First, I would like to wish you all a very happy and prosperous 2022! There is a point at which we need to fill ourselves with optimism, regardless of what is happening around us.

Happy New Year!

I believe that many of us, and probably all of us, are thinking that the year 2022 has to be better than 2021, which, in some ways, was just as bad as 2020 for a great number of us.

French custom dictates that New Year’s wishes can be expressed until the end of January, so I have managed it a few hours before the deadline.

Sad Lisa
She hangs her head and cries on my shirt
She must be hurt very badly
Tell me what’s making you sad, Li? 
Open your door, don’t hide in the dark
You’re lost in the dark, you can trust me
’Cause you know that’s how it must be
Lisa Lisa, sad Lisa Lisa
Her eyes like windows, trickle in rain
Upon the pain getting deeper
Though my love wants to relieve her
She walks alone from wall to wall
Lost in her hall, she can’t hear me
Though I know she likes to be near me
Lisa Lisa, sad Lisa Lisa
She sits in a corner by the door
There must be more I can tell her
If she really wants me to help her
I’ll do what I can to show her the way
And maybe one day I will free her
Though I know no one can see her
Lisa Lisa, sad Lisa Lis

Tea for the Tillerman was the fourth studio album by singer-songwriter Cat Stevens (Yusuf), released in November 1970. “Sad Lisa” was the fourth song on side 1.

For days I searched for a title, not knowing what angle of life I wanted to share. These days, life feels like a roller coaster. Bad news keeps coming after good, and this is happening too often for a lot of people and destabilizing many. I increasingly hear about people who have been deeply disturbed by nearly two years of a never-ending pandemic that has changed everybody’s daily life. A great many have been hit hard and are really struggling to hang in there. Some have lost jobs, others have lost self-confidence, and some have sought psychiatric help. Many are going through what the lyrics of this song describe. Professionally and personally I know people who have been greatly affected.

So yes, we can be optimistic that the end of the pandemic, the end of several crises, will occur this year. We need to be optimistic to be at our best against adversity, and some of us can manage to do this. But let’s not forget the ones who have a hard time getting through the day and who need tiny rays of sunshine in their eyes.

REINSTATING JOSEPHINE BAKER’S AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP 
It is commonly noted that French troops fought on the American side during the War of Independence and that American troops helped liberate France during WWII. This illustrates the strong bond between the two countries. Many American towns and landmarks are named after the commanders of the French troops in the War of Independence, “Lafayette and Rochambeau.” These names are familiar to many but I am not sure everybody knows who they were and why streets and towns are named after them.

Wikipedia
Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette (6 September 1757 – 20 May 1834), known in the United States as Lafayette, was a French aristocrat and military officer who fought in the American Revolutionary War, commanding American troops in several battles, including the siege of Yorktown. After returning to France, he was a key figure in the French Revolution of 1789 and the July Revolution of 1830. He has been considered a national hero in both countries.

Wikipedia
Marshal Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau (1 July 1725 – 10 May 1807) was a French nobleman and general whose army played the decisive role in helping the United States defeat the British army at Yorktown in 1781 during the American Revolution. He was commander-in-chief of the French Expeditionary Force sent by France to help the American Continental Army fight against British forces.

Interestingly, in my day little time was devoted to them in French schools. I learned a lot more about how decisive their actions were once I lived in the USA.

I started to think about all this when Josephine Baker were inducted into the Panthéon on Tuesday, November 30th. Only a few exceptional French people get this honor. In a way, the monuments in Washington, DC named after American presidents serve a similar purpose. Hence it is interesting that this American-born French citizen, remarkable in so many ways, is so little known in the USA.

Wikipedia
Josephine Baker (born Freda Josephine McDonald, naturalized French Joséphine Baker; 3 June 1906 – 12 April 1975) was an American-born French entertainer, French Resistance agent and civil rights activist. Her career was centered primarily in Europe, mostly in her adopted France. She was the first black woman to star in a major motion picture, the 1927 silent film Siren of the Tropics, directed by Mario Nalpas and Henri Étiévant.

During her early career, Baker was among the most celebrated performers to headline the revues of the Folies Bergère in Paris. Her performance in the revue Un vent de folie in 1927 caused a sensation in the city. Her costume, consisting of only a short skirt of artificial bananas and a beaded necklace, became an iconic image and a symbol both of the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties. …

She aided the French Resistance during World War II. After the war, she was awarded the Resistance Medal by the French Committee of National Liberation, the Croix de Guerre by the French military, and was named a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur by General Charles de Gaulle. Baker sang: “I have two loves, my country, and Paris.”

