WIKIPEDIA
“Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is a 1939 American political comedy-drama film directed by Frank Capra, starring Jean Arthur and James Stewart, and featuring Claude Rains and Edward Arnold. The film is about a newly appointed United States Senator who fights against a corrupt political system.”

As a French equivalent, I would choose Le Président, a 1961 political thriller directed by Henri Verneuil and based on Georges Simenon’s novel of the same title, though with an altered ending. It tells the story of a French prime minister (Jean Gabin), who has toiled all his life for the national good. He is betrayed twice by an opportunistic younger politician (Bernard Blier) but gets his revenge in the end.

I have been following what is happening in French and American politics. It made me think of these movies, which, by contrast with what is going on now, are idealistic and uplifting rather than depicting what I think is the reality of politics around the world. I doubt that any real political system has ever been as good as what these movies show. But the French movie could be considered a kind of biopic of Georges Clemenceau:

WIKIPEDIA
“Georges Benjamin Clemenceau (28 September 1841 – 24 November 1929) was a French statesman who served as prime minister of France from 1906 to 1909 and again from 1917 until 1920. A key figure of the Independent Radicals, he was a strong advocate of separation of church and state, … as well as opposition to colonization.”

Both movies, in their way, address corruption, greed and self-interest. They also reflect a belief that good wins in the end because ethics transcends opposition along party lines. Even so, the reality was murkier. But the public had expectations of good governance, ethical behavior and common grounds when it came to what the country stood for.

Sadly, I find that in the USA and France, the public today has a very low opinion of elected officials and others who work in government, and even of law enforcement. So it is good to be reminded that there was a time when they were held to a higher standard: when the media revealed objectionable behavior, they would resign, drop out of the race, apologize and so on, even for wrongdoing that was not illegal. It would be nice if another Mr. Smith could go to Washington someday.

In watching American and French political life, I see a resemblance that few people mention. In the past several decades, it was rare for debates, emotional diatribes and the like to take place in the Chambre des Députés, the French equivalent of the US House of Representatives. But now that President Emmanuel Macron’s party lacks a majority, the opposition parties use such tactics to delay votes, hearings and other action, which infuriates the members of the government. All the parties involved, as well as the executive branch, indulge in surrealistic behavior, losing it at one point or another, leading to chaos and suspensions – in other words, pretty much what happens in the US House.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington shows people having passionate arguments while staying civil and polite. The contrast between then and now is striking. Several times while watching debates in both countries I have made this connection. The scene I love the most of Le Président, which I have seen several times appearing on Facebook and I have put it on my page is,
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xx87cb 
He calls by name all the conservative representatives (les députés) and states their close ties to major international trusts, conglomerates, or banks. He also talks about how expensive a political campaign is and how better is the return on investment when financing the political campaign of un député versus bribing local officials in the colonies.

The USA is used to these situations and the House will not get much legislative work done until the presidential election next year. France entered unchartered territory when the newly elected president did not win a solid majority in the Chambre des Députés. It is impossible to predict what will happen during President Macron’s second (and last) term.

STRIKES AND DEMONSTRATIONS IN FRENCH CITIES 
American love to joke about, complain and ridicule France on the frequency of strikes and demonstrations, especially in Paris. The chaotic debate about reforming the public retirement system is one of the driving forces behind the current strikes and demonstrations. There have been lengthy debates on TV and opinions of all kinds from across the political spectrum about the strikes and marches.

One thing I have noticed is that, contrary to many protests in recent years, there has been hardly any violence at the end of these latest demonstrations, even the massive ones. I can see that the police are stationed very differently than they used to be around the demonstration routes. Few people have commented about this and the reason for the difference. But those who do are unanimous in saying that Mr. Laurent Nuñez, who became the Paris préfet on July 20th, 2022, is responsible for this success.

