From Wikipedia
“We Are the Champions” is a song by the British rock band Queen, first released on their 1977 album World. Written by lead singer Freddie Mercury.

The World Cup, Trevor Noah and French nationality
If something could not be missed this summer in France, it was the French men’s soccer team winning the world championship in Russia. I am not much of a sports fan, but there are some events that are worth following, as their impact is much bigger than just winning a game.

Twenty years ago, the French national team won the same championship. Even in 1998, almost everybody spoke positively of the racial diversity of the national team, which in those days looked much the same as it does now.In 1998, hardly anyone dared to criticize this diversity. They were French, and they had won. The celebrations were peaceful, with very isolated exceptions.This summer it was a very different atmosphere. There was looting in the streets of Paris and fighting with police.Interestingly, a controversy arose in the USA when late-night comedian Trevor Noah expressed joy that “Africa” had won the tournament. Noah is from South Africa, where for decades soccer was the favorite sport of black people while whites preferred rugby, especially during apartheid. Not only is soccer South Africa’s most popular sport, but most members of the national team, nicknamed Bafana Bafana, have been black since the early 20th century. Black South Africans would attend rugby games just to support the opposing team as a way of showing their opposition to apartheid. By the way, “Bafana Bafana,” from the plural of the Zulu word for “boy,” means “Go, boys! Go, boys!”

Noah later got a letter from the French ambassador to the USA, scolding him for his statement on the grounds that the players were born in France. It would have been more accurate to identify the only clear error Noah made in his presentation.

Stating that the players do not look as though they have some Gallic ancestry is wrong, as the French population is not in fact descended from the Gauls, the Celtic peoples who fought Caesar.

This error has been made for centuries in French textbooks so it is difficult to criticize Noah for perpetuating it. Every French person has heard at least once,“Nos ancêtres les gaulois”!

After Julius Caesar defeated a confederation of Gallic tribes in the Battle of Alesia, Roman influence grew in Gaul. The Romans ended up having a tiny role in Brittany – which may be the only (loosely) historical fact in the Asterix comic books! Then Germanic tribes conquered all Western Europe, defeating the Roman Empire in 476, and each tribe settled where it chose. In France, two Germanic groups grew and battled for superiority: the Francs and the Burgundians (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgundians ) under whom the remainder of the Gallic nation was destroyed. Not until 1477 did King Louis XI, called “Louis the Prudent,” defeat the Duke of Burgundy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_the_Bold.

The kingdom of Brittany, whose capital was Nantes, existed from 849 to 1532, when Queen Anne de Bretagne married the king of France. Brittany was independent for so long that today it is the only place in France where one still finds Gallic people, descended from the Celts. There the road signs are written in two languages: French and Breton, a Celtic language.

But Noah is right in saying that when members of the far-right wing made similar statements, they were using the players’ origins against them. So I understand and agree with the content of the ambassador’s letter, from a French point of view. Made in France, such statements are racist. But given what I know of Trevor Noah, South Africa and soccer there, I cannot find an ounce of racism in his statement.

I have always known that the French soccer team is made up of first and second-generation immigrants, as far back as one can go, and I got interested in digging up some historical facts.

For example, during the 1958 World Cup competition in Sweden, one of the French players was Just Fontaine. Born in Marrakech to a French father and a Spanish mother, he was the best player of that tournament, surpassing the number of goals made by Pelé, the Brazilian icon. The captain of the team was Raymond Kopa, born in Poland. In those days, if someone were to have made the same kind of remark as Noah, they would say the French team was mostly East European.

Then, for many years, the French soccer team no longer made it to the soccer finals until the 1976 European Cup, when the Saint-Étienne team lost to Munich. Saint-Étienne, led by brothers Hervé and Patrick Revelli, second-generation Italian immigrants, was made up of French players with origins mainly from Italy and Eastern Europe, as well as from Spain, to a lesser degree.

Michel François Platini is regarded as one of the greatest footballers of all time. He won the Ballon d’Or three times, in 1983, 1984 and 1985. He is also a second-generation Italian. Then there was the 1998 team, which won the World Cup – led by Zinedine Zidane, born in Marseille to Algerian Kabyle parents.

