of the same rights. But there are several key differences. One concerns the procedure to obtain “private life” immigration status. Another issue involves estate planning, as the surviving partner in a PACS receives nothing unless there is a will making a specific bequest.

A situation that often arises concerns the dissolution of a PACS. This is another one of those differences since there is no divorce involved and therefore this must occur amicably. This court case is about the legal responsibilities of the partners, such as whether the financial burden of the relationship should be equally shared or not.

The PACS indeed regulates an official communal life which includes the obligation of taking care of each other in sickness and in health. The article linked below involves a court case in which both names were on the apartment lease but one partner paid the entire rent and other living expenses, and asked to be reimbursed for half when they split up. While one tenant can force another to pay half the rent, the French Supreme Court has consistently ruled that a PACS creates an official couple and therefore it is a communal living arrangement and not a roommate situation. The ruling mentioned in the article, issued on July 20th 2020, once again stuck to this principle: the partner who paid everything was denied the right to compensation from the other one. This said, marriage has the same rule!

www.lemonde.fr/argent/article/2020/09/19/quand-les-concubins-se-separent-qui-doit-quoi_6052824_1657007.html

DETAILING THE PROCEDURE TO OBTAIN THE EMPLOYEE IMMIGRATION STATUS
Since the creation of the passeport talent immigration status, which covers several types of employee, many think the old salarié status is obsolete and barely exists anymore. And yet the vast majority of jobs offered to foreigners do not fit passeport talent requirements.

There are two very different procedures to obtain salarié status, depending on whether the foreigner is already a legal resident of France or lives in another country.

1. The foreigner lives in France
The procedure starts with a scheduled meeting at the prefecture of the foreigner’s place of residence, at which a file is submitted. The vast majority of its contents come from the employer, but the employee is responsible for carrying out the procedure. The prefecture transfers the file to DIRECCTE, the division of the French administration dealing with employee status from many angles. Its main d’oeuvre étrangère (foreign labor) office is responsible for deciding whether to grant the right to work as an employee. Since it has a clear right to veto any request, it is critical to know how to block it. The legal timeframe for responding to a request is two months, but since there is no penalty if it takes longer, that is quite common.

If the decision is positive, a letter is sent to the employer, the employee and the prefecture, which carries out the last part of the procedure and produces the related carte de séjour.

2. The foreigner lives elsewhere
The employer starts the procedure by submitting the file to the local branch of DIRECCTE to have the labor contract approved and receive approval for the request. Again the two-month period applies, but with the same lack of consequences if it is exceeded. Then the file goes to the branch of the OFII (Office Français de l’Immigration et de l’Intégration) in the département where the employer is based, where according to the guidelines it is reviewed for about ten days; in my experience it takes two weeks, which is pretty much the same. After that, the file goes to the French consulate nearest to the foreigner’s place of residence. He/she is asked to submit a request for the visa to be issued. This kind of visa is called VLS-TS, which means it lasts for one year and the foreigner only goes to the prefecture a year or so later. Upon arriving in France, the foreigner must validate this visa with the OFII, in order to secure his/her immigration rights.

http://www.ofii.fr/recruter-un-travailleur-etranger

OFFICE CLOSED FOR CHRISTMAS
The office will close for three weeks over the Christmas holidays, starting on Friday December 18th in the evening and reopening on the morning of Monday January 4th. 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. Of course, Sarah or I will honor prefecture meetings already scheduled, as well as a couple of other engagements.

THE EVOLUTION OF COVID-19 IN FRANCE
As I was drafting this issue, the numbers of people infected with the coronavirus, testing positive, being sent to the emergency room, and dying, were all increasing sharply enough that people were talking about a second wave. At the very least, local authorities, mainly mayors, are issuing regulations to fight this trend. There is nothing too alarming, however. The statistics I was able to access as I wrote this issue were as follows: 78 deaths on September 23rd, 143 taken to the emergency room on Sept. 21st and 783 hospitalized as of Sept. 22nd.

For this month’s Q&A, I thought it would be interesting to answer two of the questions I received during the first lockdown in case even stricter regulations arise. I do not expect another complete lockdown to take place throughout the country, as many different parts of France are barely affected. It is mainly the large cities that have problems, so there could be temporary lockdowns in one or more cities.

Significant restrictions, announced by Olivier Véran, the French health minister, are currently in effect. Here is the list for Paris:

Private parties
10 people maximum This new restriction concerns parties, weddings, raffles, volunteer events, birthdays and communion events. Burials and funerals, on the other hand, are not included on this list.

Large gatherings, concerts
1,000 people maximum Unless there is an exemption, stadiums, performance halls, convention centers and the like cannot accommodate more than 1,000 participants at the same time (compared to 5,000 previously).

Party rooms and multipurpose rooms
Closed All party rooms and multipurpose rooms used for festive and community activities are closed.

Gatherings in public spaces
10 people maximum This restriction includes gatherings on beaches and in parks.

Working from home
Encouraged Without imposing restrictive rules, Véran called for teleworking to be used “as much as possible”.

Major events
Prohibited This measure applies to local festivals, student parties and other such events.

Bars
Early closure Bars and cafés must close by 10 p.m. (or even earlier in the event of a prefectural decision).

Restaurants
No new restrictions The previous rules remain in force: physical distancing is required, and customers moving around restaurant must wear masks.

Sports halls and gymnasiums
Closed Sports halls, fitness clubs and gymnasiums are closed until further notice.

Establishments open to the public that have no “strict sanitary protocol already in place”
No new restrictions The previous rules remain in force: physical distancing and mask wearing are compulsory.

Best regards,

QUESTION

TRAVELING BY CAR DURING LOCKDOWN

We are leaving next week for Normandy but we have not received our cartes de séjour yet. Our appointment with the prefecture on 10 March went well, but then everything closed down one week later.
We understand that our récépissé (which expires on 9 June) has been extended due to the pandemic.
We would like to know if there is something we need to do now, or if we continue to wait for the text message from the prefecture that our carte de séjour is ready for pickup? We heard about a form to complete for getting the card mailed to our house. Would that be an option for us? I looked at the site, but did not complete the form because I wanted your advice first.
We worry that we will get settled in Normandy and then receive the text message that our cards are ready and not be able to travel back easily to collect them.

QUESTION

RENEWING VISITEUR IMMIGRATION STATUS

We’re an American family in Paris – my wife and I and our two children –on a long-stay tourist visa. We received our visa last August, valid for a year. We went through the OFII procedure and plan to renew before expiration.
I’m sure there’s reason to believe that even under normal circumstances, nothing in France is “easy.” However, now the circumstances are even less normal than usual. Would it be possible to receive from you the list of documents and details of the current procedure? We’re in Paris and will be for the foreseeable future (obviously!!).

“The Winner Takes It All” is a song by the Swedish pop group ABBA, the first single from its Super Trouper album, released on July 21st 1980. My faithful readers might be surprised by this choice, as I am not a real fan of this band with its too often sugary lyrics and disco music.

I like this song quite a lot as it is about the end of a romance. I hear the frustration and pain of the betrayed woman; she lost everything and tried to stay civil about it, and I am not sure the man reacts in the same well-mannered way.

This title (more than the lyrics, I admit) reminds me of an incident that I felt did not get as much media coverage as it deserved. In early May, US Attorney General William Barr was asked by Catherine Herridge of CBS, “When history looks back on this decision, how do you think it will be written?”

“Well,” he replied, “history is written by the winners, so it largely depends on who’s writing the history.”

Sure, in politics it too frequently feels as if the winner takes it all, leaving virtually nothing to the other side. But in a democratic system, the fact that one party wins is not supposed to prevent it from governing for the wellbeing of the entire nation. According to the rules of democracy, the winners cannot take everything, and there are checks and balances to ensure that the minority has sufficient influence so that, in an ideal world, the needs and aspirations of the entire nation are taken into consideration. The USA has for centuries been a model of this because of the way the founding fathers structured its democratic system, with three equal branches of government with the power to rule and to prevent the other branches from becoming too powerful.

Many people describe the policy that is currently being implemented in the USA as an autocratic evolution of the way the current American president and his government rule the country. In other countries, some people see a similar trend in their own government. Indeed many French people think the current president is moving dangerously towards a more autocratic regime.

PREFECTURES ARE REOPENING AT THEIR OWN PACE, AND THE VALIDITY OF THE SIX-MONTH IMMIGRATION ID EXTENSION IS MISUNDERSTOOD
The French administration is trying to do a good job reopening public services, but when it comes to prefectures and their schedules, the task is enormous and the result confusing, frustrating and highly unreliable. This is in spite of the considerable efforts of the employees.

Since May 11th, prefectures have started to get ready to receive the public and resume some of their activities, although each one seems to have a different schedule.

There are four distinct situations that must be addressed, each requiring different actions:
1 – An appointment was made to pick up the carte de séjour, but then the prefecture shut down. Some prefectures have started to give new appointments to pick up these cards.

2 – The carte de séjour should be ready by now but the prefecture had not issued an appointment before lockdown. Since the applicant cannot be certain that the card is ready to be picked up, they must wait to receive the date and time of the appointment.

3 – The titre de séjour (usually the carte de séjour) needed to be renewed and expired during lockdown. The prefecture needs to arrange for the appointment to be made in a special way, as the standard page of the website will not allow it to be done after the day of expiration.

4 – The titre de séjour needs to be renewed and will expire soon. The prefecture needs to reopen the standard website so that people can make appointments. I am pretty sure the appointments will be much later this year.

The situation that poses the most problems is the third one, as we do not yet know how it will be addressed.

The first cases that need to be discussed involve cartes de séjour, récépissés, visas, autorisations provisoires de séjour and so on that had their validity extended for at least six months. When the system reopens, all those documents will be considered valid and procedures will resume as usual – but only for people who were in France when their immigration status expired; the extension does not apply for people who got stuck out of the country. Therefore, it is extremely important to come back before the immigration status expires. Remember, French citizens and immigrants to France have the right to travel back to France at any time, even when the borders are closed. Anyone in that situation needs to fill out the document called attestation de déplacement international dérogatoire vers la France métropolitaine.

While France’s borders remain shut, it is not possible to fly back to France with just an American passport. For people stuck abroad whose immigration status expired during lockdown, the solution is to ask at a French consulate for a visa de retour allowing you to come back. This document is issued to French residents who can prove they maintained their residency in France but exceptional situations prevented them from traveling. It is supposed to be issued quickly and it does not require much paperwork. But the consulate checks with the prefecture about the applicant’s immigration status, so the situation had better be clear. Ideally, an appointment to renew has been secured, so the intention to stay in France is clearly documented. If that is not the case, the intent to continue residing in France can be more difficult to prove.

This link can be used if you have an appointment to pick up the carte de séjour at the Paris prefecture and it was shut on that date: www.demarches-simplifiees.fr/commencer/prefecture-de-police-de-paris-rendez-vous-remise-d.

Most prefectures for which I have information state that they will be ready to welcome the public on June 15th, but not for all procedures, and with a new way of receiving the public. The only thing that seems to be standard is that appointment times will be strictly adhered to, with a 15-to 30-minute window to enter. This means the process should be quite lean, without the large crowds we are used to. It should also do away with the usual long waits.

I strongly advise people to check their prefecture’s website regularly so they can act right away. Currently the Parisian prefecture is sending new appointments scheduled in mid-July by postal mail to the people who had appointments in Mid-March. This gives some vague indication as to when one can expect to have the appointment rescheduled. As for people who need to schedule an appointment, I do not know when this will be possible and, it could be as late as January 2021 even if one manages to get in the system shortly after it reopens. If so, this delay will create more problems for many people.

THE PARIS PREFECTURE HAS COME UP WITH AN UNPRECEDENTED SOLUTION: SENDING CARTES DE SEJOUR BY MAIL
As many activities of the prefecture are linked to national security, there is a permanent desire for control and scrutiny to make sure no one is trying to cheat. That explains why, during the issuance and renewal of immigration status, there are two times when the foreigner must be present: to submit the request and to pick up the physical ID. Few people are aware of the abuse of cartes de séjour common in African communities in France. An undocumented foreigner pays someone who is in France legally to use theircarte de séjour to get a job. All the pay slips and credits associated with receiving a salary in France go to the legal holder of the card, but it allows the person illegally in France to earn a living.