A NEW MISSION FOR THE INPI: REGISTRATION OF BUSINESSES
On January 16th, 2004, I was proud of myself when I walked out of the Institut National de la Propriété Intellectuelle (INPI) in the 8th arrondissement after registering the trademark “A Survival Kit for Paris.” It was just the brand name without a logo or graphics. The name said exactly what I wanted my business to be, and it was mine. It stayed legally dormant for over 10 years: I only put it on my business cards and letterhead until I created a SARL called A Survival Kit for Paris in May 2016. The protection that comes with the registration lasts 10 years, so mine will run out in 2025.

For some reason, the French government has added business registration and modification to the INPI’s responsibilities. On January 1st, 2021, an office was set up in the INPI to manage the creation and alteration of businesses. On September 16th, 2021, this office became the national business registry. Now, since January 1st, 2023, all online registration of businesses is done through the website pages of that office (see the INPI link at the end of this section). This applies to registration of all corporations, whatever the type or size, along with solely owned craft and merchant businesses (artisan – commerçant). However, consultant-type businesses (profession libérale) still go through the URSSAF procedure. This classification was created under Louis XIV and has remained essentially unchanged ever since. It is one of the fundamental business classifications in France.

The new INPI registration procedure is advertised as being easier than before. But when assisting a client with it, I found that every other issue was incomprehensible to an American who was truly fluent in French. So take the advertising with a large grain of salt!

I am sure this topic will have a sequel. Although the vast majority of non-EU immigration applicants choose to be consultants, independent teachers, translators, interpreters and coaches, there are still several who either need to create a corporation to comply with their chosen passeport talent sub-category, or their activities fit the artisan – commerçant status. This latest change is radical and cannot be overlooked.

www.inpi.fr/formalites-entreprises/creer-son-entreprise 
www.autoentrepreneur.urssaf.fr/portail/accueil.html

REGISTERING AS SELF-EMPLOYED AND GETTING HEALTH COVERAGE
For at least a year I have observed the poor performance of the procedure for getting French public health coverage after registering self-employed status for the first time. Formerly, URSSAF would send a letter asking for a file with passport, immigration ID, birth certificate and French banking information so as to create an account with the Caisse Primaire d’Assurance Maladie (CPAM) and start the procedure to obtain a French social security number. The file was sent to an office in Brittany, which dispatched the information to your local CPAM to implement the health coverage policy and to INSEE, the French statistics agency, for the creation of the French social security number. For years, the procedure was somewhat slow but predictable and thus reliable.

Now the system is so slow as to be dysfunctional, so it is no longer feasible to rely only on it to obtain coverage. Instead, once the letter from the URSSAF Brittany office in Auray is sent, you have to be proactive and submit the registration file to the local CPAM as well. Eventually, there may be two files active. But if you inform this Brittany office when it asks for the file that one registration has already been completed, you can avoid having two files in process at the same time. Keep in mind that this is the procedure to set up CPAM public coverage. URSSAF takes care of setting up the account to which income is declared and social charges paid.

DECLARING USE OF FRENCH REAL ESTATE
The French tax office’s recent announcement that property owners now have to complete an extra filing about their holdings took me by surprise because I first got the information from a client who reads The Local France, an expat website: www.thelocal.fr/20230126/new-french-property-tax-declaration-your-questions-answered .

I did some research and found the information issued by the French administration, the most reliable source. Since January 1st, 2023, all owners of French real estate have had until July 1st, 2023, to submit a report on how the property is used. The official reason is simply that the administration wants an improved picture of the usage of French real estate. But I can see that how a property is used can indicate discrepancies in the income declared to France (or the lack of it). It can also show if it is used for Airbnb, facilitating checks on whether the rental meets the French legal requirements and how many non-residents foreigners use the place. I won’t try to read from these observations what the next step might be, aside from these basic legal and fiscal issues.

Here is a partial translation of the message found on the official website.