As I continue to look at French history, I realize that the first wave of immigrants in modern times came from Poland, starting in the late 19th century. By the time it flattened out in 1931, some 500,000 people had immigrated to France. About 30 years later, French players of Polish origin were represented on the French soccer team.

Another wave occurred right after WWII: between 1945 and 1970, 1.8 million Italians came to France. It was the third wave of Italian immigration and the biggest up to then. About 30 years after the beginning of this wave, they were represented in French soccer.

Another massive wave started when Algerian independence was declared in 1962. By the time it ended in 1982, the Algerian population of France had grown from 350,000 to 800,000. About 30 years after this wave began, players of Algerian origin were represented in French soccer, as they still are today.

Does it really matter? Yes and no. Clearly, from its creation by the German tribes called the Franks, France has been a country made by continuous waves of immigration, unlike most other European countries, which historically saw their population emigrating, mostly to the USA.

Soccer in France is played mostly by low-income people, and is especially popular in cities dependent on heavy industry. Thus it makes sense that it takes about 30 years to bring these populations to the top of the game.

The chanting heard the night of France’s World Cup win, continuing very late into the night, just reminded me that France stands by its tradition of welcoming immigrants, as it was created by immigrants themselves. For any country, welcoming immigrants is never an easy thing. Immigration brings out the best as well as the worst in people.

THE IRS AND HOLDING AN AMERICAN PASSPORT
A new policy authorizes the US Internal Revenue Service to block the issuance or renewal of an American passport to American citizens who are in arrears or have pending tax issues. If you owe the IRS more than $51,000 in taxes, it may not be possible to get a new passport or renew an existing one. Your passport might even be taken away.

The media has mainly reported that the IRS says some 362,000 Americans could fall into this category by the end of this calendar year. This situation could represent a significant limitation on travel freedom.

The regulation is very likely to be extended to American citizens living outside the USA who have not met their IRS obligations. Many Americans citizens living in France have never filed annual declarations, or stopped doing so. A plausible scenario is that, if such people visit the USA, they will not allowed to leave if they appeared on the authorities’ radar when they entered the country and this information was passed on to the IRS to see if they have met their fiscal obligations.

A RECENT NATURALIZATION PROCEDURE 
The following account (lightly edited for clarity) was sent by one of my clients who recently obtained French citizenship. We are regularly told now that this procedure takes less than a year. I am sure the prefecture is working on it, but clearly it is not happening yet. This one took two years, almost to the day:

“I sent my file on July 11, 2016. My appointment occurred at the prefecture on December 7, 2017. The file then was sent to Rezé, where the registrar of l’état civil des non residents is located, during the month of February. My name was published in the Journal Officiel on July 8, 2018. So, the whole process was almost two years. I have requested my birth certificate and am waiting for that now.

“According to other cases and statistics I have seen, this timeline is currently average for Paris for naturalization by decree (other departments are quicker; it seems Paris is the slowest). Most people are having to wait at least a year to get an appointment in Paris, and sometimes closer to 18 months.

“My understanding was that the ‘official’ one-year (max. 18-month) timeline for a decision starts only from the time of the interview. In fact, the agent told me that day to expect to wait up to a year for a decision (in the end it was only seven months). Perhaps the discrepancy is in how the time is calculated.”

I confirm what this client says. I will keep you posted if I see a significant increase or decrease in how long it takes to complete the process. The truth of the matter is that everybody knows the concept of the procedure taking one year refers to the time between the file reaching the prefecture and the official decision being published in the Journal Officiel.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH ON SOCIAL NETWORKS
At first social media was seen as fun. The idea was to share pictures and emotions, keeping people informed. Social media, especially Facebook, is now criticized by some for allowing unacceptable messages, while others find this criticism to constitute censorship. I am staying away from this debate, as France has rather strict laws limiting what people can say regarding specific topics, especially for publication. France and the USA have very different views on the definition of freedom of speech.