Early in May I started hearing that the prefecture would mail out cartes de séjour to foreigners. This solution has several advantages, given COVID-19 and the prefecture’s three-month backlog. The prefecture sends out the usual text message saying that the card is ready, but instead of giving a date and a time to come and pick it up, it says either Votre titre de séjour xxxxxxxx disponible en pref. taxe à payer : 0000 eur. rdv sur site internet pref pol/ressortissants étrangers/envoi postal des titres or the same message with0225 eur, depending on whether a fee is owed. The recipient must go through a couple of clearance steps to make sure the right person is activating the account. The final step is to confirm the mailing address. Then thecarte de séjour is sent by registered mail.

This shows that the prefecture is facing unbelievable chaos if it is willing to give up its sacrosanct double presence policy and trust the postal system to check the recipient’s identity. It also shows the ingenuity of the French administration, coming up with an alternative solution that works. I would not be surprised if it is retained, even when everything falls back into place once the pandemic is truly over.

The website is the one mentioned earlier: www.demarches-simplifiees.fr/commencer/prefecture-de-police-de-paris-rendez-vous-remise-d.

A ZOOM Q&A WEBINAR FOR EXPATS OCCURRED ON MAY 7th
In an event sponsored by the Facebook forum American Expats in Paris, the Franco-American lawyer Daniel Tostado and I held a webinar to answer immigration questions. Daniel came up with the idea and we worked on the format. He is my second-in-command for my volunteer activity at the American Church in Paris and this was an attempt to do something for the community, as the activity stopped when the church closed on March 14th.

Chris Mann, a member of our church running a computer ministry, monitored the Zoom session, making sure we could address the issues in an orderly fashion and manage the waiting room. It did not come close to replacing the sessions at the church, but it was an attempt to reach out and we had decent turnout.

The topics covered were visas, residency permits and the like, appointments, extensions, closures, reopenings, and our best speculation as to how the French government would proceed in the months to come. The webinar was recorded and we insisted it be made available to the public. Since it was done during lockdown I can be seen with a sizable beard, which I never wear when my office is open. So, thanks to Chris Mann, it is now on YouTube and my reputation for good grooming could be challenged!

THE INTERNET CONNECTS THE WORLD AND DEHUMANIZES THE SOUL
After a few months of lockdown, many researchers have started to study the effects of the confinement (forced to stay at home) on people. The findings include significant increases in domestic violence and divorces. We have also seen petty as well as generous action and behavior. So much has been said on this subject and there is bound to be much more to come, but I would like to share an exchange that highlighted an interesting aspect of what was happening.

After 29 years as part of the American Church in Paris congregation, we have seen several pastors come and go. My family has stayed in contact with some of them, even 20 years later. The following was an exchange with one of them.

PASTOR:
My 75th birthday was May 4, and E. organized a Zoom meeting with M. and A. and kids. M.’s daughter S. said something that really struck us all: “Funny, we are now living a huge worldwide event that someday in the future will be in the history books and studied by children and adults in school. But we’re actually LIVING this future to-be-studied event right now!” A simple but profound perspective, we thought.

ME:
Indeed, there are so many layers in her comment.
1 – It is true that we are connecting with the world and it does not take much to feel close to one another, when we are physically far apart.

2 – For now – and I believe this will never change – a human being is made of a body and therefore needs to have the presence of another person. In the past generations, people prioritized those who shared their lives. Other people were important as well; our grandparents, parents and I, myself, had significant epistolary exchanges which sometimes led to marriages. In those days, the methods of communication were limited to visits, snailmail, and, more recently, phone calls. The existence of internet should not change this basic principle; the people present with you should have your priority because they share your life, and the others are probably important but fit in between those who are present with you.

3 – I use social media more and more and I am happy it exists. Facebook has become a tool I communicate with that helps me remember birthdays and where I advise for free on several francophone and anglophone forums. I believe that on some occasions I have managed to make a difference in people’s lives with some good advice. It is also a marketing tool: People see what I answer and contact me later. I welcome this communal aspect of social media. But it can also be a tool used to harm others, enabling some people to destroy reputations and sometimes lives, with rumors.

4 – Lockdown has exacerbated the absurd and way too common situation where people constantly use their phones to publish things to a wide, anonymous audience while sitting with friends, loved ones or family members. The sad reality is that fake Facebook friends can become so important that the real loved ones who are physically close are ignored. How often do we see gatherings where everybody is on their phone as if they were alone in the room? This is wrong. The person you are with should have your main and ideally undivided attention.

***********

This evolution scares me, even if the pandemic may have made people aware that a screen does not bring a body, just an image. That leads me to the topic of working remotely, which surged enormously in France and became widely used in the USA and many other countries. In the past few months I have conducted business meetings with clients via Skype, Zoom and other platforms. Since it was the only way, I was happy to do it, but I miss the personal aspect of such exchanges.

A personal presence clearly changes the dynamic, and I am sensitive to it. Many people complain about feeling uneasy during Zoom meetings. After taking part in a few of them, I got used to it, and Zoom offers a real ability to communicate and exchange. Yet no matter how productive the meetings were, I always came out of them feeling a kind of dryness and coldness that was unrelated to the people I was with but existed because the communication was through a screen.

Some people say that once they got used to it, it stopped bothering them. But that is exactly my point: We are getting used to dehumanization. Having all those internet tools saved many businesses, allowing employees and small business owners to continue to work, and I rejoice that it was possible. At the same time, we saw people getting used to being locked in and enjoying the slower pace, and having more family life. They suddenly had more time for their spouses and children. They tried, sometimes clumsily, to manage work the best they could while putting their priority on the people they lived with. They did not complain much about having to stay inside their home. We also saw people who after one month or less became violent or depressed because they were stuck, and they felt stuck, and social media was not enough.

Of course, there are much bigger problems stemming from the pandemic, including the death toll, rising unemployment and a staggering number of bankruptcies. As is often the case, I like looking at what could be seen as an insignificant detail. I find that it is not.

INCOME TAX WITHHOLDING FOR CLEANERS, TUTORS, ETC.
Since January 1st 2019, all French employers have had to withhold the amount of money owed for income tax on salaries paid monthly. But one category of employers could not really do that the way the system was initially set up: private individuals employing people at home as tutors for their children, cleaners, nannies and so on. These employers are not equipped to calculate and pay the social charges related to the salary paid.

The program through which such workers are paid, called chèque emploi service universel (CESU), has existed for about 17 years. The French administration, in the form of the URSSAF branch in the city of Saint-Etienne, calculates the amount of social charges owed by the employer and takes that money from the employer’s bank account at the end of the month. That office was not ready to add the tax calculation when all other employers were forced to do it. The government overlooked this problem, and URSSAF was not ready to implement the policy. Later another question was raised: Should the withholding be done on the employer’s bank account or the employee’s?

Finally, in January 2020 (although employers were not informed until about two months later), the amount paid by the employer at the end of the month began including the estimated income tax owed. The form confirming the declaration done online shows three amounts: net salary earned by the employee, amount of income tax estimated, and amount the employer pays the employee before the income tax is taken off. Nearly the same situation exists for people paid through Pajemploi, which is for nannies and other childcare.

While implementing the policy, URSSAF created two new services, called Cesu+ and Pajemploi+. The employer can pay the employee by check, wire transfer, cash, PayPal and maybe more. There are some restrictions as to how much a cash payment can be. With the “plus” service, URSSAF can transfer the net salary directly from the employer’s bank account into the employee’s designated bank account, with prior approval of the employer.

https://www.lemonde.fr/argent/article/2020/01/09/particulier-employeur-et-prelevement-a-la-source-mode-d-emploi_6025254_1657007.html

INFORMATION THAT MUST BE GIVEN TO THE BUYER OF AN APARTMENT IN FRANCE
On several occasions, I have mentioned that notaires are obliged to inform both buyer and seller of all consequences of a property purchase. The rights and obligations linked to a property are passed from seller to buyer when the closing is signed. The notaire has a duty to control and therefore inform, which covers many issues. The most obvious is that the seller is the lawful owner and that the title is clear so it is safe to buy the property and live there. Another mission is to make sure the buyer has all the information needed to make the right decision and buy the place for the right price. Sometimes the amount paid to the seller differs from the purchase price if a known liability is attached to the property.

The obligation to repay a loan backed up by a mortgage is obvious, and thenotaire rarely neglects this information. But certain more insidious issues are likely to be overlooked by both the notaire and the buyer. One common concealed liability is a lawsuit pending when the property changes hands. If a suit is underway in the middle of the procedure, it is virtually impossible to know the outcome until the court rules. This issue is usually downplayed or ignored because most such cases deal with unpaid condominium charges. In these lawsuits, the unknown costs include the amount of legal fees the co-owners will have to pay, and when the court case will end.

However, when there is a lawsuit concerning matters such as the firing of thegardienne, dealing with a contractor accused of bad construction work, or settling with the city regarding cleaning and maintenance of the facade, the outcome can end up costing the co-owners a lot of money, so it is imperative for the buyer to be properly informed of the risk, and escrow is virtually impossible since the amount per apartment will not be known until the case is settled.

Information of this type must be included in a document called état daté, which the property manager (syndic) issues on request of the notaire. It summarizes all amounts owed by the seller, including unpaid charges and any amount linked to work already voted but not yet paid for. Each is clearly identified, and such items rarely cause problems. The buyer understands that once a contractor starts working, the final cost might be lower or higher than what was voted during the general meeting but what counts is the motion that has been voted.

The état daté must also list all current lawsuits. A ruling by the French Supreme Court, the Cour de Cassation, on June 20th 2019 addresses this issue. A syndic stated in the document that there were issues with the underground parking pending in a court case. Much later the buyer found out that the issues were linked to grossly defective ventilation, in the parking lot as well as in the staircases and common areas, creating a serious health hazard for residents. The syndic claimed the buyer was informed of the existence of the lawsuit, but was found guilty of misrepresentation.

I strongly advise anyone buying an apartment in France to carefully read all minutes of three or more recent annual general meetings and make sure they understand every motion voted on. If necessary, investigate why the motions were on the agenda and voted on. Ideally, you should also read the notification of each general meetings (convocation à l’assemblée générale), as these have much more information than the minutes. In the court case mentioned above, the minutes simply noted approval of a motion to take the contractor to court, but the pre-meeting notification would have included the letter from the co-owners’ lawyer explaining what the case was about, probably along with the expert’s memo listing the problems, and so on – enough information to show much better what was at stake. By law, the seller is only obliged to give the minutes of the three most recent general meetings. This is a great improvement, compared to before, but this above-mentioned court case shows its limits.

For more information on the état date, see www.lemonde.fr/argent/article/2020/03/21/copropriete-quand-l-acheteur-n-est-pas-informe-des-procedures-judiciaires-en-cours_6033918_1657007.html

SUMMER VACATION: THE OFFICE WILL BE CLOSED JULY 17th to AUGUST 24th 
The office will be closed for one month, starting Friday, July 19th, and will reopen on Monday, August 24th. As always, I will be reachable by e-mail for emergencies and important matters. My service of receiving mail for clients will continue while the office is closed.

MY MINOR FEES WILL INCREASE ON SEPTEMBER 1st, 2020
Handling mail in my office: 40 euros per month
Handling mail received at my home: 50 euros per month
Surcharge for out-of-the-office meetings: 60 euros which corresponds to less than 30 minutes’ transportation
Surcharge for meetings and phone calls at the client’s request after 7PM weekdays, all weekend and during national French holidays and vacations: 30%.

Best regards,

QUESTION

PROOF OF ADDRESS FOR THE PREFECTURE

In light of the Paris citywide lockdown, will my June visa interview at the prefecture still be on schedule? I was in Paris two weeks before the shutdown, looking for an apartment to rent. But unfortunately, I left before I could secure one, for fear of being locked down in France. So I came back home to the US early, and hope that I can return to Paris again soon. If I cannot find a suitable apartment to rent long term, is it ok to rent one for, say, 3-6 months, just to provide an address for the visa application?

QUESTION

CAN A PREFECTURE LIST BE TRUSTED?

I wanted to thank you for your monthly comments. I always find them informative and, at times, thought-provoking. In your current notice I did find an item where I wanted to offer a comment. Regarding taxes, it is probably worth noting that while there may be no tax due if there were no earnings in France, social charges (CSG/CRDS) may still be assessed, even if the person filing the taxes is not receiving assurance maladie. However, once that is noted, there is the golden lining, so to speak, of now being able to claim the social charges as a US tax credit.