WHAT INFORMATION MUST BE DECLARED VIA THE NEW ONLINE SERVICE “MANAGE MY PROPERTIES”?
This new obligation is carried out through the online service available on impots.gouv.fr in your personal space under the “Real estate” tab [“Biens immobiliers”].

The following information must be provided by July 23rd, 2023:

How the premises are occupied (by you or tenants).
Whether it is a main residence, a secondary residence, rented, occupied free of charge, or unfurnished and unoccupied.

Who the tenants are (for a private individual: last name, given name, date of birth, place of birth; for a corporation: name of the manager, SIREN).

When it is used by the owners (beginning and end of the period of occupation).

In the case of seasonal rentals: when it is rented and who manages the property (either the owner or, if it is professionally managed, the manager’s SIREN or that of the owner if applicable).

The amount of the monthly rent (optional).

Gathering this information will help the administration calculate the habitation tax on secondary residences, the tax on vacant premises (TLV) and the housing tax on vacant accommodation (THLV).

This is a mandatory declaration (article 1770 terdecies of the CGI). Failure to declare will result in fines of 150€ per premise.

This topic is also addressed in the second Q&A of this column.

www.impots.gouv.fr/particulier/questions/quelles-informations-sont-declarer-le-nouveau-service-en-ligne-gerer-mes www.impots.gouv.fr/formulaire-de-creation-dacces-lespace-particulier-non-residents

www.impots.gouv.fr/particulier/questions/quelles-informations-sont-declarer-le-nouveau-service-en-ligne-gerer-mes 
www.impots.gouv.fr/formulaire-de-creation-dacces-lespace-particulier-non-residents

Best regards,

QUESTION

DOES INSULATION QUALITY AFFECT THE CHANCES OF GETTING A MORTGAGE?

We are a couple of Americans who just arrived in the southwest of France and we are starting to look at real estate in that region.The first thing that I don’t understand is what energy class signifies and whether there is something I should be mindful of here. I’m also seeing something called GHG: is that also something I need to pay attention to? And should I anticipate that the energy class ratings would enter into consideration when I apply for a mortgage? Say a prospective owner wants to buy an E, F or G-rated house (owner occupied, not a rental), but needs a mortgage; would the rating influence the success of obtaining that mortgage?

QUESTION

THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE NEW ONLINE SERVICE “MANAGE MY PROPERTIES”

I hope in your next newsletter you will address the topic of the announcement of the French government creating this new declaration to be filled out before the end of June 2023 regarding the use of secondary residences. Indeed, it is important to know how to fill out the form when we use them a couple of times each year. I click through it partially and it asks who is staying there (start/end date). I am tempted to put no end but then I worry that I will be targeted for not having a long-term visa. I am sure this will be a question for all your readers.

From Wikipedia:
“ ‘We Shall Overcome’ is a gospel song which became a protest song and a key anthem of the Civil Rights Movement. The song is most commonly attributed as being lyrically descended from “I’ll Overcome Some Day”, a hymn by Charles Albert Tindley that was first published in 1900.”

As I write this, there is beautiful weather outside, which I cannot take advantage of. The pandemic is sweeping the streets of Paris, as in so many cities in the world. France’s confinement (stay-at-home order) has already lasted nearly two weeks and there is no real end in sight.

I am extremely fortunate to be able to stay in my home, which is cozy and just big enough that I have a corner of a bedroom where I can work at a desk. Much of my work has been done remotely, and thus continues. All meetings in my office and at the prefectures have been canceled, but I have had a few via Skype or just over the phone.

Then there are those people we depend on to go to work in order to fight this illness in hospitals, to keep food stores open or to transport food to these stores. So many people are outside their homes, risking their lives for low paying jobs. I wrote this issue thinking of them, the ones I know personally and all the others. They have a work ethic and they know they need to do their job well, complying with the safety guidelines, when so many patients and clients disregard them.

