“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:

Most people stay away from bus stops. They are known as dreadful places, always found in bad neighborhoods. They cannot be associated with pleasant journeys. Even the worst train stations I have gone through do not have the gloomy lighting and the shaggy feeling one gets when entering a bus stop, getting off a bus, and getting ready to take a bus.I really like the movie Bus Stop; Marilyn Monroe acts using her inside brokenness in a very skillful way. Her character is about broken dreams and severe disillusionment, a woman with a golden heart stuck in a horrid place.

From Wikipedia
Bus Stop is a 1956 American romantic comedy film directed by Joshua Logan for 20th Century Fox, starring Marilyn Monroe, Don Murray, Arthur O’Connell, Betty Field, Eileen Heckart, Robert Bray and Hope Lange.
…it was the first film she appeared in after studying at the Actors Studio in New York. Bus Stop was based on two plays by William Inge, People in the Wind and Bus Stop. The inspiration for the play Bus Stop came from people Inge met in Tonganoxie, Kansas.

Considering how often I got on and off the bus at bus stops, I ended up being able to see past the gloom, which is maybe the cheerful image needed to celebrate Christmas this year. I wonder how many people will manage to celebrate Christmas this year with a cheerful heart, having a wonderful time with family and friends, partying as they always do. Some people in the USA seem to feel like they are sitting in a bus stop without knowing how they jumped off the bus. Others feel as though they are stuck in a bus they have not chosen. This Christmas, I remember the people I met in those buses, in those bus stops, those people I ended caring about because I got to know them quite well. Ultimately my bus stop vision is an allegory about immigrants leaving with the hope of a better future elsewhere and arriving at their destination with cumbersome luggage, and mixed feelings of excitement and fear about their new lives.

I would like to wish you all
A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR
I am looking forward to the year to come, 2017.
Like many, I feel that 2016 was a very hard year and I am eager to let it go.

THE GREYHOUND LESSON
As a French person, I wish to avoid making yet another comment about the results of the latest American presidential election. I heard and read way too many comments, but one in particular caught my attention. It was about not knowing how angry the white working class was.

In 1981, I had just turned 22 and was taking my second trip around the USA. I toured the country exclusively on Greyhound buses. Starting from New York City, I went to Denver, stopped in New Mexico, Arizona, LA, SF and Reno, entered Yosemite Park by way of Nevada and left via the main entrance in California, then went back to SF. After that it was Portland OR, Spokane WA, Cheyenne WY, then a long stretch to Birmingham AL and north to Indianapolis and Notre Dame IN before returning to NYC and then taking a round trip to Vermont.

Basically living off the Greyhound buses taught me the size of the country. I got a physical experience of how big it is, like an imprint on my sore body, riding all those miles. Also, in the summer of 1981 it felt as though the entire American population thought Soviet tanks were in Paris because France had elected a Socialist president a couple of months before with the help of the French Communist Party. So everybody thought I was a political refugee, and the way I was welcomed was quite impressive. This was very different from the current position of America (and most of the Western world!) on how to handle refugees.

What may be more relevant to the recent election is that I met the people who rode the buses, waited in the bus stops, ate in the diners. Being French among them made me an oddity, to put it mildly. We shared hours of discussions, and I learned who they were and, I believe, who they still are. I liked the fact that in the traditional American education system, students from middle school on were expected to work for their spending money. Many would earn the money to pay for their college tuition. So, for several years, they often shared the workplaces of blue-collar workers and got to know them. When they started holding executive positions, they could usually understand the practical consequences of their decisions for the people working for them.

Over the years, however, this practice has disappeared in the USA as tuition has skyrocketed and student loans have become common. Maybe the resulting disconnect between economic classes has affected the evolution of the country. I am sure that 35 years later, members of the white working class rarely live any better than they did then, and probably worse. I believe, and many observers agree, that it is this segment of American population that made the election of Mr. Trump possible.

I feel that I was privileged to have the life-changing experience of that American journey. As a law student in Paris fully financed by my parents, I was going back to a very different life than that of the people I met. This was a summertime trip that lasted three months. In addition to the bus trip, I worked in a port warehouse in Stamford CT doing hard labor, loading and unloading rolls of material on trucks. This is one reason I have the highest respect for the old-fashioned American work ethic. People had to work hard to get where they were, and being an upstanding member in the church and the community was also important.