Recent French Supreme Court decisions shed some light regarding its consequence on social media and hence the limits of the individual right of freedom of speech on Facebook. The cases involved an employer who fired an employee for negative posts that damaged the employer’s reputation. In most cases, this is considered a valid reason to fire an employee, as there is a loyalty obligation as well as an obligation to work for the interest of the employer. The key question is whether the message can be considered slander or objective criticism.

https://abonnes.lemonde.fr/emploi/article/2018/07/25/critiquer-son-employeur-sur-internet-mieux-vaut-y-reflechir-a-deux-fois_5335564_1698637.html

RETENUE À LA SOURCE – INCOME TAX WITHHOLDING STARTS ON JANUARY 1st 2019
I first mentioned that this would happen in my July-August 2015 column. The tax office has been communicating by email and post about this enormous reform, and now people are receiving information about exactly how it will be done. The bottom line is that the employee will have the money withheld by the employer; for the self-employed, the tax office will take a set amount from the bank account linked to the income declaration.

Many in the French media continue to state that the system is not ready yet and could lead to some serious problems. The one segment of the population that will escape this new policy is people working for private individuals, who are the cleaning ladies, the nannies, and the tutors among many others.

The French administration has come with several sophisticated explanations for this exception, but they are not at all convincing. It is pretty obvious what happened. The French pay slip is so complex that it is nearly impossible for anyone but a French CPA to issue a valid one. Therefore, over 20 years ago, on December 1st 1994, le chèque emploi service universel was created so that URSSAF, a division of the French administration, would issue those pay slips. URSSAF is very qualified to calculate social charges, as it collects them from businesses. I am sure the people who planned the new policy totally forgot this type of situation. Only about 250,000 people nationwide fall into this category, which does not match either of the two situations mentioned above.

The people affected are employees, but the employer is not issuing the pay slips; the tax office could take the money from the employees’ bank account but they are not self-employed, even though some of them have a lot of employers. I have known some cleaning ladies who have ten employers at once.

But URSSAF has not had the time to add this new function to the service it already offers. It really requires redesigning the calculation of the bill sent to the employer.

Many of the employees affected have very low wages and therefore do not pay income tax. This may be another reason the French administration did not push as hard as for the other categories: there will be very little money to collect.

https://abonnes.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2018/07/05/le-prelevement-a-la-source-decale-d-un-an-pour-les-salaries-des-particuliers-annonce-darmanin_5326048_823448.html

TAX OWED ON 2017 INCOME IS DUE SEPTEMBER 15th 
This is the last year in French history that people pay their income tax in the traditional three installments on February 15th, May 15th and September 15th. The new system will be implemented on January 1st 2019, as mentioned above. There is a special office in the Parisian suburb of Créteil for residents of Paris. It used to be that the two divisions of the French tax administration involved in the reform had different locations. Today they share the same buildings, but still function as separate entities. Nevertheless, the September 15th deadline will be retained so as to wrap up any discrepancies between what was paid and what is owed.

Best regards,

QUESTION

BUYING AN APARTMENT WHILE RENTING IT

I have been renting a furnished apartment for over a decade. A few days ago, my landlord sent a real estate agent to my place to take pictures, and a surveyor for all kinds of testing. Later I learned that the landlord has signed an exclusive sale mandate and plans to have me move out.
I am really mad because for several years I have told him I would like to buy the place. I thought I had the right of first refusal before he could give me notice. Also, I thought he could not do this in the middle of the lease but needs to wait until the anniversary date. I reminded him that the lease states primary residence and as such he should have dealt with me first. He answered that his hands were tied and I should make my offer to the real estate agent.
I feel bullied and cheated. Do I have any recourse?

QUESTION

SPOUSES OF DIFFERENT NATIONALITIES IMMIGRATING TO 

I am American and my wife is Filipina. After a couple of years of marriage and just a few months living together in the USA, she has been denied residence status for technical reasons. We are continuing the legal battle to extend the time before deportation, without much hope of success. So, she will be forced to leave as early as February 2019. We might make it to May 2019 at best. We have been through so much, emotionally, being rejected by my home country, coming to terms with leaving my grown children and the beautiful financial situation I have worked my life to attain. I am proud to run a successful business. Our only choice appears to be to commit, financially and emotionally, to a new life in France. Having our visa requests rejected would be a catastrophe. In the hope of success, we have chosen either Dordogne or Occitanie to be our new home.
Most immediately, we need to know if she has the right to apply for her French long-term visa in our French consulate in the USA or if she will need to return to the Philippines to apply. What are our chances of success?