All together, we shall overcome this pandemic. United, caring about each other’s life and well-being, all of us behaving the same way outside our home, we shall overcome – as the recent and not so recent past has shown, singing this gospel song, living it, believing its message. Right now and probably for weeks to come, if not months, selfishness kills people.

From Wikipedia:
“The Plague (French: La Peste) is a novel by Albert Camus, published in 1947, that tells the story of a plague sweeping the French Algerian city of Oran. It asks a number of questions relating to the nature of destiny and the human condition. The characters in the book, ranging from doctors to vacationers to fugitives, all help to show the effects the plague has on a populace.”

This would have been the obvious choice as the title of this issue. Everyone is referring to it. The book has become a best seller in many countries. It is indeed the right book to read right now, or to read again. Many need a description they can read or watch, like the movieContagion, which also has suddenly become extremely popular.

From Wikipedia:
“Contagion is a 2011 American thriller film directed by Steven Soderbergh. … The plot concerns the spread of a virus transmitted by fomites, attempts by medical researchers and public health officials to identify and contain the disease, the loss of social order in a pandemic, and finally the introduction of a vaccine to halt its spread.”

I far prefer an uplifting message of hope and unity, a message of caring and love to each other. So, we shall overcome.

THE PREFECTURES HAVE SHUT DOWN FOR THE DURATION OF THE CONFINEMENT
The Paris prefecture closed on March 17th and I assume that pretty much all the others in France closed at about the same time for immigration issues. The main consequence of this shutdown is that the validity ofcartes de séjour, récépissés, visas, APS and so on that expired starting on that date is being prolonged for at least three months. When the system reopens, all those expired documents will be considered valid and procedures will resume as usual.

The other consequence is bad news for foreigners who had appointments to submit an immigration request or pick up their carte de séjour: They all need to be rescheduled. At this point nothing is being said about how that will be handled. The worst solution for the applicants would be for the prefectures to require everyone to reschedule, primarily through the prefecture websites.

Before the crisis it was already common knowledge that some prefectures’ sites were dysfunctional; the few appointments available were issued at odd hours and gone minutes later. The Parisian prefecture website has only one flaw, that of scheduling appointments months later. I fear there will be an enormous rush when things reopen, which will submerge the system even more. Regardless of how many months the validity is extended, it will likely be insufficient to allow new appointments to be made on time. Little can be done to avoid this situation. If your appointment to submit your file has been canceled, be sure to keep the file up to date so it is always ready to be submitted literally overnight.

MEMORIES POSTED ON THE WALLS OF PRIVATE BUILDINGS IN PARIS
One morning several weeks ago as I walked up to the building where my office is, I saw a strange paper sign about Jewish children living there during the war who died in an extermination camp.

Bronze plaques on Parisian buildings are so common that I do not pay attention to them anymore. Throughout the centuries that the city has existed, many famous people have lived and died in Paris. But this very cheap A4 poster was saying something different. It was making a poignant reference to a time in French history that the country is ashamed of and that therefore is not as well-known as the Résistance or the days of the Libération when Parisians freed Paris almost completely by themselves.

Tales and historical truth mingle, as so often is the case. I was moved reading the names and ages of these very small children. That was the intent of the Union des Etudiants Juifs de France (UEJF), the French Jewish Student Union. The poster campaign in late January created a fair amount of controversy, with people wondering why someone was stirring up emotions about a historical event that is pretty well known thanks to books and movies like Sarah’s Key
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah%27s_Key 

The posters were put up to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Noémie Madar, president of the UEJF, said of the campaign: “It is about being able to transmit the memory of the Shoah.” One French press account gave this description:

“ ‘Passing by, remember their names’ could be read this Monday morning on the walls of certain districts of the capital. During the night, activists from the French Jewish Student Union stuck about 1,500 posters on building doors in memory of Parisian Jewish children deported during the Holocaust. The UEJF said it based its work on the census taken by the Klarsfeld spouses [Serge and Beate], who listed the names and addresses of the children; these were transposed onto an interactive map by a historian in 2012. Between 1942 and 1944, just over 6,000 children were arrested within the Paris city limits.”