AN UNUSUAL USE OF A MAID’S ROOM DURING WWII
A reader sends this reminiscence:
“In 1939 my family was living on Blvd Jules Sandeau and my father, fearing the possibility of Paris being bombed, moved us to the south of France. After the debacle and capitulation in 1940 he returned to Paris and moved some of our valuables to the chambre de bonne. After the war when he returned, the apartment was cleaned out but the chambre de bonne was intact. That was a plus for their difficult access. That is another story for these chambres.”

LEAVING FRANCE, CONTROLS AT THE AIRPORT – EU REGULATION
Another reader writes:
“On 2 October, my wife and I left CDG for Minneapolis. At the immigration kiosk I presented our American passports. My wife’s is virgin, as she usually travels to all other countries, other than the US, on her French passport. The immigration officer looked in vain for an entry stamp and asked when she had last entered France. I told him she was a French citizen. He asked for and got her French passport, and that was that – for her passport. He then asked me when I had last entered France. My answer was slow in coming as it had been well over a year. He then asked if I was married to her. I said yes, and that was that for me. (I have a carte de résident.) Lesson: French immigration authorities have joined their EU compatriots in checking Schengen entrance dates.”

RETENUE À LA SOURCE – INCOME TAX WITHHELD BY THE EMPLOYER
I wrote the following section for the July-August 2015 issue. Since then, aside from a few snippets in the media, it seems nobody is talking about this enormous reform to the taxation method except the people who are working on it. If you go to government websites, there is detailed information explaining what is going to happen, but it seems that nobody cares. This will be a radically different way to pay income tax in France. Therefore, I am republishing this July-August 2015 section.

France is one of the last Western countries where income tax is paid by the individual directly and not withheld by the employer. There are many cultural and historical reasons why the French people are reluctant to change this set-up, but all of them combined are not enough to explain why it has not yet been done. There is only one technical reason that withholding tax would be very difficult to set up. It is called the quotient familial. I believe France is the only country that taxes the family as a group rather than individuals.

• This means the amount of tax you owe changes if:
  – You get married,
  – You get divorced,
  – You have a child,
  – The child leaves the home,
  – A family member dies, and/or
  – A family member becomes disabled.

These events occur frequently enough in the course of a lifetime that if France had withholding taxes, such happenings could significantly change the amount withheld. A withholding system works well only if there is just a small discrepancy at the end of the year. This is why the French system prefers to have taxes paid in three installments. The first two, in February and in May, are calculated on the amount owed the year before, and the last one on the amount of taxes owed for the year.

Now, however, the government is determined to have a new withholding system go into effect on January 1st 2018. Neither employers nor employees are very happy with this. Employers do not want an extra task to complicate the French pay slip even more. Employees do not want the change, as it will mean the employer will know much more about their private lives. Employees will be required to inform employers right away of any of the abovementioned changes in their life. The employers will then be obligated to inform the tax office to calculate the new amount owed. Considering the level of distrust that French employees have toward their employers, this could create major difficulties.

It is going to be interesting to see if this measure actually goes through. Most likely it will, but I can see a lot of problems arising from it, and there will be a lot of unhappy people in France before everything settles down.

To ease the transition to the new method, the French administration will start setting up tools in the second quarter of 2017. It will send employers the rate of income tax their employees paid in 2016. On January 1st 2018, employers will start withholding an amount based on that rate, which will be reviewed in September 2018.

I strongly advise anyone who is an employee in France to be extremely attentive in 2017 regarding this reform. If need be, ask your employer how it is handling the change, what tax rate it has for you, and so on. Keep in mind that even though French employers have paid social charges for decades, they are not really equipped to deal with this. It is important to note that the employee, not the administration, will be responsible for telling the employer when to change the rate because of a change in family situation. Culturally speaking, this is not going to be easy.

MORE ON SENDING A TEXT MESSAGE TO PICK UP A CARD AT THE PREFECTURE
The document officially called feuille de mise en salle but often referred as fiche de renseignements changed sometime in November at the Paris Prefecture. In the personal information section, it now states that : “nécessaire pour l’envoi du SMS pour la remise du titre”; that is, translated into English “needed for transmission of the text message advising one to pick up the title” which means the new carte de séjour. I know that the prefecture can change this document again at any time, but the new wording is a clear indication that the French administration considers the system of notification by SMS to be here to stay.