Regarding the note about tax filing being requisite for a 10-year carte de résident, there are many reports of people having been required to show proof of tax filing, but in our own case, we were never asked to provide evidence of tax filing at any point, from the original visa de longue séjour to the carte de résident. Also, the official information pages do not list tax filings as a requirement.

It was obvious to my wife and me that we received better than average treatment during all of our contacts with the French consulate in the US, and at the prefecture here in France. However, I credit some of that preferred treatment to the way we presented ourselves: We spoke only French, we were relaxed, calm, in good humor, we never challenged anything, and where there were questions or issues, we always asked for help and advice.

However, as to the list of detailed documents, I can say that, at least in département 06, there is no published requirement to show the avis d’imposition sur les revenus. Here is a link to the page for renewal of a carte de séjour temporaire. I chose this option since it would assume being present in France for over a year.

http://06.accueil-etrangers.gouv.fr/demande-de-titre-de-sejour/vous-etes-ressortissant-e-non-europeen-ne/vous-etes-ressortissant-e-de-pays-tiers-non-algerien-ne/vous-etes-en-france-vous-avez-deja-un-titre-de-sejour/vous-souhaitez-obtenir-son-renouvellement/pour-l-obtention-d-une-carte-de-sejour-temporaire/article/pour-l-obtention-d-une-carte-de-sejour-temporaire.

From Wikipedia
“The Grapes of Wrath is an American realist novel written by John Steinbeck and published in 1939. … Set during the Great Depression, the novel focuses on the Joads, a poor family of tenant farmers driven from their Oklahoma home by drought, economic hardship, agricultural industry changes, and bank foreclosures forcing tenant farmers out of work. Due to their nearly hopeless situation, and in part because they are trapped in the Dust Bowl, the Joads set out for California along with thousands of other ‘Okies’ seeking jobs, land, dignity, and a future.”

Many may wonder why I chose this title when the US economy is good and there are no longer large numbers of people from middle America hitting the road for a better future in California. Set amid the Great Depression, this novel talks about not being able to earn the bare minimum to live and the despair of having to leave everything behind while holding onto an unrealistic dream.

But, to extrapolate, there are people in the USA on the right as well as the left hoping for things that are not realistic. The presidential campaign has already started and it feels like it is now in full swing when the actual vote is about a year away. Given the extreme polarization of American society, whether President Trump is reelected or a liberal Democrat wins, are we sure it will not create a crisis of the magnitude of the Great Depression, with its related migration, acts of despair and defiance of law and order?

One thing is certain, I see wrath coming out of Washington and many other parts of the country every day. I understand and agree that some expressions of great anger can be legitimate, considering what the other side of the political spectrum is doing. My point is that I see a cumulative effect of these expressions of anger, and I wonder how far it will go and what will happen if it reaches a breaking point.

France is not in a much better situation. After witnessing the gilets jaunes demonstrating Saturday after Saturday, in recent weeks we have seen members of the police forces taking to the streets of Paris to protest, while uniformed colleagues are also there to control and manage the demonstration. Does anyone else see this as a complete absurdity? Who would have thought that police would potentially commit violence against other police? It did not happen that day, but a later demonstration of firefighters ended up with a significant amount of violence. Many do not realize that Paris firefighters are military personnel, constituting a regiment. So let this sink in: soldiers fought police in the streets of Paris.

Are the grapes of wrath that far from us, or could this kind of crisis happen again?

DOES A VEGAS WEDDING COUNT IN FRANCE? 
Las Vegas has long been known as the capital of speed weddings and extravagant ceremonies. In the USA, everybody knows this and understands that such weddings are legal. Couples may have various reasons to get married there. Eloping is not one of them in our modern society, at least I hope not.

I would like to review a decision of the French Supreme Court that may astonish many Americans. Two French young adults, who were dating at the time, traveled across the USA. While in Las Vegas they thought the wedding ceremonies were fake, since they were so different from what is done in France. So, for fun, they got married. After their return to France, they did not register the marriage certificate with the French administration. Even when they had a child, it was registered as being born to unwed parents.

Several years later, the woman got married in France to another man. After 17 years, the husband came across the Vegas marriage certificate and asked that his marriage be annulled, as French law prohibits bigamy. The Versailles Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court both refused to annul the French marriage. When it comes to applying the law, the logic used was shady. At the same time, I can see why they ruled this way, since seeking an annulment after 17 years shows a significant level of bad faith, especially as the wife claimed her husband had always known about the Vegas ceremony.

On one hand, the court recognized the formal legal validity of the first wedding, stating that France must take at face value all legal American weddings and is bound by the US definition of a legal wedding. The certificate existed and the husband argued that it proved bigamy without a doubt, which is true on the face of it. But the court also reviewed the situation in another light. Is a couple married when both spouses are sure they are not, and behave accordingly? In short, the court contested the existence of the first marriage because neither of these two people had ever intended to be married.

My take is that the court did not want the husband to benefit from his proven bad faith and get away with not paying alimony or the other financial consequences of going through a French divorce.

www.lemonde.fr/argent/article/2019/10/12/quand-l-epoux-decouvre-que-sa-femme-s-est-deja-mariee-avec-un-autre-a-las-vegas_6015231_1657007.html

Below is the pertinent section of the Court of Appeal decision on l’intention matrimoniale:
En revanche, la cour estime que les « conditions de fond » qui, aux termes de l’article 146 du code civil, exigent « le consentement » des époux, n’ont pas été respectées. Le « consentement » implique que les époux aient eu une véritable « intention matrimoniale ». Or, la cour considère que Catherine et Thomas « ne se sont prêtés à la cérémonie qu’en vue, manifestement, d’atteindre un résultat étranger à l’union matrimoniale ».

ARE THERE GOOD AND BAD IMMIGRANTS?
I want to share a recent exchange I had with a reader, as it shows the extreme complexity that exists when dealing with immigration. It is very common for foreigners sitting at the prefecture to complain about harsh treatment after having been called back three times or more for insufficient documentation. They see other people with thin files walking out of the prefecture after being approved, and conclude that the system is rigged, that certain categories of foreigners have more rights than others and that they are being discriminated against. I want to be very precise, here; on that level at the prefecture, there is almost never a personal discrimination, or even one based on citizenship or origin in the world. Therefore it is exclusively a perception that some foreigners have, that other foreigners with the same legal ground, have more rights than others. The next comparison is even worse for me as it opposes large categories or people indiscriminately. The most common one I have seen is comparing homeless veterans with asylum seekers, as well as stating the dreamers have more rights than people currently crossing the border with Mexico.

It is painful to me to see such claims, as they have a wide and long lasting impact without any good ever coming of them. It is a very human thing to do, comparing and wondering why discrepancies exist, challenging the notion that certain people have more rights, as if despair and hardship can be measured with a scale or a ruler.

This exchange below and the following testimonies are poignant because they show how emotional this issue becomes when one is personally involved.

1st COMMENT
I’ve been reading your newsletter for several years. I greatly admire your professional write-ups. Being an American lawyer myself, I admire your understanding of the administrative hurdles you describe, especially since these are things one does not learn in law school.

What puzzles me is: tens of thousands of immigrants, sans papiers, illegals and “in between”, are in France, and many of them receive generous benefits, such as medical care. Some may be here in good faith, but some may be pique-assiettes or freeloaders sucking what they can from the system. Indeed some of those people don’t respect France, but they somehow get along and may even obtain legal status by hook or crook. Children born in Syria to French jihadists are automatically considered French, no questions asked, while my spouse born in Châtillon-sur-Loire to naturalized, hard-working Spanish parents, schooled and raised in France, was not considered French but had to apply for citizenship and had a rocky road to get it, and sometimes the problem resurfaces.

Getting to the point, it is difficult to understand why the French administration lacks the discernment to be flexible for a well-intentioned lady PhD from Pakistan to allow her to stay with some legal status when they let much less qualified and potentially dangerous folks filter into the country. Why raise hurdles for a well-meaning, highly-educated Pakistani lady, knowing that there is such a thing as administrative discretion? I know one cannot count on one’s papers landing in a sensible bureaucrat’s inbox, so one has to give clean legal advice, as you do, and not count on “understanding” bureaucrats, but it still is puzzling given the situation.

Best wishes and thank you for your newsletter from someone who may be a future paying client and I have passed on your newsletter to some who may have become such.

MY ANSWER
Thank you very much for your message. As you are a lawyer, the answer to your frustration is the definition of the law and how it is applied.

As I explained in the 1st Q/A there is always a significant difference between the rights a person has and the rights the person can exercise, based on his/her ability to prove those rights. In other words, the justice system is by definition unjust, and this injustice must be accepted by the people who go to court seeking justice and hoping the court will make it right. Some people prove their rights with few documents, while others must bring excessive documentation to prove their rights.

Another issue directly linked with your profession is that the law applies equally and uniformly to people who fit the same profile. For example, people who have obtained asylum status have different rights from native French people, who in turn have different rights from undocumented aliens. So your wife, who was born in France, was asked for a multitude of documents to prove the status she was asking for. It makes sense because she has access to these documents. Asylum seekers who left with nothing can only rely on a handful of documents and their request will be reviewed on their testimony.

That said, the chance of obtaining asylum seeker status is rare, while for a person born in France to naturalized parents, France has 100% of the paper trail, regardless of how hard it may be to find the documents.

When it is a file for a client, we can keep our distance and treat this as a job – there is no emotion involved about which document is needed or why this one is hard to get. But when it is our file or, worse, that of our spouse and children, we take it personally because we have a protective reflex concerning them. That is the flip side of our job.

The key thing is not to compare the pain, suffering and distress of one part of the population with another. Mostly in the USA, but also in France, I have seen people comparing sans-papiers with French-born homeless people, and refugees and with homeless veterans, as if the government had to choose one over the other.

I believe there is a need for budgetary decisions to be made so that one population is not held up in opposition to another, one group slandered because the other is presented as being more deserving. But neither of us is sitting in the US Congress or French Parliament to pass laws. We can only witness decisions we agree or disagree with.

My church helps the homeless a great deal and allocates a significant budget for this. The refugee team, which I am involved with, is smaller with fewer means. I tend to choose the underdog, a pattern in my life that was strengthened when I served in the French Army. I am proud of what the church is doing and the diversity of the people we help.

I am truly sorry for what your spouse went through. In 1994, the first time I went to city hall asking how my American wife could become French by virtue of being married to a French man, the civil servant told me with a straight face that even if I had been able to fool the French army into thinking I was French, he would make sure I would not fool his office, since I could not prove to his satisfaction that I was French. He pushed just about all my buttons and smeared my wife as well. It took me about 10 years to get over this. So I am no better when it comes to this sort of thing. I took it very personally!

THEIR RESPONSE
I have enjoyed reading the past issues you were kind enough to send. My husband is French, while I was born and raised in the USA. A few years ago we moved to France to be closer to my husband’s family. We are here to stay. While I love living here, I am 53 and as you brilliantly wrote in one of your issues, I am starting all over.

Thank you for your thoughtful response. To tell the truth, I suspected what your answer would be but I pushed the “send” button too quickly. After writing my message I hesitated about sending it and consuming your valuable time.

It was quite unlawyerly and too emotional of me (particularly for a lawyer) to wish that officials might be more discerning and flexible so as to allow people of obviously good qualifications and who apply in good faith to have some leeway. It was a wish that they could use their administrative discretion and sort out the wheat from the chaff, if you will, so that honest folk applying could get a fair shake. I know that those who apply cannot expect to receive that kind of treatment and should definitely not count on it. They have to thread the needle and submit the right documents and comply, to the letter, with whatever rules or laws prevail and hope for the best.

By the way, next year I will need to apply for my fourth ten-year carte de sejour. I am apprehensive about doing it. I’ve stood in the rain and snow many times, starting 5 or 6 in the morning, only to be told as I reached the promised land at the front of the line outside the prefecture at 9am in Montpellier that they were not accepting any more applicants that day, no more numbers to hand out. I could come back and try another day. Maybe start at 4am.