I do not remember the names posted on my building, but I will remember that there were four of them and that Paris, like the rest of France, lived through WWII. Yes, today, when I think of the pandemic going through the streets of Paris, I remember the long lines of children and adults in the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup on July 16-17, 1942, arrested not by German soldiers but by French police to be sent to concentration camps.

MY SUMMERS WORKING IN A WAREHOUSE 
IN STAMFORD, CT
I got a lot of my early work experience as a young adult in the USA. In 1980 and 1981, while going to law school in France, I spent three months each summer in the USA, earning enough money during the first part of my stay to travel on Greyhound buses all over the country during the second half. It was hard labor, loading and unloading trailers full of rolls of material. Then I met people on those long bus rides, spending days traveling from New York City to Denver or from Cheyenne, Wyoming, to Birmingham, Alabama. Those two summers and my military academy training are the life experiences, which have molded me the most.

I had two types of coworkers in the warehouse: older men who worked there all year for their living, and younger men, about my age, going to college and earning some or all of their tuition for the year. The work was physically hard and several young men quit.

I see a link between what I experienced then and what is being said now about the student loan situation. Working two months or so in the summer at minimum wage today does not come close to paying a year’s tuition at just about any college in the USA. To cover that cost, a loan is needed to supplement the meager wage earned in the summer. That is one side of the issue that has received a lot of press coverage, and rightly so.

But there is another side I have never read nor heard anything about: the early labor experience of corporate executives. I have admired America for its ability to mingle socially. In those days, even the children of rather wealthy parents would take this kind of job, for many reasons – experiencing independence from their parents, lightening their parents’ financial load, learning what hard labor means, seeing how operations on the ground really work, and so on. Some of these graduates ended up in senior executive positions. I believe that then, much more so than now, in the American business world, business decisions, policy implementation and strategic goals were often informed by personal knowledge of what they would mean to all employees, even those at the lowest level.

“Working hard” are probably the words I heard most often while I was living and working in the USA as an immigrant. I did work as hard as an immigrant is expected to. I believe that resilience and determination to get the job done are often learned from never quitting no matter how much your body aches at the end of the day. That work ethic, the respect earned for the job well done, was recognized by the leadership of the company.

Today, many people are crippled by student loans. Either they can barely meet the monthly payments or they have to declare bankruptcy, thus destroying their credit rating for years and making them something of an outcast in normal society. Meanwhile, those whose parents paid for their studies or who managed to finance their tuition by taking a small loan do not suffer the same consequences. Furthermore – and this is where I see the link – they often do not need or want to work summer jobs. I believe that part of the reason corporations’ monetary value has shifted from their capacity to produce goods and services to shareholder value is their executives’ lack of experience working as young adults at the bottom of the pyramid.

NEW REQUIREMENT FOR FRENCH NATIONALITY: 
A WRITTEN TEST
Applicants for French citizenship must take a test to determine if they have the required mastering of the French language. In recent years the requirement was a level of at least B1 on the Test de Connaissance du Français (TCF). Now this requirement is being upgraded to include a written test. Therefore the “old” certificates, called TCF-ANF (Accès à la Nationalité Française), issued as late as January 2020, are no longer valid starting on April 1st, 2020.

On March 21st 2019, the French Prime Minister stated his wish to make this test significantly more difficult, during a naturalization ceremony he attended at the Pantheon. The new TCF-ANF consists of oral comprehension, written comprehension, written expression and oral expression. As soon as I know exactly what is on the writing tests, I will provide details. Most people find that writing a foreign language is the hardest task, where all errors are the most evident. That is why a section on written French is now included in the test.