Some American groups in Paris have expressed interest in having Baker’s American citizenship reinstated; she lost it when she married a Frenchman. Such a move would make sense: The USA would recognize that this French heroine born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1906 and who moved to France as a young adult, also had a significant impact on strengthening the ties between the two countries. Sadly, it would also be about the Jim Crow era at the time, when she had to move to France to be able to have a career as a performer.

The metro stop Gaîté was renamed after her at the time of the Panthéon ceremony. There are streets, a swimming pool and other places named after her throughout France.

There will be those who think that Baker, after leaving the USA at the young age of 18 and spending her life and career in France, did not retain enough ties with the USA to be recognized this way. But I find it interesting that on February 6th, 2016, a transport station named for Rosa Parks was inaugurated, even though the civil rights activist never came to France or had any interaction with Paris.

Until 2011, the station was to be called Évangile, after the rue de l’Évangile and the wayside cross from which the street takes its name. The name Rosa Parks was first given to the nearby tram station in 2012. “We wanted at least 50% female names. There was a lot of debate, in particular with the RATP, which favors existing place names, but for Rosa Parks, there was a consensus: this is a must for a tram stop, it is a strong symbol,” recalled Annick Lepetit, Mayor Bertrand Delanoë’s deputy in charge of transport. People living in the nearby Curial-Cambrai social housing project were asked to vote on a list of ten names; their top choice was Bernard Tétu, a local doctor who died in 2003. But Rosa Parks ran a close second. “We then had the idea of changing the Évangile name to that of Rosa Parks, which gained a consensus and made sense,” said a spokesperson for François Dagnaud, mayor of the 19th arrondissement. The Syndicat des Transports d’Île-de-France, now called Île-de-France Mobilités, agreed. The name caught on and was also given to the Rosa-Parks/Macdonald neighborhood council and a community center opened in 2016.

I find all these juxtapositions interesting. I believe the Franco-American friendship still exists and can be seen in multiple ways.

ETHNIC NEIGHBORHOODS IN CITIES AND INTEGRATION
A reader recently wrote to me:
“Dear Jean, your newsletter was excellent. This quote stuck in my mind. I like your word “fascinate”, which could be written ‘I don’t understand how’” Americans can live in a foreign country, learn computer skills (to renew their Carte de Séjour Temporaire) yet not speak or try to speak French. It is beyond me and makes Americans look (in my book) not so good. I am here to experience France, to learn to communicate and to speak French. When I lived in NYC, Puerto Ricans (a very close-knit people) would live in NYC for 40 years and still not bother to try to speak English. I know this, not only by living in NYC but also from teaching English in Puerto Rico. Stubborn and scared. A great letter! Thank you.”

I professionally help foreigners with their French immigration issues. After all these years, I am familiar with the numerous reasons why foreigners settle in France. It can be a short-term assignment by an employer, which gives little motivation to do the hard work of getting deeply acquainted with the French lifestyle and culture. As I was an immigrant when I lived in the USA, I understand the trials, tribulations and hardships one goes through when starting a completely new life in another country. This reader talks about a different issue, which I would like to address.

I rode Greyhound buses across the entire country, starting in New York and going to Los Angeles CA, Spokane WA, Cheyenne WY, Birmingham AL, Indianapolis IN, Montpelier VT and back to New York before I lived for a few years in the USA. For historical reasons, ethnic neighborhoods are often found in large cities. I had a heartbreaking experience walking for an entire day, pretty much from dawn to dusk, all over southern Chicago in the summer of 1981. The walk took me through block after block of rundown African-American neighborhoods but also through Chinese and Italian areas, as was to be expected, as well as Spanish, Greek, Irish, Polish and Russian enclaves. The last was the one that surprised me the most, with signs written in Cyrillic. I could visualize the different waves of immigration coming to the USA. In those days being part of such a community helped with getting a place to live, a job, starting a new life. This was imperative; it was a matter of survival. With some imagination, after seeing pictures and stories of immigrants just off the boats at Ellis Island, I could visualize their lives decades ago, living and working in a new land.

France never used to have anything like this long tradition of ethnic neighborhoods. It was said, and for centuries it was true, that French cities, especially Paris, had neighborhoods defined by profession. One of the best known is the rue du Faubourg Saint Antoine, where artisans specialized in woodworking and producing furniture opened shops. That is why French people always used to say that ethnic neighborhoods could not and did not exist in France, until the evidence of such areas became glaringly visible. The first one started in the early 20th century, just north of the metro station Barbès, located in Paris’s 18th arrondissement. The adjoining neighborhood is now world famous for its North African identity. Algerians were the first to move there in the 1920s, on and around the rue de la Goutte d´Or, which is a couple of streets north of the Boulevard de la Chapelle. Gentrification has greatly diminished their presence.