Let’s assume that she is successful in obtaining her long-term visa at either location. I would then need help in securing permanent residency for both of us. This means I need to work to sustain our stay in France. I believe that living in France is our best choice and maybe the only one, considering her status. I have nightmares thinking about what can happen if our visa requests are rejected. I hope and pray for a yes, against all odds, considering what we went through. Please help us.

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?

Face to face with…
Indeed face to face with what?
The answer to this question makes all the difference in the world.
It can be good but most of the time it is bad.
Foreigners are faced with all kinds of difficult situations, with doubts, misunderstandings, and this list can go on for a very long time.
“In the face of death”: for most of us, it is just an expression, which, thankfully we just about always misuse.

In this column, I describe my encounter with one of the victims of a recent terrorist attack that occurred in France. This person came to my office and I was face to face with a reality that shook me to the bone.

Life is rarely a bed of roses; being an immigrant too often feels like being comfortable will never happen again. Reminding people that it is back-to-school time on September 1st for French students in Paris, and that taxes are due in two weeks looks very small in comparison.

SOMETIMES AMERICANS ARE NOW HELD OR FINED FOR OVERSTAYING IN FRANCE
For as long as I can remember, I have assured American citizens that the French police, including those working in airports, will not give them trouble when they leave France or reenter it even if they are not staying legally in France. But that now seems to be changing, though I have not received enough accounts from people to be able to map exactly what is happening or what the pattern is. Of course, this is not really something one can go to the authorities and ask about.

Since early this year, I have been aware of increased scrutiny. It is now common for people to be asked to show their French ID card when they leave or enter France; in such cases, presenting only an American passport is not enough. More and more frequently, in the case of a foreigner who is unable to prove full compliance, the police check the prefecture database, see the person’s actual status and give a little lecture about keeping one’s status legal at all times. The most common case so far is that of traveling on an expired card, which usually involves having secured an appointment for renewal but not carrying the récépissé, the temporary ID card that covers the time up to the appointment. To my knowledge, here has been no real punishment to date, just a stern lecture on what the law is.

The reason I mention all this is that one of my clients actually got fined leaving France on an expired carte de résident. It had expired over six months before, and the person had nothing in the making, no appointment upcoming, no file submitted. I was told that the person had to pay a fine of about 100 euros, which is not much compared to what the other EU countries inflict in the same situation.

The conclusion I have reached is that the fight against terrorism has changed a lot of things, including the leniency that used to benefit North Americans. The case of the fine is the worst story I have heard so far, but I expect to get more and more feedback, as there is a staggering number of North Americans who have lived in France for years or even decades without legal immigration status. I expect these people to have an increasingly difficult time at French airports.

Also, I have seen the Paris Prefecture getting a tad stricter on the requirements to obtain or renew a carte de séjour. My concern is that a passport stamp from the airport showing that the holder has left France without holding either a récépissé or a convocation, which I define as having no valid documentation, could tick off the prefecture. I would remind everybody that traveling outside France without a récépissé, which means that one is traveling on an expired French ID card, should be legally interpreted as having moved definitively out of France. Therefore the traveler is considered to be a tourist entering France under the 90-day visa waiver program. I wrote about such a case in the March 2016 issue, in which the person had never had a French ID and requested one a few days after their most recent arrival in France..

My advice is very simple: this situation is here to stay and likely to worsen. As much as possible, everybody should have legal status in France and keep it that way all the time. Traveling under dubious immigration status, in my view, means a risk at the airport and then another one at the prefecture. How much of a risk, I do not yet know.

PARIS – CITY OF LIGHT AND MODERN TECHNOLOGY
The Ritz palace hotel has just finished a complete renovation, which lasted nearly four years. It is the latest Parisian palace to undergo extreme renovation. In the last 15 years or so, pretty much one palace has reopened every year after having been closed for several years. This trend basically started in 2000, when the Royal Monceau and the Meurice closed for several years.

Most articles mention that the competition has increased with a new generation of fine hotels. Not all the new hotels get the “palace” classification, but the quality of comfort provided by those newcomers is challenging the Parisian palaces, who are being forced to undergo renovation.