FRENCH INCOME TAX: THE TIME TO DECLARE IS ALMOST NOW!
Regarding the more mundane topic of income tax, I would like to remind everybody that paper versions of the 2019 income declaration must be filed in France by May 14th 2020 midnight. The declaration forms are available at www.impots.gouv.fr. The very first income declaration to the French tax office must be prepared using the paper form, and the “first time” box on the form called CERFA #2042, “Vous déposez une déclaration pour la première fois Cochez” must be checked. If this is not your first time filing, you can file your declaration on this website starting on April 8th. To do so, you need your tax ID number “numéro fiscal” and some access codes.

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

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

I remind everybody that if you are self-employed in France, (often incorrectly called being ‘auto-entrepreneur’) the quarterly declarations sent to URSSAF do not constitute income tax declarations that must be sent to the tax office. I have seen a great many foreigners absolutely convinced that these quarterly declarations were the only fiscal obligation they had. The amount of income tax owed is often low and sometimes zero. The problem comes from the fact that the prefecture demands the income tax bill issued by the tax office called “avis d’imposition sur le revenue” for issuing almost all the immigration statuses. The prefecture can be quite lenient with the“visiteur”, student and expat statuses. For all the others, this document is mandatory. Filing late because the prefecture demands such an “avis”, means that the tax office sometimes issues the “avis d’imposition sur le revenue” six or more months after receiving the declaration. At best it considerably delays the issuance of the new carte de séjour. On occasion, the prefecture is not patient and foreigners lose their immigration status.

The main reasons for the tax office’s slowness are: 
1 – the page dedicated to the declaration on the website is not open all year long, so very late declarations must be filled on paper, thereby slowing down the process,
2 – once the tax season has ended, and if no tax is owed, there is no incentive to prepare this “avis” quickly.

MESSAGE FROM AARO REGARDING CARES 
Congress has passed the Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act and the president has signed it into law. Americans abroad will be interested in understanding the law’s aid provisions and how they can be accessed. This is a summary of key aid provisions that are or may be relevant to Americans abroad –

• Americans abroad who meet the income eligibility criteria (income under $99,000) are entitled to the Recovery Rebate (up to $1,200 payment plus $500 per child).
• Taxpayers who have provided bank account details with their 2018 or 2019 tax filing will likely be receiving payments via direct debit in the next 2-3 weeks, with others likely to be sent checks or debit cards through the mail.

Under the Act, the US Treasury has been provided with flexibility in establishing the aid payment delivery mechanisms. We will be working with our friends on Capitol Hill to understand how the distribution of aid will progress. We will send information to members as soon as we have it.

aaro.org/advocacy/taxation-issues/808-americans-abroad-win-big-with-the-coronavirus-relief-law

Something similar was issued by the French government but the conditions are a lot more complicated to explain and therefore I have attached the flyer that explains it.
Here is the link for the self-employed people.

www.secu-independants.fr/action-sociale/aide-coronavirus/?fbclid=IwAR2dBxogsD5uYqEOPbn7hn5dRkkvSlbtwXlUiGJRRF3MfK6eJqIw-CH7PW4#c47596″

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

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

Best regards,

QUESTION

WHICH LAW GOVERNS FRENCH ESTATES?

I am based in Nice and have been in multiple conversations where Americans shared contradictory advice received from different notaires, lawyers and experts. One French notaire wrote a French will so that the deceased’s assets and property in France would be governed by American law and the estate would be settled in the US at lower tax rates, thus “not touched” by France. A top-notch lawyer in Paris with legal qualifications in both the US and France told me that if you are a resident in France, when you pass, the French government allows a 100,000€ distribution to each biological child but after that, they tax worldwide assets, including funds and investments in the US and any real estate, at the French rate of 45%. With electronic transfer, they’ll find out about the foreign holdings, you cannot “hide” them. Can you tell me who is right?