There are two Chinatowns in Paris. The older one, in the 13th, was located historically between Porte de Choisy, Porte d’Ivry and Place d’Italie. It was begun by Vietnamese boat people who fled to their former colonial power, France, after the Vietnam War ended in 1975. Such migration peaked in 1978-79 but was still going on in the early 1990s.

It is difficult to determine whether the existence of concentrations of immigrants helps or deters their acceptance into the general population. In the USA, integration came about haphazardly in the work place, while France focused on encouraging assimilation through the education of schoolchildren, although both countries used both methods.

In France and the USA alike, as in many other countries, if surviving as an immigrant who has arrived with nothing necessitates staying in the ethnic community, nevertheless this strong connection with the other immigrants from the home country can considerably delay integration into the general population, especially because it makes it so difficult to learn the new language. My initial comment was never meant to describe such immigrants.

Furthermore – and to a certain extent I will contradict myself from one issue to the next – while all immigrants have a story, they do not always tell it fully. When they are sent by their employer, they leave their country for that reason. Another reason may be a romantic partner waiting for them. Or they may be leaving behind a traumatic life: perhaps in the USA they lived through a traumatic divorce or the death of a parent or other loved one. Does it really matter what made them come to France? Some manage to rebound as they create a new life. Some carry hidden emotional scars and do their best to get by and adapt to this new world.

I admit that the statement I made in the December issue might seem harsh and insensitive when seen from that angle. I was talking about how not speaking some French is a severe handicap for people living in France. It often has a compounding effect, not only making it harder on them and thus creating cultural misunderstandings, it also leads them to do the wrong things. But this is the life some have chosen, and the best thing is to be there, walking along with them. This is the part of their life that is deeply buried. We never know their entire story, even if we get a glimpse of what brought them to France. I feel privileged that several have confided in me.

BANKING IN FRANCE 
Another reader has this to say:
“I was interested to read that article in the Q&A section of your newsletter from the person who had a bank account closed. You hooked me up with Barclay’s in 2005, which later became Barclay’s France, then Milleis. I also got the 60-day closure of the account letter.

The entire process was a three-month disaster. They blocked my account and CB and would not return my calls.

Fortunately, I was able to open a new account at BNP Paribas and all is OK now I have gotten my balance back from Milleis.

It took two months from the first visit to receive a checkbook and a CB from BNP – they said the delay was because I was American.

All of my direct debits (SFR, EdF, Orange, AmEx, etc.) were rejected, and since I had no approved account from BNP I was making transfers from my US bank and paying extra fees. The long nightmare is now over.”

I understand and respect your initial reflex, starting with disbelief that the decision is final and therefore thinking some explanation to the bank will fix the problem. It is quite common for banks to give no warning signals that the client can pick up. The exchange with the bank often drags on for days or even weeks before the client realizes the decision is definitive. Since the client does not know the reason for the decision, they are destabilized, which often further delays looking for another bank. Opening an account takes a long time, so in such situations there is a long wait between the closure of the old account and the moment the new one becomes fully operational. This reader’s experience underlines my advice: Do not wait or argue. It is essential to realize the bank’s decision is final. Contact other banks as soon as possible and get a new account opened without delaying. This may make it possible to have a smoother transition and avoid cancellation of services such as cell phone and internet because monthly payments are not wired when due, as this reader testified. There may also be fees or fines linked to the lack of payment.

AMERICAN NOTARIZATION IN FRANCE 
For a long time, the only way to get documents notarized by an American notary public was to go to those working at the US consulates in France. The one in Paris is expensive at $50 per notarization, and sometimes the schedule is such that the first available appointment is weeks away, while the need that expats have is often urgent. Lately, however, online notarization services have appeared, making the task much easier.

A French notaire is a completely different professional from a notary public, but some of them accept to notarize documents. The problem is that, increasingly, American entities asking for notarization do not recognize the French process of notarizing documents, even when they are in English.

Here is the website of one of the many online notary services: www.notarize.com.

THE LATEST ON FRENCH HEALTH REGULATIONS: FROM PASS SANITAIRE TO PASS VACCINAL 
I should have learned by now not to write about this. The policies stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic change from one week to the next. It takes me a long time to draft this column: I often start as much as three weeks before it is published. When I was writing this, the French Parliament was discussing whether apass vaccinal should replace the pass sanitaire (the answer was yes, in the end). The key difference is that under the new policy only fully vaccinated people (who may be required to have booster shots, depending on the dates of their prior inoculations) and the recently COVID-recovered are allowed access to a variety of public places.