Now the appointment system online is clogged by illegal operators who immediately make bogus appointments and sell them. If you are caught buying an appointment it is illegal and dangerous. But there is practically no other way to get one. Kafka would have something to say about this situation.

I proposed to an official I know that they set up a table with a person who would validate online appointments after seeing an ID card. This would eliminate the middlemen who have an illegal business selling appointments. The official’s answer? That would be too costly.

NEW STATEMENTS FROM PEOPLE WHO WERE REGULARIZED OR STRUGGLED TO KEEP THEIR IMMIGRATION STATUS
I have continued to receive comments, mostly from people who read the issue last month and wanted their voice to be heard. Because I am mostly helping Anglophones, such people often come from Asia – more specifically, from South Asia and China.

COMMENT #1
Being sans papiers here in France is way too hard. You have to fight the feeling that any time you will be caught by the police. And the loneliness of being away from your family for a long time is a nightmare in your everyday life. You need to be ready to embrace the life that will happen ahead of you.

COMMENT #2
There is this idea that sans-papiers should have a worse life because they are illegal. I believe that this is wrong and offensive. It is wrong because I see French people doing illegal things all the time, illegal parking, speeding, cheating on taxes and social charges, and they boast about it. When I was sans papier, I was supposed to be ashamed and worthless. I was humiliated, taken advantage of by employers, well-off professionals who had no problem being illegal by making me work for them. My illegality was a cross I had to carry. I have always resented being seen as a criminal, when everything in my life was decent. It is true that the procedures at the prefecture can be humiliating, having to wait in line at 6AM to be among those who will have the appointment to renew the carte de séjour. Even when it was happening once a year, can it be compared to living five years with this awful knot twisting my stomach night and day? I understand that there can be some anxiety about going to the appointment at the prefecture. When I went there the first time to submit the regularization request, I could barely move, I was stricken by fear. The odds were real that I could end up handcuffed and sent back to my country. Last but not least, imagine what it takes to get the employer’s French tax documents that prove that they have the means to pay my salary. Nothing was easy, comparisons can be so painful. When I was sitting waiting at the Cité prefecture waiting for my turn to be called, knowing my request for regularization had been approved, I felt that I had as much right to be there with my legal stay, my right to work, as anyone sitting in that same room. Pain, despair, anguish, they cannot be compared from one person to the next. Now that I am preparing my carte de résident request, I am integrated, feeling safe in France. From the day I realized I had been fooled by my employers who brought me to Paris from Hong Kong, and made me a sans-papier to today, I have stayed the same, a decent woman and a practicing Christian. This is what defines me then and now.

In conclusion, I would like to address two issues:
1. Regardless of how secure the foreigner is, how strong the file, how solid the immigration status, many foreigners get panic attacks about going to the prefecture to submit their request. The fear that the civil servant they will encounter has this almighty power over their life and the slightest thing can make them lose their rights can make them sleepless or physically sick. Quite often the fear is irrational and disconnected from the reality of the procedure at the prefecture. For people who suffer panic attacks, however, it is barely controllable and reason has hardly any effect on their condition. Many of the comments I received dwell on this theme of fearing the prefecture’s decision.

2. Nearly all sans-papiers live in constant fear of being caught by the police and deported. This means that this fear also exists with people who think that there is a good chance that they could lose their legal right to live in France. These people who have reasons to fear a negative answer very often have family members, close relatives, friends, who are sans-papiers, who have been caught and deported. Some of them have gone through the regularization procedure and have difficulties maintaining this legal status. Whether sans-papier or not, explaining that the file is there, it is strong, that there is no point of fearing the police since at this stage of the game, the risk of deportation is null, it does not affect the emotional condition, the fear is strong and they suffer from it.

What I describe here about these people living in France, is also true about the similar procedures in the other Western countries that regulate their immigration with strict procedures. Based on my knowledge, the American immigration procedures objectively create even more anxiety than the French ones.

COUNTRY CODES FOR FRENCH SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS
I have explained how the French social security number is constructed almost entirely of codes representing the date and location of birth. I recently found a webpage listing all the codes identifying where a foreigner was born. The page displays them including the code 99, which means being born outside of France. I am not how useful this information is, but I assume some people will want to check their number against this list. For a reminder of how the number is constructed, see the explanations in the June 2005 and March 2019 issues.
www.insee.fr/fr/information/2028273

AAWE “RETIRE & THRIVE” EVENT
The Association of American Wives of Europeans recently held an event called “Retire & Thrive” at the American Church in Paris, where many professionals had booths and offered their services to those who attended. On such occasions I often meet my readers, and this was no exception. Some say they have followed my work for years without contacting me.

After helping put together the tables, I spent time talking to people who had all kinds of questions, not just those about retiring in the French public system. Immigration, getting a pension on both sides of the Atlantic and staying on French public health coverage were some of the topics discussed. I would like to thank AAWE for putting together this event, which was well attended from beginning to end.

I AM THE SPEAKER FOR ANGLOPRENEURS ON DECEMBER 17th 
At the AAWE event, Patricia Smith Zraidi who runs the Anglopreneurs’ Monthly Evening Event asked me to be the speaker for the Tuesday, December 17, 2019 event. It starts at 7 PM until 10 PM and is held at: HD Diner Opéra (downstairs), 25 Bvd des Italiens, 75002 Paris. For more information check the page https://www.facebook.com/groups/anglopreneurs/

OFFICE CLOSED FOR CHRISTMAS
The office will close for three weeks over the Christmas holidays, starting on Friday December 20th in the evening and reopening on the morning of Monday January 6th. 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. Of course, Sarah or I will honor prefecture meetings already scheduled, as well as a couple of other engagements.

Best regards,

QUESTION

DOES OVERSTAYING A FEW MONTHS MEAN BEING AN UNDOCUMENTED ALIEN?

I am an American student who overstayed my one-year visa. I got hired as an au pair but the family didn’t work out. My visa ended this summer. I have been searching for a job since then. Then I found out you cannot work as an au pair on a student visa so I have been wondering if it is possible to change status if an au pair host family wants to hire me? Does the prefecture grant new visas to expired student visa holders or would I have to go home? I am curious because it would cost a lot of money to do so. I finally have a family but I need to be legal again.

QUESTION

DOES PARENTAL FINANCIAL HELP CONSTITUTE TAXABLE INCOME?

I’m having issues with being taxed on money my parents gave me as a gift for rent and living expenses without having my own income in France. Is it possible to ask you some questions about this and get your insight?

From Wikipedia
“The Outlaw is a 1943 American Western film, directed by Howard Hughes and starring Jack Buetel, Jane Russell, Thomas Mitchell, and Walter Huston. Hughes also produced the film, while Howard Hawks served as an uncredited co-director.”

It has been a long time since I used the name of a movie for my column. I will let my readers guess what or who motivated me to choose this title. Most readers will not have seen this 1943 movie: It features Sheriff Pat Garrett, Doc Holliday and the criminal Billy the Kid. There are still legends surrounding these men, who actually lived in the Wild West of the late 19th century. Today the legends are being challenged: Some say the men enforcing the law were not really the good guys and Billy the Kid was challenging a corrupt authority.

I chose the title mostly in regard to the second Q/A. I have been a militant for over 20 years in trying to assist people who are considered by some to be outlaws, the undocumented aliens, “les sans-papiers”. I believe we must look beyond their status as law breakers, especially as long as French law grants them the right to obtain a legal stay, thus blurring the line between legal and illegal. I stay on the right side of French law, which, odd as it may seem, grants right to outlaws.

MY OFFICE PROJECT HAS BEEN DELAYED 
This unusual real estate transaction goes back to shortly after I bought my current office space, when the real estate agent asked me if I would be interested in buying the space next door to mine. At the time, I saw no opportunity for its use. But after a couple of years, having built up some savings and acquired an assistant, I realized what an investment opportunity it was. After several months of negotiations, I reached a deal with the agent in early May.

The initial sale of these properties was triggered by the death of the owner, a rather old lady. There are many heirs involved, with little trust among them. I knew from the initial transaction that there might be some delay in getting everybody’s agreement, but I was confident that in the autumn I could start renovating.

In the meantime, however, one of the heirs died, leaving a son aged 17. Due to the slowness of the French court in approving the sale, it was decided to wait until he turned 18 so he could sign for himself. Hence while the offer still holds, and will almost certainly be accepted, I doubt that the transaction can go through before 2020.

The space concerned is a studio that is commercially zoned. Measuring about 28 square meters (300 square feet), it can be used for short-term, Airbnb-type rental and/or a coworking space for up to five people.

CLARIFICATION ON GETTING A CARTE DE SÉJOUR IN THE MAIL
After the September issue went out, I received this message from the reader who sent me the material for the last Q/A:
“I have just read your latest column, noting that you included my email to you, and want to clarify: 

• 1. Yes, our cartes de séjour were sent to us through La Poste; and.
• 2. The Hôtel des Impôts simply did not want to, or could not, deal with us when we turned up to register as tax residents.

Bear in mind, however, that this was 2008-2013 and this incident took place in a very rural area of Dept 86. The mairie of the small village of Brigueil le Chantre was not able to facilitate our requests, necessitating numerous visits to Poitiers with our multiple translations of police clearance certificates, marriage license, birth certificates and, in my husband’s case, Australian citizenship certificate, plus other documents that I have forgotten about. On the other hand, we were able to obtain my driver license via the sub-prefect’s office in Montmorillon, our nearest small city.

I add that nothing was straightforward or simple and we were often left with the impression that the bureaucracy did not know what to do with us. Despite the amount of time spent navigating our way through the complexities of the French residency system, albeit only temporary, as we were always intending to return to Australia, we did enjoy our time in France and wouldn’t have missed the experience for anything!

Thank you for your informative column.”

BRITISH PEOPLE WILL BE ALLOWED TO ASK FOR IMMIGRATION STATUS AFTER BREXIT
Another deadline is quickly coming regarding Brexit. The chances of an absence of agreement are greatly increasing. The prime minister is campaigning for a so-called hard Brexit. He appears not to have the support in Parliament to get it, and it is now possible that Parliament will approve an agreement that he refuses – the exact opposite of what happened with his predecessor. Because of what is at stake, I have ended up having to follow British politics. It is clear that something has to happen in about a month.

The French government continues to be lenient in its policy regarding British citizens living in France. Even if a hard, no-deal Brexit takes place, these people will have a year to ask for French residency, provided they can prove that they have lived in France for a while. This will be true regardless of whether any equivalent offer is extended to French people living in the UK.

British citizens in France, and probably other European Union countries, are securing their legal stay by asking for an immigration ID, which will make Brexit likely to have much less impact on their life. It is difficult to know which status they will get once ties are cut, but the French prefectures will certainly have to find an immigration status that fits their situation, and there are many to choose from. I am telling my clients that asking right away for French nationality, based on just the British passport and several years living in France, is not the safest way to go. Holding a carte de séjour européenne is more than enough, since it lasts five years and Brexit should be complete by then. They will then be in a clear, secure situation. Therefore I am pushing my British clients to ask for their cartes de séjour before Brexit occurs..

I am not certain, but it would make sense if, in a case of hard Brexit, British citizens would still be able to ask for French immigration status without having to hold it beforehand. But it is possible that the prefecture will not issue them a carte de séjour européenne but a standard one, which may grant fewer rights. Holding a carte de séjour européenne or a student card is not at all the same thing, by the way: The latter grants very few rights to the card holder.

The opportunity may last only for the next four weeks or so, but if you need to obtain this immigration status, make the appointment now. Even if the appointment ends up being several months after the Brexit deadline, you should obtain the carte de séjour européenne.

MY FEES WILL GO UP ON OCTOBER 1st
As of tomorrow October 1st, my initial retainer goes up from 270€ to 300€ and the hourly rate from 110€ to 130€. I am also blocking three hours instead of two for each meeting so I have time in between two back-to-back meetings to do administrative work. This should make it possible for me to answer emails and return phone calls more quickly. My assistant attended several meetings with clients in September to facilitate this transition. In some instances she has accompanied my clients to the prefecture. She should be able to do the same thing with URSSAF, CPAM and some other public offices. As her fees are lower than mine, this should compensate for the increase in my fees. I hope once again to be able to get back to people in 48 hours. I am sorry for my slowness in the last several months. I have tried to solve this issue to the best of my ability.