QUESTION

THE USE OF THE FRENCH SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER

My daughter, who is European, has worked in Paris in a restaurant for the last six months. She submitted a form asking for a Carte Vitale at the CPAM in the 19th district in October 2019 and has not heard anything back yet. Right now, she cannot work and she will need to fill out a form to apply for unemployment. Her pay slip does not mention a Social Security number. She needs this money really badly and she cannot get it without this number. Which office in Paris deals with Social Security number issuance?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OFFICE CLOSED FOR CHRISTMAS
The office will close for three weeks over the Christmas holidays, starting on Friday December 20th in the evening and reopening on the morning of Monday January 6th. As always, I will be reachable by email for emergencies and important matters. The service I offer of receiving mail for clients will continue while the office is closed. Of course, Sarah or I will honor prefecture meetings already scheduled, as well as a couple of other engagements.

Best regards,

QUESTION

DOES OVERSTAYING A FEW MONTHS MEAN BEING AN UNDOCUMENTED ALIEN?

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

QUESTION

DOES PARENTAL FINANCIAL HELP CONSTITUTE TAXABLE INCOME?

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

Back in Black was the seventh album by the Australian band AC/DC, released on July 25th, 1980. Malcolm Young, its co-founder, rhythm guitarist, backing vocalist and songwriter, died in November, although that did not motivate my choice of title. AC/DC fans are well acquainted with the brutal and unflattering lyrics this band is known for, associated with a heavy metal sound. The title song from this album is about disillusionment and having to come back to an unfriendly environment. How many Americans will feel this way traveling back to the USA for the holiday season? And how many Americans living in France will feel this way on their way back to France after the holidays?

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

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

So my choice of title can be understood in many ways. The very point of calling the day after Thanksgiving “Black Friday” is that it is the starting point of the Christmas shopping season, when many stores truly break even and get into “the black,” which means having money in the bank instead of being in the red! One can hope that small businesses will also go “Back in Black” and that they too will benefit from the seasonal improvement of the economy, at least in France.

I would like to wish you all
A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR
I am looking forward to the year to come, 2018.
Like many, I feel that 2017 was a very hard year in which to stay focused on the issues that matter.

AARO HAS INVITED ME TO DO A PRESENTATION ON DECEMBER 18th 
The Association of Americans Resident Overseas (AARO) has asked me to speak about “Coping with French Administration” on Monday, December 18th, from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM.

The event is open to the public. It will be held at Reid Hall, 4 rue de Chevreuse, 75006 Paris. For more information and to reserve a seat (€10 – seating limited, registration required), see.

https://aaro.org/events/upcoming-events/event/102-coping-with-french-administration

This is their text presenting the event:
“Join us to hear Jean Taquet, a legal consultant, talk about the ins and outs of French Administration regarding living in France temporarily or indefinitely. Topics will include how to get, retain, change or upgrade your residency status; become covered by French health insurance; open a bank account; be an employee, an entrepreneur, a retiree; and how to surmount the paperwork and the bureaucracy.”

HOW EMAIL AND SOCIAL MEDIA HAVE CHANGED THE WAY I WORK
I started my business in July 1997 when telephone and fax were the backbones of communication with clients, as they were in those days, for me and many others, the only immediate means of communication. I remember how we had a phone message notebook to make sure we called people back, and were judged by how quickly we managed to return calls. We needed a dedicated line for the fax machine; documents were sent this way.

Then there was the postal mail. Even today in France, a lot of things are still done by postal mail. Twenty years ago it was the normal way to send anything the least bit official. How often did we hear “The check is in the mail!”? It was the common way to send a payment, as wire transfers were complicated and expensive.

Today, corresponding by fax is an oddity, but it is still the only thing some divisions of the French administration accept, making them a laughing stock, and not just to Americans living in France. Postal mail is still important even though, as in all western countries, the volume of mail has considerably decreased. Even traditional Christmas letters are now rarely sent by mail, but go by email as an attachment and often with a lot more pictures! I still make sure I check the mailbox at the office every day, though the home one is more often forgotten.