CREATION OF SÉCURITÉ SOCIALE, THE FRENCH SOCIAL SAFETY NET 
All European countries have some form of universal public health care covering their nationals and foreigners. In light of the debates, discussions and talk shows broadcast in the USA and France, I believe it might be useful to talk about how France came by its system of universal health coverage, retirement and robust, far-reaching family subsidies.

France came out of World War II with Charles de Gaulle at the head of the two distinct factions who had fought the German occupation: the Communists and the Gaullists. De Gaulle put the country back on its feet. He named members of his own party as well as members of the Communist Party to his cabinet. In those days, the French Communist Party followed the Soviet Communist Party line. Thus in April 1946, the minister of Labor and Social Security, a communist named Ambroise Croizat, introduced his plan for a humanist utopia, which he called social security. As described in the program of the National Council of Resistance, it had three divisions, which still exist:Assurance maladie is the health coverage, Assurance vieillesse is retirement and the Caisse d’Allocations Familiales provides subsidies for families and the poor.

That was 76 years ago. French people are notorious for criticizing everything in France, and it is true that some aspects of the French social safety net are indeed inadequate for the 21st century. But the fact is, none of these programs has collapsed, and the local Caisses Primaires d’Assurance Maladie (CPAM) are handling a very challenging pandemic. I talked earlier about naming public places; it is important to note that many cities have named some streets, etc. after Ambroise Croizat. In Paris, Place Ambroise-Croizat is in the 14th arrondissement.

To learn more:
www.franceculture.fr/histoire/a-lorigine-de-la-securite-sociale .

MY BUSINESS HAS A NEW FACEBOOK PAGE
Over the holidays, my assistant, Sarah, took an interesting initiative and created a new Facebook page. It is a good move for her since she and I both moderate it. She can show off her expertise and her ability to give good advice and clearly explain solutions. She does this in French, leaving the queries in English to me.

Since I am already active in a few Facebook groups and my website is my main showcase, I did not feel I needed such a page. On the other hand, it will no doubt benefit her. I do not have the time to monitor this forum and so far, it has been fairly quiet. Sarah is still figuring out how to handle this new task, being quite busy herself. I am sure it will be a great space for exchanges and hope it will pick up soon.

You are welcome to join:
https://www.facebook.com/rattachement

Best regards,

QUESTION

PICKING UP THE CARTE DE SEJOUR AT THE PARIS PREFECTURE

My carte de séjour is waiting for me at the prefecture in Paris but I am unable to make an appointment to pick it up. I am currently in the USA and cannot access the site. I will be back in late March and will be able to go at any time of any day to pick it up. My récépissé will still be valid. Is it still possible to book an appointment on this site? Thank you for any help you can provide. When I try to access the site from the USA, I get a message saying “Interdit. Service surchargé. Le service que vous avez demandé est actuellement surchargé et/ou il n’y plus de créneaux de rendez-vous disponibles pour le moment. Veuillez réitérer votre demande ultérieurement.”

QUESTION

WHAT IS THE OFII MEDICAL VISIT?

When I had the medical exam at the OFII medical office in November, the exam disclosed some issues that were of concern to the doctor. He told me to have a scan done and he wanted to know if I had some pre-existing respiratory conditions. I had the scan in December which disclosed that the spot was an old scar. However, this scan disclosed an abnormality on an artery. The OFII doctor told me to seek a private doctor and have it scanned, which I did quickly. The doctor performing the scan told me that I did not have an aneurysm, and that the artery was enlarged a little and should be checked periodically. My doctor also set up a test for the middle of March for a routine hospital scanning procedure. This doctor said to have the OFII doctor call him. The OFII doctor tried to call my personal doctor from the office when we returned with the latest medical information. He could not reach him. He then told me that he would not sign off because he was unable to talk to my doctor. We have now made three trips seeking the sign-off and each time a new requirement arises. While we were there, he checked to see how much time my husband and I have before we have to apply to continue our long-stay visa. (We have to apply soon, as our year ends this summer.)
Each time I have returned to his office, there is a new reason for not signing. This provokes questions about this process: If he refuses to sign, do we have to leave when our visa expires? If his sole purpose is to find any contagious diseases and check immunizations, why is this process continuing? or is he seeking to protect France’s medical system from reimbursing the costs of extensive medical treatment? Do I have to have a Carte Vitale to apply to continue our long-stay visa or can we continue to pay my medical expenses ourselves and apply? Can we be forced to return to the U.S. because of my medical issues? Needless to say, this has caused a lot of anxiety for us. We spent three years planning for a permanent move here including living in a hotel for so many months during France’s lockout of visa applications. I would like to anticipate what we can do and put a plan in motion in preparation for a return to the U.S if all this is leading to a visa rejection. Thank you for your time in this matter.