Best regards,

QUESTION

CHOOSING THE RIGHT IMMIGRATION PROCEDURE

I have been living with my French PACSed partner for several years and I hold student status as an American. I have just been hired by an IT firm in Paris for a really good, well-paid job but they have never hired a non-EU citizen. I told them that I could get a family visa. I asked the prefecture how to do it and they answered that I do not live with him. They are lying. I have been with him for three years, and I can prove it: I get my bank statement and my phone bill at that address. The rest of it is in his name and as a student I never declared my income anywhere. How can the prefecture be so wrong?

QUESTION

CHOOSING TO LIVE SANS PAPIERS

I am a PhD student from Pakistan who came to France on international mobility (6 months) in June. Now my training and work require me to get an extension of three more months, and my organization is ready to support me for an extended period of time. But my visa cannot be extended or renewed, as it is for a long séjour temporaire. I am in a situation where I cannot afford to go back to my country to apply for another visa and then come back. The truth is, as a young woman, I do not want to go back. No one is guiding me well. I wanted to ask you if there is another solution, if I can apply for a new visa while staying here in France, as the validity of the visa is till November. I tried for a carte de séjour but my visa restricts me from that as well. I desperately need your help.

The album Burn was released in February 1974 by Deep Purple. I always find it interesting that lyrics can be understood in a way totally different from their intent when they were written. Reading the lyrics of this album’s title track once again, I felt it could apply poetically to what happened to Notre-Dame Cathedral.

The sky is red, I don’t understand
Past midnight I still see the land
People are sayin’ the woman is damned
She makes you burn with a wave of her hand
The city’s ablaze, the town’s on fire
The woman’s flames are reaching higher.

It felt like the whole world watched the cathedral burning. Almost everybody was talking about this tragedy, and rightfully so. Now France needs to start the rebuilding. I hope it is well done, with the finest craftspeople doing the work. Almost certainly, the Compagnons will be called upon – possibly the same guilds that built the cathedral in the first place. Many guilds were created in about AD 1000 to make the building of churches and cathedrals possible. I find it reassuring that they have been able to maintain their traditions and craftsmanship through the centuries.

https://compagnons-du-devoir.com

https://compagnons-du-devoir.com/les-compagnons-du-devoir-caen

A NEW OFFICE PROJECT SHOULD BE COMPLETED BY THE END OF THIS YEAR
For about seven years, when I had an office near the Place Saint-Georges, I rented the other room out, usually for about a year at a time and no longer than two years. Most of the people renting it were creators of start-ups, consultants or independent contractors who needed this place to make their professional transition. I always liked being able to offer a professional setting at an affordable price and thus help people launch their careers.

As many people know, my current office has three rooms: one is where I meet my clients, one is my workroom with files, printers and a large desk, and the third contains a kitchen corner and my assistant Sarah’s workspace.

For almost a year now, I have been interested in purchasing a place in close proximity to my office in the same building. I have just received the seller’s approval from the real-estate agent. As long as the sale goes through, I should be able to offer the use of a completely independent space very near my current office. I cannot say more until I have the presale contract. But I am already thinking about offering a small discount to any of my readers who might like to use this space as an office space or Airbnb place to stay.

I will probably not have much of a summer vacation, as I will be working on this project so as to have everything ready for September. It will likely be necessary to do some renovation so that the place offers a comfortable setting.

PAPERLESS OFII PROCEDURE
The Office Français de l’Intégration et de l’Immigration (OFII), the part of the French administration dealing with the side effects of the immigration procedure, has gone completely paperless, as many of us have long wished. There is no longer a paper form; instead, an electronic procedure is activated once you arrive in France. When you receive your passport with the visa for France in it, on the next page is the URL of the website where you go to ask for an appointment once you arrive in France. It asks for your date of entry into France, and you will be asked to prove it, if possible. This seems to have shortened the time it takes to obtain an appointment.

PUBLIC HEALTH COVERAGE AND VISITEUR IMMIGRATION STATUS
French immigration law has always put an emphasis on the health insurance coverage valid in France. The most recent evolution is creating some serious problems for the foreigner holding a ‘visiteur’ immigration status. I had hoped that the prefecture had taken a definitive position after taking into consideration the vast changes set in motion by the creation of PUMA. Sadly, the prefecture has once again changed its position on whether people withvisiteur status must provide proof of health coverage.

The starting point is simple. To obtain visiteur immigration status, you have to prove that you have a certain minimum income, often retirement funds or other assets. You also have to prove that your health care is covered by a policy valid in France, and that the premiums for it are being paid regularly, either directly or indirectly (as part of a retirement package, the person often gets coverage for life, whether or not an amount is deducted from the pension for it).

Before the protection universelle maladie (PUMA) went into effect on January 1st 2016, each person covered by the couverture médicale universelle sent in an income declaration and the cost of the premium was 8%. The coverage was (and still is) free for those with annual earnings below 8,951€, which is pretty much poverty level. With the prefecture looking for annual income of at least 14,000€, the system was set up so that a foreigner covered by the public system called Assurance Maladie would easily be able to prove payment of some premium and therefore comply with the requirement.

Since the 8% of income used to calculate the premium does not include retirement income, many American retirees with visiteur immigration status can sign onto PUMA and be covered for free even if their global income is $100,000 or more, way over what the prefecture requires as a minimum.

URSSAF handles PUMA billing and collection, as it is the collection agency for social charges in France. Instead of receiving a special declaration of income, as before, they now get the information from the French tax office. This leads to several crazy situations. Some foreigners who declare their worldwide income to France without paying anything have received bills from URSSAF even though they have always been covered by the private sector. Under the old system, some foreigners paid their premiums in order to be covered by French public health program. These same foreigners now pay nothing because they do not declare their income to France.

Because of the craziness of the situation and the fact that for about two years URSSAF did not send a single bill to anyone, the prefecture agreed to renew people’s immigration ‘visiteur’ status without proof of health coverage. But my experience is that since the beginning of this year the prefecture has once again been asking for such proof. Several of my clients’ requests for renewal are up in the air, and they are waiting for the prefecture to decide about this situation. Some foreigners have ample income but do not pay anything for their public French health coverage. If that describes you, and you are about to go to the prefecture, be ready to face this issue.

MORE DOCUMENTS NEEDED FOR SELF-EMPLOYED STATUS
The prefecture has added to the list of documents required to be registered as self-employed, opening up a can of worms much bigger than you might think. The first requirement has long-lasting effects and creates serious problems.

Domiciliation professionnelle
The prefecture has a clear tendency to treat self-employed people registered in France as consultants, as if they were opening a shop, or as a limited liability corporation. Now it is asking applicants to submit a statement under oath that their business is domiciled in the home, even though all the other paperwork proves that this is the case.

The next step is that the prefecture may ask to see a lease or other document proving the grounds for the person’s tenancy. Leases almost always state that the apartment is residential and that no businesses can operate on the premises. So the prefecture requires the statement ofdomiciliation professionnelle to be signed by the landlord, authorizing something that is prohibited in the lease, as if a consultant’s activity were the same thing as having the public enter a shop or operating heavy machinery.

This has damaging consequences. Often landlords and even property agencies have people sign a hosting agreement (attestation d’hébergement), when all the utilities and local tax liability remain in the landlord’s name. Getting them to sign a domiciliation professionnelle document is close to impossible. Formerly, one way to block unscrupulous landlords was to have a business registered in the home. This meant declaring income for tax purposes and billing of business taxes at that address, documenting that the person was staying there as their primary domicile and therefore giving them domiciliary protection. This is no longer possible, however, and one might quickly need to find a new place. Thus, for people with this kind of profile, instead of risking being put out on the street, you may want to get yourdomiciliation professionnelle from asociété de domiciliation professionnelle, which may cost about 10€ to 20€ a month for the base service, equivalent to a PO box corporation in the USA.

By doing this, one gets the carte de séjour and the right to work, but gives up the right to deduct a substantial portion of the rent from one’s taxes, which can represent a significant loss. Considering how difficult it is to find lodging in Paris, this adds considerably to the existing problem.

Attestation de vigilance
This is a completely counterintuitive request regarding a review of the payment of taxes and social charges required of those with the self-employed immigration status. Until recently, URSSAF readily made available a statement of what was paid and how much the social charges were. If the statement indicated that the outstanding balance was zero, the person was paid up. The prefecture accepted this was proof of good standing.

Now the prefecture wants another document that does not show any figures but states at the bottom of the second page that the person has complied with all the requirements linked to their status. I would like to raise a couple of questions:

What other requirement could be as important as being up to date on your payments, when one knows that not declaring means getting a fine?

Would not it make more sense to match the four individual URSSAF bills, one for each quarter, with the statement wrapping them all up so as to see if anything is missing?

FRENCH INCOME TAX: TIME TO DECLARE IS NOW
Regarding the more mundane topic of income tax, I would like to remind everybody that the paper version of the 2018 income declaration must be filed in France by Wednesday, May 17th midnight. The declaration forms are available at www.impots.gouv.fr. You can file your declaration on this website, provided it is not your first time. To do so, you need your tax ID number and some access codes.

Note that if you file online, the deadline is later. The schedule depends on your postal code:

• départements 01 to 19 must file by midnight on May 22nd
• départements 20 to 49 by May 29 th
• départements 50 or higher by June 5th

An important reminder: if you are a French fiscal resident (i.e. if you hold acarte de séjour or an immigration visa validated with an OFII stamp, and comply with the requirements), you must declare your worldwide income to the French authorities even if you have no income in France and do not have the right to work in France. There is no penalty for neglecting to file, but not meeting this obligation is illegal and can have consequences.

You are a French fiscal resident if you:

• 1. Staying in France for 183 days in a calendar year, whether you have legal immigration status or not.
• 2. Having immediate family members who reside in France (a spouse and/or children).
• 3. Having a French employer.
• 4. Running a French business, even something like tutoring schoolchildren in English.

Current government-sponsored advertising campaigns refer to paper forms as thing of the past. For now, declaring electronically gives you an extension of a few weeks.

CHOOSING BETWEEN FRENCH NATIONALITY AND A CARTE DE RESIDENT
A couple of weeks ago, while attending one of Stephen Heiner’s monthly entrepreneurs’ lunches, the topic of naturalization came up and I could see that there is a misconception about the naturalization procedure, especially when comparing it to obtaining the carte de résident, which is loosely the equivalent of the American green card.

Many people read the requirements and conclude that the naturalization procedure asks for almost nothing, as the current requirements are: 

• 1. Having had a permanent legal stay in France at all times.
• 2. Being a French fiscal resident.
• 3. Mastering the language at B1 level (the government is thinking of increasing it to B2)
• 4. Having lived in France for five consecutive years, or possibly two consecutive years for applicants who have received a master’s degree in France.

The carte de résident requirements are much stricter: 

• 1. Having had a permanent legal stay in France at all times.
• 2. Having lived in France for five consecutive years, without exception (years holding a student carte de séjour do not count).
• 3. Showing four consecutive avis d’imposition, the French income tax statement, with a consistent annual income at least equal to French minimum wage, the SMIC.
• 4. Mastering the language at A2 level.
• 5. Preferably owning one’s home, or renting with a full lease.
• 6. Preferably being covered by the French public health care system.

The requirements for a carte de résident are more numerous, more demanding, and more rigid than those for naturalization. This confuses a lot of people. They do not understand why becoming a French national looks so easy, when even asking for carte de séjour can entail a longer list of required documents.

My explanation of this apparent oddity is that the naturalization procedure is like a funnel: the entrance is wide but the exit is tiny. What I mean is that it is true that the requirements for submitting a file requesting naturalization are simple, but the ones for obtaining it are strict. There are a lot of unwritten requirements that are not mentioned in the documents the prefecture gives you when you ask for the list.

By contrast, the carte de résident procedure is like a straight pipe: If you qualify to submit the file requesting it, it is nearly certain to be approved.

Finally, in my experience, many people do not know the rights associated with the carte de résident. It gives you various types of right to work and guarantees that you can live forever in France; you can even live in another country without losing the right to live in France.

I would say the objective when asking for naturalization is to prove complete allegiance to France and, ideally, to have all aspects of your life grounded in France. Hence some of the unwritten requirements when asking for naturalization, such as holding a carte de séjour salarié as well as vie privée et familiale, which gives you a better chance of success. Otherwise, asking first for the carte de résident is pretty much an obligation. Another is earning most, if not all, of your income from a French source, ideally as an employee. This is just to give an idea of what is truly required, but, to be fair, miracles can happen, so if you think you have a special profile that offsets what is missing, you should still apply.