There was a time not too long ago when the clients of palaces were looking for the traditional premium service; WiFi in the suite or state-of-the-art plumbing and so on was not on their agenda. As did the British aristocracy portrayed in Downtown Abbey, clients expected quality service of a different kind. It is almost as if they were looking for a kind of idealized old-world luxury in their accommodation. While this is more an image than reality, the longing for a certain style of living, staying away from modernity, was what certain clients used to look for.

As things have evolved, probably due to globalization and a change of culture, clients have begun to expect palace hotels to offer exquisite and modern service, and the industry had to quickly adapt.

Even though it is not at all the same quality of service, I can compare this to the success of very short-term rentals against the hotel industry in Paris. Clearly more and more people prefer this type of service, having the feeling of staying in a home but also generally having the latest technology available, especially in very old buildings (there are still 17th century buildings in some parts of Paris). These guests want to experience WiFi and cable TV while enjoying the idea that these walls have seen centuries of history.

There was a time when traveling in Europe meant learning to enjoy living history with a different type of comfort and service. Today access to the latest technology has become the most important factor, even for palace hotels. Yes, there is more to it than that, but this trend cannot be denied.

WHEN THE REALITY OF TERRORISM KNOCKS ON MY DOOR
Since the early days of 2015, terrorism has been in the news, and continues to hit targets all over the world. It hit once again in France this past July. We all read about it. The news coverage depends on where the attacks happen, how many people died or were injured, and so on. It is very sad to say, but in France it is starting to become a fact of life; it is clear that the Bastille Day attack is unlikely to be the last one. Getting information, or maybe an excess of information, through the media for such events still does not make these attacks real or personal unless you know someone who is a victim. Then you are faced with the evidence of what a mauled life is.

No one in my close circle of friends or my family has been a direct victim of one of these attacks. But this summer, one of the victims, a survivor who was badly hurt, came to my office and sat in front of me. Then I was faced with what terrorism does. Adding insult to injury, the couple has been sent back to the prefecture again and again for close to a year. Yes, they are also victims of the too-familiar runaround: being told that a document is always missing, that “this is insufficient information.” To add to the problem, the French spouse is dealing with a severe medical condition, does not have perfect documentation and never mentions that the physical handicap came from being the victim of terrorism.

A beautiful soul in a broken body, this is my visualization of what terrorism does to people. In many ways, I feel honored that they came to me on the immigration issue. It made me feel humble, at a time when I was impatient over everything that was needed to make a move and change in my professional life possible. When I compare our situations, my struggles become minuscule and should be put in perspective.

I never know who will walk through my door when a first-time client arrives. Sometimes my work takes on a different dimension. Fixing the lives of these victims is impossible; most of the time, they are left with a permanent handicap. But I can do my utmost to make sure that this couple’s administrative situation is swiftly fixed. In many ways, I feel like I owe this to them, and not just because I am paid. It feels like too little, too late.

The victims of terrorism now have a face.

MY FEES WILL GO UP ON OCTOBER 1st 2016
It has been about six years since my fees last increased. On October 1st, I will raise my initial retainer from 250 € to 270 € and the hourly rate from 100 € to 110 €.

MY OFFICE WILL NOT CLOSE IN SEPTEMBER BUT I WILL NOT BE VERY AVAILABLE
I need to get the new office ready and clear and clean the old office. On top of that there will be a transfer of the internet line and account. So I am hoping that I can have everything taken care of by Friday September 23rd. So more than ever, the best way to contact me is through my cell number cell :

(33) (0)6.16.81.48.07. and by E-Mail: qa@jeantaquet.com. 

Thank you for your understanding.

THE NEW OFFICE
Since early June, I had been worried about finding the right place for my new office. To sum up the challenge: really professional office spaces start at 50 square meters, or about 540 square feet. I need about half of that, and I found exactly that, 29 square meters. In early July, I found a place that met nearly all my requirements: ground floor, courtyard, quiet, with excellent public transportation. So we all hope the deal can go through now that France is waking up from its August nap!

It is located in the 11th arrondissement between the following stations:

1. Rue des Boulets (line 9)
2. Nation (RER A and lines 1, 2, 6 and 9)
3. Faidherbe-Chaligny (line 8)
4. Reuilly-Diderot (lines 1 and 8)

I am a little bit superstitious about all this and so will not give any more details until I have the keys in my hands. I have already written down directions on how to get there from each of these stations.