NEW LEGISLATION REGARDING FRENCH IMMIGRATION
On November 3rd I was at the Paris prefecture with clients and there was a traffic jam at the printer-copier. A new regulation to be implemented on November 1st, which is a national holiday in France, was close to 300 pages long. Its printing for this office was taking a long time, keeping the civil servants from doing their job, which includes making a copy of each récépissé issued with the number the applicant is being called by. The civil servant dealing with our request explained that the work done by the entire office on November 2nd had been piled up as they were waiting for guidelines on what to do and which card should be awarded to whom. The upshot is that it is now official: the multiyear cards are now available.

However, the bad news is that the tax linked to the carte de séjour has skyrocketed. Renewal used to cost 110€ because the card is only valid one year; this was less expensive than the initial card or the ten-year carte de résident. Now, just about all cartes de séjour will cost 269€ to renew. The official reason given is that, regardless of how long they are valid, they all cost exactly the same to produce.

There are so many flaws in this logic that I will just review the ones I find the most offensive. The first and most obvious is that it makes a carte de séjour ten times as expensive as a carte de résident. A carte de séjour carries a lot fewer rights, so for the users, who most of the time are poor immigrants, this increase in cost is going to be very onerous.

An underlying principle of the French administration is that a service and the price charged for it are not connected. The idea of le service public is that everyone must have access to a given service offered by the administration and its cost should not be a barrier. But in this case, the population concerned does not vote and does not really have a means of voicing its opposition, so revenue from card renewal is easy money.

Choosing to have all cards priced at the highest level is a political decision that goes against this very basic French principle. Furthermore, the price is way too low if one looks at the cost of just the wages of all the civil servants who have to spend time working on renewal requests. It is way too high if it is just the cost of each card’s actual production that is taken into consideration.

Also, making it financially difficult to obtain the card is a way to increase the number of people who lose their legal right to live in France simply because they lack the means to pay such a large amount in one lump sum (269€ is 16% of the monthly minimum wage in France).

The new legislation also involves intrusion into people’s lives. Previously, the civil servants based their decisions simply on the documents submitted to them. As long as the originals looked authentic, the documents were trusted. There is always a police check before the card is produced, but what the police do in this respect is up to them.

• Now, however, the prefecture has been given direct access to several databases:
  – The état civil, i.e., everything pertaining to the person’s birth, marriage, divorce, children, and so on.
  – Social charges and organizations dealing with people’s employment or profession, i.e., all the information that carries the French Social Security number. Even though this is a lot less information than for the American counterpart, it is still a lot!
  – All programs linked to social services, whether through the Caisse d’allocations familiales (CAF) or the Caisses primaires d’assurance maladie (CPAM).
  – All records from schools and universities, including children’s report cards, as well as school-based extracurricular activities.
  – All utilities contracts, including internet access and both fixed-line and mobile phones, going back five years.
  – All bank statements going back two years.

This will definitely eliminate fake originals and related cheating. It will also put a lot of people in a delicate situation if their life is a tad messier than the paperwork in their dossier shows.

The only good news that I can see in this is that now some types of cards can last for more than one year. This is especially true for employee (salarié) and private life (vie privée et familiale) cards, since student cards have been multiyear for a while. People holding visiteur cards will continue to renew yearly.

For more information (in French), see :  www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2016/11/03/loi-sur-les-droits-des-etrangers-les-decrets-enterinent-des-reculs_5024888_4355770.html

APPOINTMENTS MADE BY THE CRE IN PARIS ARE VERY EARLY
There is a new situation that only affects a few people but provides a good illustration of what happens when one division of the French administration does not care at all what other divisions require. The result is that applicants are caught in the middle and have to handle an impossible situation.

It is possible to immigrate to France with a visa for self-employed professionals. When the procedure happens in Paris, the first step is to go to the Centre de réception des étrangers (CRE) to get an appointment for the Cité prefecture and a récépissé. This serves as a French ID (which the visa is not) and enables the applicant to register with URSSAF, the Maison des Artistes or AGESSA, which in turn process registration for all related agencies.

It used to be that the prefecture appointment was scheduled about two months later, sometimes more. This was great because four offices must respond in due time in order to make the file complete for the appointment. In short, once registered, the foreigner had time to start working, get all the necessary documents and be ready for the appointment without too much hassle.