From Wikipedia
“Won’t Get Fooled Again” is a song by the English band The Who, written by Pete Townshend. It was released as a single in June 1971, reaching the top 10 in the UK, while the full eight-and-a-half-minute version appears as the final track on the band’s 1971 album Who’s Next, released that August.
This iconic song has swept a complete generation in the 70’s. Today its message can be interpreted in very many ways. The idea is that everybody lies and cheats; politicians, medias, the corporate world, bosses, spouses, … It has reached the point where it feels like that there is a conspiracy theory for just about everything.
At the same time, crooks have perfected their methods and phishing is only one ways in which their prowess is revealed. We are now living in a world where we need to be cautious just about all the time. This changes the way we live and many people become suspicious of everything, and expect the worst all the time.
This issue deals for the most part about not delivering what has been promised. A foreigner is always an easier prey. Since everything seems weird, it is very difficult to discriminate between cultural differences and being taken advantage of. It is easy to state “Won’t Get Fooled Again” when we get mad after finding out that we have taken for a ride. We blame ourselves for not having being vigilant enough.

RAPID CHANGE IN HOUSING IN THE PARIS REGION
I have heard very few people commenting about a phenomenon that is visible all around Paris. While Paris proper is slowly losing population, its suburbs continue to grow faster than the French population as a whole. This means many people working in or near Paris are living farther and farther away. I saw a similar situation firsthand in greater New York, where people work in Manhattan but live far away in New Jersey and Connecticut. The small town where I grew up in Paris’s southern suburbs, about 20 miles from the city, had an urban life disconnected from Paris, with its own active town center. There were large families living in big houses, including the one I grew up in, which was around 100 years old.
Today, most of those houses are condominiums. Each unit is a small studio or one-bedroom apartment. They were converted on the cheap, and the comfort level is really low. So many people are desperate to live in the Paris region that no matter how terrible an apartment is, it will be rented.
It is never too late to stop such destruction, but a lot of damage has already been done. A recent law upgrades the standards regulating what constitutes decent rental housing, and the government of the Ile de France region, which includes Paris, is determined to expropriate the remaining unspoiled properties and prosecute unscrupulous landlords.

http://www.lemonde.fr/logement/article/2017/09/05/l-ile-de-france-s-attaque-aux-marchands-de-sommeil_5181177_1653445.html/

AVOIDING CROOKS WHEN REGISTERING AS SELF-EMPLOYED
The registration form for self-employment, accessible through the CFE-URSSAF website, is offering a new option that is very useful. You can choose to have your information kept private during the registration procedure.

For a long time, INSEE’s policy was that such information should be fully public, with the idea that clients would check the company before doing business with it. However, this almost never happens. As far back as I can remember, there have been establishments offering their services to new businesses. Some of them are genuine, but most are what I consider to be crooks. In their letterhead, names and logos, they try to look like divisions of the French administration linked to business creation. But the “service” they offer is usually just a mention in a database that nobody checks, for which they charge between 200€ and 500€. It is often difficult to find the truly minuscule fine print at the bottom or on the back of their mailings, stating what the service is.

Now, by checking a box on the registration form, you can opt out of having your information become public, and thus avoid receiving these unwelcome solicitations. This does not mean everything you receive in the mail will be pertinent to your particular business, but at least everything is official, which makes the process a lot safer.

President Macron is going after an organization called the Régime Social des Indépendants (RSI), which was never well-organized but today has become just plain dysfunctional on so many levels that his efforts to get rid of it have made headlines in the French media. As a period of high uncertainty starts, I prefer to identify the services the French administration offers, noting that the names associated with some of these divisions may change.

1 – Health coverage is obtained on the day of registration. One of the organizations commonly chosen is RAM,

2 – A retirement account is opened when you sign for self-employed status. The organization in charge is usually CIPAV,

3 – The family subsidy collection agency is called URSSAF,

4 – The tax office’s business division is also informed of the creation of your business, and writes to inform you that it has opened a file for you,

5 – There are also several organizations sending mail about retirement accounts for any employees of the new business. You can set these aside, as they are irrelevant for many self-employed people, who usually have profession libérale status, at least at first.

Becoming self-employed used to entail many special procedures, but the number has decreased over the years.

President Macron is making a huge effort to unify everything in a single group of organizations for self-employed people – one for health, one for retirement and one for unemployment. This will not happen right away, but we know for sure that the RSI as it exists today, is nearly defunct. We just do not know yet what will happen after it is closed, or how the situation will be handled.

DOUBLING THE CEILING FOR MICRO-ENTREPRENEURS (FORMERLYAUTO-ENTREPRENEURS): PROMISES AND REALITY
President Macron is also making speeches about doubling the maximum income for the type of self-employment formerly known as auto-entrepreneur but now called micro-entrepreneur, and the government is working on carrying out his promises. There are so many aspects to this that I want to address just two, which I believe illustrate the complexity of the change.