I would like to remind my readers who hold a ‘visiteur’ immigration status that after a lawful presence of five years and compliance with all the abovementioned requirements. They can easily get the 10-year carte de résident because they already comply with everything on the list by virtue of their annual renewals. Some prefectures can be extremely lenient with American citizens who can often renew their immigration status without complying with this abovementioned list. So this is one of the first things to check. Then the only thing that is left uncertain is their competency in French. This said, an A2-level of competency can be presumed after a presence of five years in France.

DISCUSSION OF RAISING TAXES AT THE 2019 DAVOS FORUM
The article I cite below has a direct link with the section of my January 31st issue in which the gilets jaunes movement is discussed. Their members still demonstrate every Saturday, regardless of what the government proposes. Clearly this is not something that can dealt with by announcing last-minute changes. Several other countries have also been experiencing weekend demonstrations, notably Algeria. What is going on there deserves much more attention than the Western media, including French media, are giving it. Western economies need a radical new way to address taxation, especially taxation of income and wealth. These are the tools that enable countries to deal with their primary mission of national security and inhabitants’ well-being. I am happy to see that terms such as socialism, taxation and wealth regulation are no longer considered obscene and taboo but have become issues to discuss and review. The definition of well-being varies by country but the constant decreases in the services and protection the state guarantees its people now has a visible result: multinationals have more power than many countries and their money controls democratic elections more and more, stripping away what democracy should be: the voice of people.

The following article was published in the Guardian on February 1st 2019.
Rutger Bregman had not really intended to stick it to the global elite. He never meant to have a pop at the idea that inequality could be solved by philanthropy or inviting Bono to Davos. But when the Dutch historian decided to go off-piste at the World Economic Forum and tell the assembled billionaires they should stop avoiding paying tax, he became an overnight social media sensation.

“It’s been a crazy week and just for stating the obvious,” said Bregman, when asked about a panel discussion at the WEF last month in which he said the issue was “taxes, taxes, taxes, and all the rest is bullshit in my opinion”.

Bregman had not been to Davos before. He was invited on the basis of the book Utopia for Realists, which argued for a basic income and a shorter working week, ideas that have been taken up by some of the Silicon Valley billionaires who show up for the annual event in the Swiss Alps.

But he grew more irritated as the week wore on. Bregman gave a speech to a dinner of technology chief executives and then spoke at one of Davos’s private sessions, off limits to journalists. There he was surprised and maddened by the pushback when he mentioned tax. “One American looked at me as if I was from another planet,” he said.

As a result, Bregman decided to change his plan for a panel on inequality organized by Time magazine on the final morning of Davos. “I went to my hotel room and memorized what I wanted to say by heart,” he said.

“I more or less ignored the question asked by the moderator and gave my speech instead. It was mainly to ease my own conscience: someone has to say what needs to be said.”

What Bregman said, put simply, was the Davos emperors have no clothes. They talk a lot about how something must be done about inequality and the need to address social unrest, but cavil at the idea they might be a big part of the problem.

He told his audience that people in Davos talked about participation, justice, equality and transparency, but “nobody raises the issue of tax avoidance and the rich not paying their share. It is like going to a firefighters’ conference and not talking about water.”

Nothing happened over the weekend. Bregman went back to Amsterdam wondering whether his colorful language was a mistake, but then a video of the Time panel went viral, and it has received millions of views on Twitter alone.

Bregman, 30, is not entirely surprised at the reaction. He said he is part of a generation not traumatized by the cold war and radicalized by the financial crisis of a decade ago. “When we say what’s needed are higher taxes and the response is ‘that’s communism’, we say ‘whatever’,” he said.

“I am part of a broad social movement. Ten years ago, it would have unimaginable for some random Dutch historian to go viral when talking about taxes. Yet here we are.”

As a historian, Bregman noted the most successful period for capitalism occurred in the years after the second world war, when the top rate of tax in the US was above 90%.

“This is about saving capitalism,” he said. “Most innovation has come about through government spending. During the golden age period [after the second world war], there were way higher taxes on wealth, property, inheritance and top incomes. That’s what we need today if we are going to tame this beast called capitalism.”

Bregman was born in 1988, the year before the Berlin Wall came down. He grew up in the Dutch city of Zoetermeer, studied history at Utrecht University and contemplated doing a PhD before deciding he was not cut out for a career in academia.

“I didn’t want to waste four years on an insignificant subject nobody cares about,” he said. Instead, the global financial crisis pushed him in a different direction.

“I thought that we needed historians to take the stage and explain what’s going on. When I watched the crisis on TV, the only people being interviewed were economists, and these were the guys that didn’t see it coming. I thought that we needed some historians there, so I left academia,” Bregman said.

He spent a year working on a left-of-centre Dutch paper before joining a new journalism platform that paid him a basic income and provided the freedom to write about anything he chose. Utopia for Realists was the result.

Bregman is working on a new book in which he intends to challenge the view that humans are inherently selfish. It is not true, he said, that people revert to their true, nasty selves when the thin veneer of civilization is stripped away.

“If we assume the best in people, we can radically redesign our democracy and welfare states,” he said.

Bregman bridles at being called an optimist. “I prefer the word possibilist,” he said. Optimists are the sort of chief executives found at Davos, who think globalization is working, neoliberalism is a good idea and inequality is on the decline, he added.

“A lot of great things are going on. In many ways, the past 30 years have been the best in world history. But we can do much better. I prefer the word hope over optimism,” Bregman added.

So, would he make a return visit to the WEF next year?

“I would definitely go. I would just give the same speech. It is going to be a dilemma for them. If they don’t invite me, it will prove my point. If they do, I’ll say the same thing all over again,” he said.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/feb/01/rutger-bregman-world-economic-forum-davos-speech-tax-billionaires-capitalism

OFFICE CLOSED FOR MY 60th BIRTHDAY
The office will close for slightly over two weeks for this occasion. It will start on Friday June 14th evening and will reopen on Tuesday July 2nd morning. As always, I will only be reachable by email for emergencies and important matters as I will be out of France. The service I offer of receiving mail for clients will continue while the office is closed. I have not figured out how I will send the July issue considering the situation.

MY SUMMER VACATION: THE OFFICE IS CLOSED from July 19th to August 19th
The office will be closed for one month starting Friday, July 19th, reopening on Monday, August 19th. 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.

MY FEES WILL GO UP ON OCTOBER 1st 2019
I plan to change some aspects of my business when I reopen the office on Monday, August 19th. The main reason is to allow my assistant to do some tasks more systematically. One of them is to accompany the clients to the prefecture, URSSAF, CPAM and other public offices. She already handles most of the dealings with the offices where self-employed people are registered. She has also accompanied my clients to the prefecture several times. As her fees are lower than mine, this should compensate for the increase in my fees. On October 1st, I will raise my initial retainer from 270€ to 300€ and the hourly rate from 110€ to 130€.

Best regards,

QUESTION

PROBLEMS LINKED TO THE ABSENCE OF A BUILDING PERMIT

My French boyfriend owns a tiny house at the end of a courtyard in the middle of Paris, which makes for a wonderful place to live as it is so quiet, no street noise and no neighbors. When I moved in with him, there was a large toolshed against our wall which is located in a different condominium association. After several months of heavy work, which felt like a complete renovation, someone moved in and because there is a tiny brick wall between us, we hear everything, and we smell all his cooking. It has become a nightmare. When my boyfriend called the owner of this toolshed, the answer was that this is private property, he can do whatever he wants and we should get over this. Can we stop him bullying us this way? Can he face some significant consequences? Can someone sleep in what is zoned as a toolshed?

QUESTION

CHANGES TO AN APARTMENT WHILE IT IS BEING SOLD

After several years of living in France, I finally made the bold move of buying an apartment. Finding a decent place at a decent price felt like going through combat, as some places were beyond horrific.

At the time of signing the presale contract, la promesse de vente, we discussed whether anything would be left in the apartment in terms of appliances and furniture. There was an amazing refrigerator. I cannot remember seeing such a big and fancy one before, including in the USA. It was over 6 feet with the all features one could dream of. The seller valued it to be worth 1,000€ second hand. I had no idea if this was the right evaluation, as I understood that the higher we all agreed to value the appliances and furniture, the less I would pay in frais de notaire, which are in fact mostly taxes, with a tiny fraction being the notaire’s compensation.

I was shocked, when I visited the apartment minutes before the closing, to see a broken tiny refrigerator instead. I was fuming as I entered the meeting to sign. The man, the seller, never budged during the entire meeting. Both notaires tried to explain that the presale contract gave the list of appliances and furniture and it was binding. His answer the entire time was that the contract says a refrigerator and there is one, so the contract is being met. I was told by the notaires that they did not have any coercive power and there was nothing they could do. So, in the end, I gave in and signed, but I am mad as I believe I was the victim of a dishonest person. Could things have turned out differently? What should I have done?

First of all, I would like to wish all of you a very happy and prosperous 2019!
French custom dictates that New Year’s wishes can be expressed until the end of January,
so I have managed it a few hours before the deadline.

Joseph Allen “Country Joe” McDonald composed “The “Fish” Cheer/I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag” in 1965, with its very familiar chorus (“One, two, three, what are we fighting for?”), which Country Joe and the Fish sang at Woodstock.

Sitting in Paris, following very closely what is going on in France and the USA, the question on my mind and on both sides on the ocean is: “Who is fighting for what?”

In the USA, there is fighting for and against “the wall”. In France, we have seen rioting on the most prestigious avenue in the country. There has been violence on both sides, with the police having the hardest time keeping control of the streets of Paris and most other major French cities almost every Saturday. Who are these people so faithfully demonstrating, and who is littering once the demonstration is over?

I have always liked the saying, “Pick your fight!” While it should never end in a fistfight, it defines a strategy that carries a lot of common sense.

Time will tell what will come of these situations. The USA will recover from the longest government shutdown in history, but it will be interesting to see who wins and who loses once life goes back to something more normal.

As for France, how can it get out of this situation of defiant grassroots opposition? Note that unions and political parties in France can organize public demonstrations in the streets very easily. This is even a topic for which the expat community makes fun of France. But in this case, none of the unions or parties have been able to organize a plan of action that enables them to become part of the normal scheme of things. In 1968, the CGT union, which was then controlled by the Communist Party, was able to take over the famous May demonstrations, and ended up obtaining a breakthrough in labor law, the Grenelle accords.

All the French leaders who matter give the impression of being numb in the current situation.

Later in this column I mention the Boston Tea Party. I started the column mentioning Woodstock and a song associated with the hippie movement and opposition to the Vietnam War.

As the song by Bob Dylan puts it, “The Times They Are a-Changin’ ” – this is obvious to everybody.

In the midst of all this, I would like to wish everybody Happy Valentine’s Day in an effort to lighten the atmosphere.

THE STRAW THAT BROKE THE CAMEL’S BACK – LES GILETS JAUNES
Journalists and commentators always like to analyze in detail the “little thing” that ignites a revolution, a rebellion, unrest and so on. It is often a minor thing, with little significance and meaning unless one retraces years and sometimes decades of whatever policy creates the conditions for major unrest.

The Boston Tea Party occurred on December 16th, 1773, at Griffin’s Wharf in Boston, Massachusetts. It was spurred by the Tea Act of the previous May, which allowed the British East India Company to collect taxes in the American colonies.

The colonists argued that the British constitution did not allow “taxation without representation” – and the truth can be stated like this: “Yes, we live in a colony, but we matter – and we want a say in the rules that are governing us.”

The Boston Tea Party would never have taken place, and would not have led to the independence of the USA, if the underlying demand for representation in the British parliament had not been so strongly shared by the people living in the colonies that were soon to become the 13 original states.

The parallel I see is that the price of gasoline in France is mostly made up of taxes. The average price is €1.55 a liter, or about $6.75 a gallon. The USA would never accept such expensive gas – there would be riots everywhere. In France, however, one might think that increasing the tax yet again should not have led to the riots we have seen occurring in the streets of Paris. But underneath, there was some serious and long-lasting discontent on the part of the general population.