At the beginning of this year, however, the period was shortened to about six weeks. That was the bare minimum possible, and it meant the statement of health coverage was never ready on time to be sent and needed to be picked up. But for one of the last cases I submitted at the Cité prefecture, the appointment was one month to the day after the CRE visit: from October 14th to November 14th. The agencies involved are going slower, too: even though the client picked up the statement from RSI regarding health coverage on November 13th, it stated that the request was in process. The next appointment is at the end of March 2017.

The situation became even worse with a new client, when I went to the CRE on November 17th to start this same procedure and the latest appointment we could get was December 1st. This person was not even allowed to get a récépissé because, we were told, the visa, which lasts three months, would be still valid and therefore it was impossible to issue one. There was no point in going to URSSAF without it. Thus the meeting at the Cité prefecture that is supposed to finalize the procedure now will start it. I tried everything I could think of to get the civil servants to understand. Even without my asking to see the manager of the CRE, he kindly came out of his office and said he was sorry but that the software blocked the issuance of the récépissé.

Some people might be happy to have appointments so quickly, and I would share this feeling if applicants really benefited from this and could be done dealing with the prefecture sooner, which I admit is quite an appealing prospect. But as the above description shows, the actual result is that it stretches out the process by many months, which makes it completely counterproductive.

A similar topic, which I need to address in the next issue (for February 2017), is the fact that people with universal health coverage (CMU), now called universal health protection (PUMa), have not paid any premiums for an entire year. The people in charge explain that the situation will be fixed in 2017, probably in the first half of the year. The problem is that foreigners holding the carte de séjour visiteur must show that they pay for their coverage, which proves that they are not destitute. The prefecture refuses to renew the carte de séjour without this proof.

REDESIGNING MY WEBSITE
Since my Christmas vacation starts soon and there is no January issue, during this time I plan on having my website redesigned, mainly so as to use more recent software to update and manage it. This means there may be a couple of days when the site will not be online, and I may have difficulty accessing my email. I am sorry for the inconvenience, but we will do everything we can to keep this outage as short as possible.

OFFICE CLOSED FOR CHRISTMAS
The office will close for three weeks for the Christmas holidays, starting on Friday December 16th, reopening on Monday January 9th. As always, I will be reachable by email for emergencies and important matters. The service I offer of receiving mail for clients will continue while the office is closed. I did not take any vacation time last summer, so now that I am settled in the new office with my new corporation, I have decided to take some time off, close to the normal length of my vacation. Of course, I will honor the prefecture meetings already scheduled, as well as a couple of other engagements.

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

Best regards,

QUESTION

RENEWING THE CARTE DE RÉSIDENT

My 10-year card came to its expiration date at the end of October. Knowing this I recently called and obtained a renewal appointment in August. I did get the official document in the mail but I was wondering if it is still legal for me to work here while waiting. So I called a second time and was told to go to the CRE in the 17th district to get a récépissé. The agent had told me I needed all kinds of docs – like phone/gas bills, copies of my passport and current resident card, etc. – but when I got there, the only thing needed was my convocation and a PHOTO (the photo was the only thing the agent did NOT mention on the phone). Fortunately, there is a Photomaton on the ground floor AND a change machine.. So I was in and out in about 10 minutes – a miracle. If I understand correctly, I’m now still “legal” up through my convocation date. I hope this will work for traveling as well because I must make a trip to England in the near future. Neither of these two documents feel like they are proper ID, and I do not trust the prefecture.

QUESTION

HOW TO OBTAIN A CARTE DE SÉJOUR AS A SELF-EMPLOYED PERSON

All by myself, I got a self-employed immigration visa from the French consulate in Chicago. I showed them what I do as a branding consultant specialized in the fashion industry, and got references from the couple of businesses in France interested in what I do. I am planning my arrival in Paris but I cannot find any information that makes sense regarding the steps I should take to secure my right to work and live in France. On the bottom of the visa is “carte de séjour à solliciter dans les deux mois suivant l’arrivée”, which I understand means that I must ask for my immigration ID within two months after I arrive. The consulate did not give me any other information other than to contact the prefecture. I tried and get no answer by email and once I got someone on the phone and did not at all understand the explanation. Can you tell me where and when should I go?