1 – Immediate payment of social charges, monthly or quarterly
Being a micro-entrepreneur has this excellent feature: You declare your revenue either 12 times or four times a year, paying the related taxes at the same time, thus immediately freeing the business from tax debt. This is a wonderful change from the previous system, which delayed up to 18 months the payment of some of the social charges and should clearly be adopted for many other types of business, as it prevents people from spending tax money, and never paying their taxes.

2 – TVA
The sales tax called the value-added tax or TVA is the single largest provider of funds to the state coffers, so any change could have serious consequences on the budget deficit. Previously the auto-entrepreneur income ceiling was low enough that it did not have much effect on the amount of TVA collected. Doubling the ceiling and keeping the TVA exemption would have a very significant impact, however, and there is no way this will happen.

The current system is coherent and works well. This is one reason it is so popular. It has two excellent features, immediate social charge payment and no need to hold any accounting. There is just one standard deduction, which makes it impossible to claim expenses.

Should the income ceiling double for payment of social charges but remain the same for charging TVA, this status will lose one of its best features. No solution seems to have been decided thus far.

For your information:
The service providers’ annual revenue ceiling would go from 33,100 euros to 70,000 euros
The annual ceiling for sales activities would go from 82,800 euros to 170,000 euros

I will continue to follow this topic very closely, as it affects a lot of people.

http://business.lesechos.fr/entrepreneurs/auto-entrepreneur/030522905401-microentrepreneurs-le-regime-social-etendu-312662.php?BCarpDI3G0w4JAkD.99

CRACKING DOWN ON UNDOCUMENTED FOREIGNERS IN FRANCE
The French government has come up with an interesting twist on the control of undocumented foreigners. When the Schengen Agreement was signed, the idea was to improve efficiency by loosening border controls inside member countries and strengthening controls at the Schengen-area borders. The migrant and refugee crisis as well as the terrorist attacks shattered this goal and all member countries have tried to manipulate the existing legislation so they can check who is coming in.

Since country borders within the Schengen area no longer have custom offices, each police force has the right to freely check within 20 km from the border. The French government’s latest idea is that every international airport should also be considered a “border,” as they are a point of entry to the country. The point is completely true, although airports have ample police forces, and even when a person travels within the Schengen area, there is always the possibility of controls when suspicion warrants.

If the 20 km zones were applied on airports throughout France, it would put two-thirds of the French population within the zones.

Many nonprofits in France are fighting this new idea, since the true motive for such controls has nothing to do with fighting terrorism or monitoring the refugee crisis. The main reason is to catch as many undocumented foreigners as possible, since most of them live in the largest cities. Of course, this would contravene the Schengen guidelines and be stricken down by EU authorities. But using terrorism as the reason, it has a much better chance of being approved and seen as complying with the EU legislation.

http://abonnes.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2017/09/12/le-gouvernement-prepare-une-extension-massive-des-controles-d-identite-aux-frontieres_5184205_3224.html?xtmc=le_gouvernement_prepare_une_extension_massive_des_controles_d_identite_aux_frontieres&xtcr=1

MY HELPER HAS STARTED WORKING WITH MY CLIENTS
Sarah B., as my helper has called her business, started a tad later than we were hoping for. This is the kind of situations that happens all the time when one launches a new business. She is now addressing the needs of people earning less than 33,100€ in gross sales, with the micro BNC fiscal status. Such clients are exempt from doing full bookkeeping, but still have to file declarations of income to the tax office and to RSI for social charges. Managing payment of the social charges and understanding how it works can be quite complex. I do some of it when people initially register, because almost all these documents are needed to obtain the related immigration status. After that they should be autonomous, but in fact most of the time they are not.

I have been giving her name and information upon request. Her fees are between one-half and one-third of what I charge, depending on the level of services requested. Of course, she works under my supervision, so I guarantee the quality of the service, and she keeps her files in my office.

OFFICE CLOSED FOR CHRISTMAS
The office will close for three weeks for the Christmas holidays, starting on Friday December 15th, reopening on Monday January 8th. 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 much of a summer vacation so 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.

Best regards,

QUESTION

EDITORIAL FREEDOM OF AN AUTHOR

I have known about you for many years but have only just begun reading your newsletter and Q/A. This past newsletter made me so very sad for you: your despair at the world events and catastrophes, that you, like most of us, can only helplessly witness. While of course you can do nothing about hurricanes, floods, terrorism and death, you do prevent or alleviate much personal disaster and allow many people to make sense of a system that is difficult to navigate. And that with a combination of unfailing courtesy and clinical detachment; you rarely bite back when faced with entitlement, sarcasm or erudition. I love the way you accept that people ARE the center of their universe … anyway, all this is to say that you do so much for so many, and France is certainly a better place with you in it. I wish you comfort.