The famous French motto “liberté, égalité, fraternité” (liberty, equality, fraternity) is visible on all French public buildings. It has its origins in the 1789 French Revolution, and was institutionalized in the late 19th century. Through the centuries the French people’s perception of it and what it stands for has changed somewhat, yet it emphases the idea that there is unity and solidarity within the French nation. I would translate fraternité today as “brotherhood”. Since 1983, French conservative and liberal governments alike have implemented pretty much identical economic policies. Equality and brotherhood have been overlooked for decades, leading to increasing erosion of the foundations of the French nation.

There is a fundamental difference between the USA and France regarding this issue. In the USA, no one has any problem with some people becoming very wealthy and being conspicuous about it. The fundamental reason is that most people believe they, too, can become rich, as this is the American Dream: It is the land of opportunity, where the sky is everybody’s limit. This is of course more a belief than a reality, but it remains a foundation of the USA as a nation.

The French overthrew their king a few times to settle definitively for a republic because, among other reasons, they had this desire for equality and fairness, and trusted the government to protect them from the excessive desires of the wealthy and powerful. This is one reason the French government apparatus is so huge, and at one time or another has included many businesses, such as banks, car manufacturers, the postal service, the railroads, and so on.

President Macron was elected on the promise that his policies would be very different from those of his predecessors. One of his themes during the campaign was that he would put equality and brotherhood back into French politics while also having a conservative economic policy. Without listing all the reforms France has gone through during his presidency, it is clear that equality and brotherhood have never been part of his government’s policy. It is even more conservative than before, with what a lot of people have described as disdain for the working class and the poor. In other words, his “reforms” could have been those of any previous government. Indeed, he should have thought twice before getting rid of the wealth tax while French employees suffered a severe loss of rights. It was a tax increase on gas and diesel fuel that ignited the gilets jaunes revolt.

This is why I see a parallel with the Boston Tea Party, and I believe that it has a lot of merit. I have no idea where it will take the French nation. I very strongly doubt that President Macron will be ousted by a revolution. Short of that, I have no idea what the outcome will be. Clearly this is a political crisis that must be addressed very seriously, not by just delaying the tax increase – which, obviously, is not the problem in itself. It is just the straw that broke the camel’s back.

THE FRENCH BANKING INDUSTRY
A recent post on Stephen Heiner’s blog and a conversation we had gave me the idea of writing about the French banking industry. One reason it is becoming a topic of discussion among many foreigners living in France is that opening and using a bank account is pretty much a must if one is to retain French immigration status. Also, since cash transactions are increasingly rare, it has become virtually impossible to live in France without a French bank account.

One oddity of the French banking industry is that the savings and loans side accounts for about half of the global market, if not more. Many people do not know this, and foreigners have no reason to find out unless they do some research on their own. There are six major independent French financial institutions: Société Générale and BNP-Paribas, which are banks owned by shareholders, and Crédit Agricole, Crédit Mutuel, Caisse d’Epargne and Banque Populaire, which are savings and loans owned by their clients. All others either do private banking for the rich, are French branches of foreign banks, or are subsidiaries of one of those six institutions; there are a very few exceptions, including La Banque Postale, Crédit Foncier and a few others.

For better or worse, the industry as a whole has harmonized a lot of practices, the most obvious being wiring/withdrawal capacity and the use of debit cards.

The major difference I see between the French and American banking systems is that in France, the client hardly ever needs to meet with a bank employee; everything is done via machines (mainly ATMs to deposit and withdraw money) or online. One actually goes to the bank only in specific cases, such as asking for a loan, investing in stocks and mutual funds, and opening an account. A lot of criticism I hear about French banking is the absence of personal contact with the banker assigned to the client. But that assumes French banking is the same as in the USA or elsewhere, when it is not. To adapt easily to French banking, you should first find out all the services the machines offer, often in a room located outside the branch office itself, and usually open long hours, e.g. 7AM to 10PM. Then create an account online and learn about all the services offered on the website or app, knowing that one needs a French cell phone to use some of them, such as authorizing a credit card payment on a website or adding an account to wire money to.

Yes, as with so much else in France, a foreigner must learn how the French banking industry works, because it is so different.

The second part of this topic is finding a way to open a bank account in France. The reason it is so difficult at first is a compounding effect of a French regulation and an American one. The latter is called FATCA, which I have already discussed several times. For an American citizen, opening an account in France means the bank has to report to the IRS. There is serious liability if it does not do so, but reporting entails onerous paperwork for the bank. Thus, regardless of the balance you plan on leaving in your French bank account, your citizenship is a put-off for French banks. Nothing personal here – you can blame the IRS!

The French regulation is called TRACFIN, which I have also explained several times – the name refers both to the legislation fighting money laundering and the team of investigative inspectors enforcing it. The legislation makes every bank branch manager personally and criminally responsible for any money laundering and/or other criminal activities related to moving money in and out of bank accounts for which they are responsible. Any new client appears at first to be a potential liability until the bank is sure where the money comes from, how it was acquired and so on. Once the bank is reassured about this, the account is opened. This is why the file to open a French bank account often seems worse than the one for the prefecture, which is the benchmark for many.

FRENCH WELFARE AND PART-TIME WORK
All countries that have some kind of welfare system need to address a well-known problem. When a person goes off welfare and gets a job, it can happen that the amount of money they earn is less than they were receiving on welfare. This makes any “all or nothing” system counterproductive, so there is a need for some kind of transition to smooth the path back to working.

In France, most subsidies paid by the Caisse d’allocations familiales (CAF) are linked to the amount of income declared. When the Revenu de Solidarité Actif (RSA, originally called RMI for Revenu Minimal d’Insertion) was created, the problem was identified but poorly addressed. One person I help is paid twice a year because the number of hours they work is so small, and so they receive RSA at the same time. Since CAF demands to receive a quarterly declaration, such people often end up with close to zero income for half the year because a salary of about €1300 exceeds the limit. The system does not understand that this is not a monthly income but a semiannual one.

The problem has not been solved yet by CAF, but this person will be paid quarterly and should be able to maintain all the benefits of the RSA combined with their very small salary.

On the other hand, the prime d’activité created in 2016 replaced the failing system for people holding steadier jobs with very low salaries. The calculation is complex but the end result is easy to understand. It minimizes the consequence of earning income just above the limit in the calculation of the other subsidies and thus creates a real incentive to work more. Since it applies not just to employees but also to the self-employed, it helps people with erratic income, and it applies to everybody living in France, including carte de séjour holders under certain conditions. It shows that, in reality, continuing a tad longer to subsidize an individual is a better way to get them off welfare when they are ready. What puts people on a welfare program is often a complex story with several things happening more or less at the same time.

THE MARITAL REGIME FOR INTERNATIONAL COUPLES MARRYING AFTER JANUARY 29th 2019
Without going into too much detail, this issue concerns which rule of ownership is applied to an international couple, a matter that had been regulated by the Hague Marriage Convention of March 14th 1978. The couple could choose between the regime linked to their citizenship, the location of the wedding, and the country where they spent their first significant amount of married life.

A new European Union regulation states that such couples can now only choose between the countries of which they are citizens and that where they started their married life. The latter is chosen by default, and this rule covers the entire net worth of the couple, including assets – especially real estate – in other countries. That part is one of the major changes in the new regulation.

To put this in context: in 2015, 27% of the weddings celebrated in France were what was called mixed, because they involved spouses of different nationalities.

www.lemonde.fr/argent/article/2018/12/03/regimes-matrimoniaux-du-nouveau-pour-les-mariages-internationaux_5391775_1657007.html

SPLITTING PREROGATIVES IN THE FRENCH ADMINISTRATION
People who have been in France since before 2011 may remember the complicated French tax office reform when the billing-collection part was merged with the office calculating the amount of taxes owed. The root of the historic division between the two went back to Napoleon’s time and stems from a complete distrust of people: Ensuring that the person calculating how much must be paid is totally disconnected from the person collecting the amount due was a way to avoid attempted bribery of either party. Even today, when the two divisions of the tax office are located in the same building, they are physically as far apart as possible and there is next to no contact between them. Being physically closer has not destroyed the barriers created by the centuries!

This way of functioning is less and less common but has not completely disappeared. My readers have followed what feels like the endless saga of PUMA coverage, in which CPAM had delivered health coverage, and therefore reimbursements, all along while URSSAF stopped collecting premiums for two years and since December 2017 has sent invoices to people who are not covered by the system. Aside from the obvious screw-up by the French administration, this provides a very good illustration of the division of administrative processes.

Another that is not as well known is for the independents, the necessity of registering with net.entreprise.fr to declare and pay social charges (the Social Security side of what is owed) and the chosen health coverage organization that deals with medical costs. One change the internet has brought is that a single part of the administration can now calculate and collect the money owed, since everything is done through the website, making it difficult to have any personal contact with the civil servant in charge of the operation. While double registration is old hat to French people, being self-employed in France brings daily surprises to foreigners who have just started running their business. This is just a gentle reminder: Yes, it is now a legal obligation to register with net.entreprise.fr if your yearly turnover exceeds €3,973, which pretty much means everybody.

IN FRANCE THE BEST INTEREST OF THE CHILD PREVAILS – SORT OF!
On July 11th 1975, the French law governing modern divorce was passed. To the man who drafted it, the jurist Jean Carbonnier, the foundation of French family law was “the best interest of the child”. Obviously, however, the legal understanding of this phrase can depend on what the reality is with the parents, siblings and so on. Also, I believe that an excess of the emphasis on transparency regarding a child can be completely against his or her best interests.

A groundbreaking ruling of the Nîmes court of appeal, issued on June 27th 2017, shows the limits of strict interpretation. In the case, a Napoleonic interpretation would have been that it was impossible to overrule the legal assumption that the husband is the father. In the days before DNA testing, it was difficult to dispute this assumption.

To sum up the situation, a married woman had a clandestine affair, got pregnant and gave birth. The lover suspected that he was the father and managed to arrange a DNA test. It proved, within a statistical margin of error, that he was the father. So he went to city hall and officially declared himself as such.

The married couple argued that the legal assumption was that a child born to a married couple has these two people as parents. The biological father stated that it was in the child’s interest to know who the real father was, that the DNA test left no doubt that he was the father, and that therefore the court must overrule the legal presumption that the child was born of the married couple.

This is the key quote from the court ruling:

« [S]’il est évident qu’il sera peut-être difficile pour l’enfant de devoir considérer que M. Z est son père et non pas M. Y, il appartiendra aux époux Y, et singulièrement à la mère, qui est, malgré tout, à l’origine de la situation, d’aider Anna à l’appréhender ».

In short, the best interest of the child is to know who the biological father is, and the court expects the mother to manage this difficult situation. The court adds that it is normal for this responsibility to fall on her, as she is responsible for the situation.

This ruling, after over ten years of court procedure, leaves me at a complete loss when it comes to an opinion of what is the best interest of the child. The married couple has appealed the decision to the highest French court, the Cour de Cassation, whose ruling will be very interesting. According to the legal opinions I have read, many think that this degree of transparency, considered to be in the child’s best interest, has gone too far.

How does this relate to French divorce law? In France, guardianship is decided in the best interest of the child. Many foreign mothers do not get full custody of their children. Indeed, the French court system fears that giving foreign women custody of their French children would result in their living elsewhere; in the French legal view, the best interest of the child is to stay in France.

This does not mean that, for example, an American mother divorcing her French husband cannot get full custody and the right to move back to the USA, taking her child or children with her. But the case she makes must address the right issue: the best interest of the child as the court understands it.

http://sosconso.blog.lemonde.fr/2018/11/27/le-pere-biologique-peut-il-reconnaitre-lenfant-dune-femme-mariee/

OFFICE CLOSED FOR MY 60th BIRTHDAY
The office will close for slightly over two weeks for this occasion. It will start on Friday June 14th evening and will reopen on Tuesday July 2nd morning. As always, I will only be reachable by email for emergencies and important matters as I will be out of France. The service I offer of receiving mail for clients will continue while the office is closed. I have not figured out how I will send the July issue considering the situation.

Best regards,

QUESTION

LOCAL TAXES IN FRANCE

I am living long term in a four-bedroom house in Cergy. All the other roommates come and go, so I am the only person living there long term.
The owner says that if I claim this address on my tax form, it will cost him an extra €2000 in taxe d’habitation, so I must use a different address.
Is this true? What do you recommend to avoid this extra cost? I have never had a landlord do this before.