ALLIAGE SARL IS GONE, REPLACED BY A SURVIVAL KIT FOR PARIS SARL
Alliage and I shared our business and most of the time had offices together. Legally speaking, this partnership started in September 2000 and stopped at the end of July. So I was faced with not just finding a new place, which was already a serious challenge, but also had to re-create my business set-up with a family-owned limited liability corporation. Since I have used the name A Survival Kit for Paris for 20 years now, I decided to name the new company that. It has been up and running as a legal entity for a couple of months, and I put it into full use in July to take over my billing.

I admit that I have spent some time looking back on these 16 years of business partnership and what it made me achieve. I am not a nostalgic guy, as I always have ideas and projects for the future. At the same time, the partnership was good for me and my business, so I want to thank Isabelle Russo, the senior manager of the now defunct Alliage, for her significant contributions to my success.

TAX OWED ON 2015 INCOME IS DUE SEPTEMBER 15th
The income tax payment schedule in France has three notable dates each year: February 15th, May 15th and September 15th. The system is set up so that on each of these dates, people pay part of the total tax due, usually in three approximately equal installments. The first two payments are each equal to one-third of the taxes owed the previous year, since the tax collection agency, the Trésor Public, does not know the amount for the current payment year until it is notified by the Centre des Impôts, which receives the income declaration of the previous calendar year in the spring. There is a special office in the Parisian suburb of Créteil for residents of Paris. It used to be that these two divisions of the French fiscal administration had different locations. Today they share the same buildings, but still function as separate entities.

“RETENUE À LA SOURCE ” INCOME TAX WITHHELD BY THE EMPLOYER
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 arrange, and that is the concept of 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,
• A family member becomes disabled.

These occur frequently enough in the course of a lifetime that if France had withholding taxes, such events 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 has taxes paid in three installments.

Now, however, the government is determined to have a withholding system go into effect on January 1st 2017. Employees will be required to inform employers right away of any of the abovementioned changes in their life. The employers will then have to inform the tax office so it can calculate the new amount owed. I do not have much further detail. I have no problem seeing how it will work for employees. For professionals I see only the possibility of continuing the old system of declaring and then catching up if there is a discrepancy.

Best regards,

QUESTION

A MISTAKE ON A FRENCH BIRTH CERTIFICATE

My wife and I recently were recently naturalized and received our French passports and national ID cards. During this procedure, I discovered that there is an error on my daughter’s French birth certificate, acte de naissance from 2013. Her birth certificate indicates I was born in “West Chester” instead of “Chester.” I possibly made this error when I registered her birth and the civil servant did not verify my birthplace on my carte de séjour. Because of this, the mairie in the arrondissement will not add my daughter to our livret de famille. The civil servant said I needed to go to a tribunal to get a rectification. I went there and the information was wrong. There they told me to contact the procureur as if it was a criminal case. Does this make me a criminal? As I just became French, this makes me feel awful and outraged.

QUESTION

THE JUNKMAIL RECEIVED AFTER REGISTERING A BUSINESS IN FRANCE

I am American and was a French university student for two years before I decided to be a consultant in my field. So I managed to get the self-employed status from the prefecture and I registered right away after that with URSSAF. Until then everything went fine. For two months now, I have been receiving mail I did not expect. It all looks very official, some are requests for money, some are forms for registering, some are both. I am very confused as I do not see the documents I was expecting. My reflex would be to answer all of them but the people at URSSAF warned me that there are crooks sending out requests for payment. I cannot see the difference between the good and the bad mail. Can you tell me how to find out who are the bad guys?

I would like to wish all of you a great summer and a very nice vacation.

“Hit Me with Your Best Shot” is a song written by Canadian singer/songwriter Eddie Schwartz, and recorded by American singer Pat Benatar in 1980 on her second album Crimes of Passion. In view of the recent tragedies, I look at the message and lyrics of this song and I see many violent images. Poetic images are used all the time and they often give a better explanation, a better illustration of a situation than words do. This song is all about a woman in love and there is not an ounce of real brutality in it. All the same, the title and the lyrics use a language that, if taken out of context, would be seen as rather savage.