QUESTION

ACRONYMS IN FRANCE RELATED TO SMALL BUSINESSES

I have a few questions regarding my registration with URSSAF, which I wish to do online. What will my legal status be (my statut juridique)? EI, EI avec option EIRL, or EURL? I was very happy that the prefecture approved my project and I now need to register to start working by creating my business.

QUESTION

INTERNSHIPS IN PARIS

I am American and I have been offered two full-time stages in Paris for different periods: the first from October to December 2017, and the second from January to July 2018. Both are paid a stipend, and each is with a multinational corporation. I intended to enroll in French language courses in order to improve my French, as I will be studying to enter a French business school. The prep school can sign a convention de stage, and the French courses qualify me for a student visa. What is unclear to me is whether I can legally undertake two stages, and obtain two internship visas, and, if not, whether I can obtain a student visa for the first three months followed by an internship visa for the following six months.

QUESTION

GOING FROM STUDENT TO EMPLOYEE IMMIGRATION STATUS

I have been a foreign student in France for a few years and want to become an employee. I received a complete job offer a few days ago and just learned from them that the labor inspectors (inspection du travail) visited their office. They were told that they did not have the right to hire a foreign student on a fixed-term contract (CDD). The student immigration status allows only part-time work – 60% of full-time hours. The worst thing with this situation is that the prefecture advised this solution. Clearly the inspection du travail rules, as they are the cops. Can you explain this insanity?

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.

Through the Looking-Glass is a novel written by Lewis Carroll in 1871. It is the sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.The book starts with Alice sliding behind the mirror on top of the mantle and seeing what is happening around her from a completely different angle.

Both of Lewis Carroll’s books take place in a fantasyland. Settling in a foreign country very often gives the impression of landing in a place where the rule of a crazy, vicious queen creates complete chaos.

In 1980, I spent a week at the University of Notre Dame, on my first trip to the USA. I attended an English literature class, where I studied these two books. This trip was also where I first experienced culture shock as a young French adult. Most of the topics addressed in this issue deal with the impression that the French administration is either condescending or erratic and confusing.

IN FRANCE, FOREIGNERS EARN THEIR RIGHTS THE HARD WAY
A reader writes, quoting the April 2015 issue: -No one is born French; one learns to be French by sharing the values that France stands for.-
“He is not referring to the ability to hold a French passport, but his vision of what the ideal French nation should look like. Understanding what he means would help foreigners feel much better about handling the required paperwork!”
She continues:
-This reminds me of my naturalization at the French Consulate of San Francisco with my French husband in 1997. My husband made an offhand comment about French citizenship being my right, and was promptly reproved by the consular official: “Ah, non, Monsieur! être français n’est pas un droit, c’est un privilège!

-I have always felt privileged to be a French citizen and the paperwork was all worth it. Got a nice welcome letter from M. Chirac as well, welcoming me to the French nation. 

MY ANSWER
Indeed, the French administration makes sure you feel that you are granted French citizenship – or any other immigration status as a foreigner, for that matter – because they have decided to do so and not because you have a right to obtain it, even though you know you fully comply with the requirements. In those days, the naturalization process was pretty automatic, but this never deterred the administration from making you feel like you got it by the seat of your pants.

Today the issue is really different. The current prime minister was born not French but Spanish, and was naturalized when he was 20. Therefore his vision derives from that, and just being born French is not enough. In his mind what makes you French is the fact you know and respect the legacy of centuries of French history. He expects French people to respect and therefore endorse what France stands for. Thus he goes far beyond what was commonly said before. Of course, he has to, because the far right is attacking him for not being French enough.

I will be interested to see how far he goes in politics, since for the first time that I can remember, a member of the French government who is associated with the left has proclaimed how truly proud he is to be French. Since he was not born French, his message is much more authentic than such a message generally is.

RENEWAL OF THE CARTE DE RÉSIDENT SHOULD BE AUTOMATIC
Another reader writes:
-I finally went through the 3rd or 4th renewal of my carte de résident with the Parisian préfecture after nearly a year of procedure started in March 2014 by submitting the application in the mail. I got the card, after lots of anxiety and correspondence, in early March this year, 2015. The expiration of the card was in July 2014.

-It was quite a slog but I hope this is the last one, as I do not want to be around as a late ninety-year-old man or, heaven forbid, a centenarian after this card expires.