QUESTION

THE IMMIGRATION STATUS NEEDED TO MARRY A FRENCH CITIZEN IN FRANCE

I am an American, currently resident in Ireland, and am looking to join my French partner in France in 2019. We are not yet married, but are looking at our options for us to live together in France and also allow me to work in France as soon as possible. Ideally, I will get a job with a French company in the coming months that will take care of my work permit; however, if this does not happen, we see two options and would greatly appreciate your help in better understanding the questions we have and deciding how to proceed:
Option 1: I go to France on a Short Stay Visa, Legal Marriage in France within 90 Days. Can I change from the Short Stay Visa to a Spouse Visa while in France? If not, would I need to go to the French Embassy in the US or Ireland and apply for a Spouse Visa? Can I work in France on a Spouse Visa? If yes, what is the time frame for being able to start working? Are there requirements for the Spouse Visa, such as French language and/or culture exam?

Option 2: I get a Long Stay Visa, I find a job in France. Can I convert the Long Stay Visa to a Work Permit immediately? If not, what is the time frame required from a visa/legal standpoint? Does it require waiting until the Long Stay Visa expires? If not, do I need to go back to US/Ireland (pending timeframe) to go to the French Embassy to apply for a Work Visa?

Please let me know if these are questions you can assist with, if there any additional information needed, and how we can proceed from here. Any help is much appreciated!

ll the leaves are brown (all the leaves are brown)
And the sky is grey (and the sky is grey)
I’ve been for a walk (I’ve been for a walk)
On a winter’s day (on a winter’s day)
I’d be safe and warm (I’d be safe and warm)
If I was in L.A. (if I was in L.A.)
California dreamin’ (California dreamin’)
On such a winter’s day
Stopped into a church
I passed along the way
Well, I got down on my knees (got down on my knees)
And I pretend to pray (I pretend to pray)
You know the preacher like the cold (preacher like the cold)
He knows I’m gonna stay (knows I’m gonna stay)
California dreamin’ (California dreamin’)
On such a winter’s day
All the leaves are brown (all the leaves are brown)
And the sky is grey (and the sky is grey)
I’ve been for a walk (I’ve been for a walk)
On a winter’s day (on a winter’s day)
If I didn’t tell her (if I didn’t tell her)
I could leave today (I could leave today)
California dreamin’ (California dreamin’)
On such a winter’s day (California dreamin’)
On such a winter’s day (California dreamin’)
On such a winter’s day

The song “California Dreamin’,” by John and Michelle Phillips, was first recorded by Barry McGuire in 1965, with backup vocals by the Phillips’ quartet, the Mamas & the Papas. They released their own version as a single the same year, and it became by far the bigger hit.

Among French people, especially those who have dreamed of moving to the USA, California has an iconic status, that sets this state aside from the rest of the USA. It has always been the land one dreams about. In May 1970, the French singer Julien Clerc released “La Californie,” which became a long-lasting hit. It is safe to say that as far back as one can remember, the state of California has nourished dreams of an unattainable better life for much of the world. This separation of the state and the nation in the popular imagination of the rest of the world, is something many Americans themselves have a hard time understanding.

The results of the midterm elections in a lot of the country were favorable to the Democratic Party. It is interesting to note that the state of California is heavily Democratic. So, for some people the election results were reason to rejoice, enabling them to dream that a better future is possible. California has also long been a magnet for people living in other states – and still is, for political reasons as well as well-paid job opportunities. California dreaming, dreaming California is still today, a real thing.

As I write these words, however, wildfires are destroying homes and killing people, and California is weeping over these deaths and other losses. This is a time of mourning. One could hope that such destructive fires will not happen again, but climate change is going to make it more difficult. In much of the USA, it has been really cold. It feels like winter already when one celebrates Thanksgiving with thick snow on the ground. What makes the fires even scarier is that they should not happen when it is that cold.

I could dwell upon the leaves being not only brown but burned to ashes, about the sky being grey and people suffocating from the heavy smoke. But rather than twirling with these lyrics, I pay my respects to the victims of the blazes, especially people who lost their homes, their businesses, a loved one. We should pay attention to them, helping them rebuild their lives and giving them a reason to dream of a better future.

As long as I can remember, I have loved “California Dreamin’,” and still often listen to the albums of The Mamas & the Papas.

HOW CAN THERE BE A FRENCH BLACK FRIDAY?
I already wrote about this last year, and this year is even worse in terms of the advertisements we are being bombarded with about huge sales only on Black Friday. It reassures me a little (but not much) that many French outlets promote Black Friday week, which indicates to me they have a poor understanding of what Black Friday normally means. I also find recent developments regarding the Thanksgiving celebration to be interesting. I cannot imagine the USA going through the season of fall without celebrating it. At the same time, I look with great interest at the fact that the narrative of Native Americans is being heard more and more, and that this celebration is unsettling, to say the least, for them.

FROM MY DECEMBER 2017 ISSUE:
“I was feeling completely exasperated at seeing ‘Black Friday’ advertised everywhere in France (in English!). I wondered how many of people would even know what it referred to. How can you have a ‘Black Friday’ if you do not celebrate Thanksgiving on Thursday? The adoption of this term is totally insane and I believe it illustrates 100% bad taste consumerism. In the USA, many consider ‘Black Friday’ offensive for various reasons, a tendency that has grown with every passing year. Some believe this is insanity in consumerism, citing the craziness when crowds – I would call them hordes sometimes – enter the shops. Others focus more on the idea that family life should take precedence over consumerism, as the day after Thanksgiving is usually a de facto national holiday. There are other criticisms, but I see particular merit in those two.

“France does not celebrate Thanksgiving, and this holiday, unlike some others, cannot be easily exported, as it is part and parcel of the iconic history of the birth of the USA and the infancy of an early settlement in the New World.”

RETENUE À LA SOURCE – INCOME TAX WITHHOLDING STARTS ON JANUARY 1st 2019
I attended a seminar on this topic given by my French accounting firm, as it is now certain that it will go ahead. I would like to explain in a basic way how it will happen.

We could have feared the worst from the French administration, since the deal was locked, sealed and delivered this past September after countless months of indecision.

First, the good news, which shows there have been some significant improvements.

The provision that employees feared most was that their family information would need to be shared with the employer. This is not happening: only the tax office will be informed. It used to happen once a year, when the declaration was submitted. But now, since this information immediately affects the bracket used to calculate the amount of tax owed, the individual must inform the tax inspector as soon as possible. This is a huge relief. It is interesting to see that in France, the tax inspector is more trusted and seen as less of a threat than the employer – a situation that is impossible to explain in only a few words. Just remember that the tax inspector is a free adviser when tax season comes, and an impartial helper.

The other good news is that independents will pay monthly by automated withdrawal, and the amount will be based on what was owed the previous year. The administration has promised that any reported change will be taken into account, and the amount of the payment changed, as quickly as possible. It remains to be seen how quickly that will actually be.

The same rule applies for rental income and other types of revenue that an authority cannot withhold directly.

A NEW IMMIGRATION LAW HAS BEEN PASSED – SOME GOOD NEWS
To obtain employee immigration status, one must be awarded the right to work as an employee. A new law grants this right to all of the foreigner’s potential employers, rather than to just one specific current employer. Previously there was a risk of losing this right when the foreigner changed employers within three years.

Another good thing is that the travailleur temporaire status and designation mentioned on the carte de séjour has been done away with. The evolution was such that it was issued when the foreigner had a contrat à durée déterminée, a short-term contract with a beginning and ending date. Now both labor contracts, the CDD and the CDI, grant the right to obtain the “salarié carte de séjour”. We will see if DIRECCTE issues the same number of authorizations and implements the law with the right intent, or if some short-term contract holders will be refused, when they would have been accepted under the previous law.

A further good thing is the disappearance of the autorisation provisoire de séjour for recent graduates transitioning to work either as an employee or a self-employed person. It has been replaced by a true immigration status called titre de séjour temporaire « recherche d’emploi ou création ». This should reassure employers and facilitate the job search.

Now almost all the remaining bad news concerning immigration is about refugee procedures.

CRIMINAL FAKE MARRIAGE – ULTERIOR MOTIVE MARRIAGE
I never try to guess which couple will last and which will not. There is no way to be sure, and we have all known what appeared to be the perfect couple who ended up getting the nastiest divorce. Because of my work, I often deal with couples where one is an undocumented alien seeking to obtain a legal stay through marriage. That puts a huge strain on the couple if it is not properly handled. It gives one spouse considerable power over the other, as the couple must stay married three years before the foreigner can retain legal residence in France. I have often seen the foreign spouse effectively blackmailed. The other distortion is that the foreign spouse may disappear once the immigration status is achieved for good, giving the impression that there was no love and it was just a scam to stay in France.

Completely aside from the immigration issue, multicultural couples have a much harder time staying together, as it is harder for them to establish the common ground needed for a long-lasting relationship. At the same time, the traditional view of marriage lasting forever is shared by fewer and fewer people these days. In major cities of Western countries, half of all marriages end in divorce, with multicultural couples representing only a tiny minority.

The video linked below is ten years old, and I know the administration has strengthened its controls and now does more investigation to uncover what French officialdom considers fake marriages. It is not just a matter of foreigners paying a large sum of money to get married and obtain a legal stay; that is a felony, for which people go to jail. But there are also couples where clearly the foreigner is not involved in the relationship as someone in love, when the other one seems to be. I liked the comment the policewoman made about the Moroccan woman and the Frenchman wanting to get married. She understood the motivations of each of them, and she seemed to care about both of them, but at the same time she had to apply the law and definitively block the wedding, leaving the Moroccan woman in a precarious situation.

FRENCH CONSULATES WILL NO LONGER OFFER NOTAIRE SERVICE
Starting in 2019, French consulates are dropping the notaire service they used to provide. This might not seem like a huge loss to most of us, but it is for countries in which such a service is not offered privately. It is a big deal in countries where there is no other way to verify the signing of an official document. In such countries, it was a real service that was badly needed: the consular notarization enabled, for instance, real estate transactions to occur in France without the person having to go to France. Throughout my career I have seen more and more transactions done this way. Since the clients are almost always Americans and French notaires often accept notarization by an American notary public, this is a reasonable alternative. Yet even today, I think many rural notaires would not accept such notarizations, as they are not done according to French procedure.

https://frenchmorning.com/notariat-consulaire-supprime-a-partir-de-2019/

FRENCH BAILIFFS SEIZED A RYANAIR JET OVER AN UNPAID DEBT
Here is an excerpt of an article I found on the website www.thelocal.fr:
“French authorities said on Friday they seized a Ryanair plane, forcing 149 London-bound passengers off the aircraft, to get the Irish low-cost airline to repay illegal public aid, the latest in a string of troubles for the carrier.

“Claiming that Ryanair owed them 525,000 euros ($595,000) in subsidies wrongfully paid out to the airline, the authorities sent in a bailiff under police protection on Thursday to seize the plane on the tarmac of Bordeaux airport as it was readying to take off for London Stansted.

“Just under 24 hours later, the no-frills airline relented and paid up, authorities said Friday, allowing it to reclaim its aircraft.”

The French word for bailiff is huissier and when you see a document from them or when they knock on your door, you need to pay attention. Sometimes it is empty threats, but other times they have the power to confiscate things and sell them at auction when a debt has not been paid. Grounding an airplane to get a debt paid is rare, which is why it made the news.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46152849

I would like to remind everyone that there is no January issue.

I would like to wish you all
A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR
I am looking forward to the year to come, 2019.
Like many, I feel that 2018 was a very hard year, and
I lost a lot of sleep trying to follow everything that was going on.

Best regards,

QUESTION

REGISTERING A SMALL BUSINESS – AUTO-ENTREPRENEUR

I wanted to ask you some more about auto-entrepreneur status. I have found that there are many different methods for obtaining auto-entrepreneur status (micro-enterprise, etc.). I’m not quite sure why I would get caught, since this status is completely legal. Any information you can give would be greatly appreciated as I’m finding mixed opinions.

QUESTION

WHO PAYS THE PREMIUM FOR PUMA COVERAGE?

Is an American resident of France who receives US Social Security retirement benefits required to pay the cotisation supplementaire maladie under PUMA?