HATRED – VIOLENCE & INTOLENCE
During my twelve-day vacation in the USA, I visited a longtime friend in Waterbury CT. She invited my wife and me to the 28th Annual Lobsterfest of the Sandy Hook Volunteer Fire & Rescue in Connecticut. While we were there, she introduced us to many former students of Sandy Hook Elementary School, where she had been a student herself. At the end of the dinner, I asked where the school was in which the December 2012 shooting had taken place, and she answered: “Right behind you ” they tore it down to rebuild a new one!

Too often people are blas about this kind of news until they are personally affected in some way. Being a French person living in France, I stay away from the debate regarding mass shootings, which happen all too often in the USA. But because of the personal connection, the Sandy Hook one hit me hard twice. Learning that I was having a great time a few yards away from that school cast a pall on the rest of my evening, to say the least.

On June 17th in Charleston, a white man attacked an African-American church, killing nine people. The incident brought back memories of the Civil Rights movement, of African-American churches burning and people being killed. This is another tragedy, an expression of pure hate.

When my family visited Charleston in 2006, the four of us spent several hours at the Confederate Museum. It is a small space but there was so much I wanted to learn, to understand, as the story is almost always told from the other side. Clearly, this period is still alive for part of the population.

Are all expressions of hatred the same? Absolutely not! At the same time, such intolerance, hatred, discrimination and racism is unacceptable. At roughly the same time as the Charleston shooting, an elementary school on the French island of Corsica was forced to cancel the year-end school party because the teachers received death threats after deciding to have the children sing John Lennon’s song “Imagine” in five languages, including Arabic.

RETENUE  LA SOURCE  INCOME TAX WITHHELD BY THE EMPLOYER
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 thequotient 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.

OFFICE STAYS OPEN DURING THE SUMMER!
I have not scheduled trips this summer, but expect some absences between Friday July 17th and Monday August 17th. I will take a few extended week-end trips.

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

Best regards,

QUESTION

THE FRENCH WEALTH TAX

I am a recent subscriber to your newsletter, which I find very interesting, informative, and frequently helpful. My wife and I own property in Paris, where we live about six months per year  three months in the spring and three months in the autumn. We are mindful of, and studiously comply with, the 90-day tourist visa waiver program limits. Our question concerns the French wealth tax. Could you explain 1) generally, how it works, 2) who is subject to it, when, and to what extent, and 3) whether staying in France more than six months per year increases the risk of exposure to the tax. Thanks for any information you can provide on a subject that everyone seems to have a different, and conflicting, opinion about.

QUESTION

ABOUT THE FRENCH SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER

I would like to make a comment about your explanation of the French social security number in the April 2015 issue.

I received mine long before my wife got hers. The delay was caused, according to what I was told, by the failure of the local town hall in the town where she was born in the USA to provide the sequential line number in the registry book. INSEE sent the letter requesting this vital number and nothing happened until they heard back. To fix the situation I sent two registered letters, one to CPAM asking them to try again and another to the town hall in the USA imploring them to respond to the request when they got it. This Wikipedia article explains that the last three digits correspond to the applicant’s birth order in a given place:

fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Num%C3%A9ro_de_s%C3%A9curit%C3%A9_sociale_en_France

QUESTION

LOSING FRENCH RESIDENCY WHILE BEING MARRIED TO A FRENCH

I’m leaving France to move to Australia in six weeks, but my one-year family carte de séjour is still valid until October. I might want to return to France in a year or two. Do I need to do anything regarding my carte de séjour to make it easier for when I return? Or do I just let it expire? I’m Australian and I am married to a Frenchman.

fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Num%C3%A9ro_de_s%C3%A9curit%C3%A9_sociale_en_France

QUESTION

COMING TO FRANCE AS AN UNMARRIED COUPLE

I am Polish but currently I am living in Australia. In July/August I am planning to move to Paris where I would have a contract job and I will be staying there for a few years. I am thinking of moving to France with my Thai girlfriend but we do not have any official documents for our relationship, as it is fairly new.

I know that I do not need a visa since Poland is a full member of EU now, but I would like to know about her rights. Is there any chance that she could get a long-stay visa in France with the option to work and that this visa could be granted because she is in a relationship with me?

Do I need to legalize this relationship somehow? Our friendship is not long enough to think about marriage but I would think about it if there were no other way.