MY ANSWER
Here is a perfect example of the difference between what the law says and what happens at the préfecture.The law on this topic has not changed for decades; renewal of the carte de résident is automatic, except in three cases:

• – 1. The applicant has served a criminal sentence.
• – 2. He/she poses a threat to national security as a terrorist.
• – 3. The applicant has been resident elsewhere for over three years.

If you do not fit one of those situations then you know for sure that the card will be renewed. That is the legal position.

I recently accompanied a client to the central office of the Paris préfecture because her carte de résidentwas being renewed. I was able to get some explanation of the current situation from the civil servant we saw. This person said that the office in charge of this task had been reorganized and new management appointed. As a result, within a few months it got totally disorganized, to the point that what usually took three to four months quickly went to six, then to a year. According to this civil servant, there is no way of knowing when it will be back to normal. So this service is not answering the phone or replying to emails. Although there is a cTake-A-Number ticket dispenser on site, taking a number in order to see one of the préfecture employees does not mean one will automatically be served, as this machine is either for the use of people who already have appointments or who are applying for other immigration papers that do not necessitate an appointment. With some persuasion, we managed to start the conversation and be reassured as to where the récépissé was issued, i.e., at one of the Centres de Réception des Etrangers. (C.R.E.). It is unwise to stay in France with expired papers for several months, even for Americans.

All I can say in response to the rest of your comment is that we can only hope the current problem will have been fixed ten years from now!

THE HARSHEST IMMIGRATION LAW WAS ENFORCED BETWEEN 1993 AND 1997
-Something strange happened to us too, still another reader writes on this topic. We applied as a family for French citizenship because my former husband wanted to.

-We were at the final step when the Minister of Interior, Mr. Charles Pasqua, declared zero immigration and this very tough law was approved. An elusive letter said they were not actually refusing us but we should wait and start all over again in three years!

Well, I said a few chosen words and threw all the paperwork in the garbage, feeling that I did not really need citizenship to carry on my life in France.

MY ANSWER
This must have happened exactly as it happened to me, under the so-called Pasqua-Debré laws, which were in effect in 1993-97. I faced the same attitude coming from a completely different angle. The painful incident I described in the last issue occurred during that time.

FRENCH INCOME TAX: TIME TO DECLARE AND PAY
Regarding the more mundane topic of income tax, I would like to remind everybody that the paper version of the 2014 income declaration must be filed in France before May 19th and the second partial income tax payment (deuxième tiers) is to be paid before May 15th (midnight, in both cases). The forms have been available since April 15th on the website www.impots.gouv.fr. It is now possible to file your declaration on this website, provided that it is not your first time filing (you need your tax ID number and some access codes).

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

• – départements 01 to 19 must file by midnight on May 26th,
• – départements 20 to 49 by June 2nd and
• – départements 50 or higher by June 9th.

An important reminder: if you are a French fiscal resident (i.e., basically if you hold a carte de séjour or an immigration visa validated with an OFII stamp), you must declare your worldwide income to the French authorities even if you do not earn any income in France, do not have the right to work in France or truly do not work in France. Just because there is no penalty to pay does not mean it is legal to neglect to file.

The four situations that define a French fiscal resident are:

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

OFFICE TO CLOSE FOR A NON-SUMMER VACATION!
My office will be closed from the evening of Wednesday June 3rd until 9AM on Wednesday June 17th. As always, I will be reachable by email for emergencies and important matters. The service I offer of receiving mail for clients will continue while the office is closed. I will let individual clients know how to receive or retrieve their mail during this period.

Best regards,

QUESTION

THE FRENCH SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER

I am a self-employed American living in France and I cannot create a personal account with CIPAV, RSI and URSAFF, because apparently my French social security number is either incomplete or perhaps not right.
Can you advise me on how to get attestations from any of them saying that I am paid up, as I need them for the préfecture to renew my carte de séjour?

QUESTION

CARTE DE SEJOUR VIE PRIVEE ET FAMILIALE AFTER A BREAK-UP

I am American who was PACSed for five years, and I recently de-PACSed with my French partner. My carte de séjour expires in November. I am a student and will be done with my internship in mid-June. Do I have to change my status now, or only when I apply for another visa? I am afraid to change status because I have heard so many horror stories of the préfecture deporting expats because they believe they are cheating the system. I just want to stay until the end of the visa and I will leave. What are the necessary steps I need to take so that I can stay until the end of my visa?

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

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

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

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

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

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

– An internship cannot last more than six months.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who cares?

I do.

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

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

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

Best regards,

QUESTION

FRENCH HEALTH COVERAGE AND THE CARTE VITALE

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

QUESTION

GIVING TOO MUCH INFORMATION TO THE PRÉFECTURE

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