I remember an American and a good friend of mine who used to live in Paris complaining about ten years ago that people dared to call her cell phone before trying the landline. The latter was the important one, and some of us can remember when many American homes where a teenager was living had two phone lines. Today I am rarely called on my landline; and the cell phone has replaced it. We have reached the point where calling is no longer our first reflex. Actual voice calls are now a lot less common than text messages and social media messages.

I freely admit that I have followed this trend, as I like writing. Professionally I favor emails by far, at least for now. I consider text messages and social media, in my case Facebook, as personal tools – non-billable ways of communicating. I have replaced phone calls with Skype or FaceTime. So do not be surprised if I do not return calls as quickly as I answer emails!

THE PUMA BILLING SYSTEM IS STILL NOT READY 
On January 1st, 2016, a form of insurance called protection universelle maladie (PUMA) replaced thecouverture maladie universelle (CMU), which had worked very well for foreigners who chose to sign on to the public healthcare program.

Since then, for many people, it has been a situation of URSSAF saying, “Your account has been closed; please refer to CPAM if your account is still open”; then their caisse primaire d’assurance maladie (CPAM) would reply, “Your account works well, you are covered, and we know nothing about billing – we are not involved with that.”

In other words, the answers people have been getting from CPAM and URSSAF have been murky at best, and “We do not know anything” when they were being honest!

As I have already noted, many of my American clients freaked out more than once upon hearing such statements. For them, their coverage was at great risk, since it had been months (now almost two years) since they made their last payment into the system. I fully respect their concerns, knowing how easily insurers drop those who do not pay their premiums.

In early October 2017, the people concerned received a letter from CPAM stating that finally things were falling into place and that billing would resume later that month. It went on to explain the calculation of the premium: 8% would be based on the 2016 income declared to the French tax office. Then in late November, many received another letter but from URSSAF stating that bills would be issued by the end of the month. As usual, they are not capable of meeting their own deadline, even though the French administration is moving, slowly but surely. URSSAF’s latest answer is that the first invoice (appel de cotisation) should be sent in mid-December. So I anticipate that at the latest they will be issued in January. The payments are expected to be made within one month. Always keep in mind that you can ask for a schedule of payments, even though these premiums are paid quarterly.

There is also the issue of foreigners holding a carte de séjour mention visiteur who do not declare income in France since they do not stay more than six months a year. I intend to investigate this situation, which covers several of my clients. If people are in France less than six months a year, they are not considered residents of France, even if they have a French address and a French bank account, and have held a carte de séjour for several years. For a while, the CPAM guidelines stated that even carte de séjour visiteur holders who declared income in France were not allowed to register. That nonsense has since stopped, but clearly they are still worried about proving French residence in terms of physical presence. Current applicants must send updated utility bills, internet bills and so on, three or sometimes four times, just to convince CPAM that they are indeed resident in France.

So this creates serious concern for people who are to renew their carte de séjour visiteur in the near future –in December and, most likely, in January. All they can show is a letter stating that they will receive a bill shortly, plus their claim that they have received nothing. As any junior lawyer knows, it is basically impossible to prove that something has not happened. So I hope we find a way out of this situation, knowing that both URSSAF and CPAM have been unwilling to help in any way. I think it will be hard to get a statement out of either of them explaining the situation.

I will keep my readers informed as things unfold, since finally, after almost two years, they are in fact unfolding!

DOES FRENCH GRAMMAR HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH SEX EQUALITY?
As far back as I can remember, since I was a very young boy, this issue has always come up one way or another. I was in elementary school when my mother stopped going to her gym class. There had been only women and so the teacher addressed them as “Mesdames,” but then one man joined and from then on the teacher called them all “Messieurs” even though the ratio was probably 30 to 1. My mother could not stand it and quit the class. Right now there is a very serious debate in France on whether French grammar should be changed so that it enhances equality between the sexes, mainly so as to address situations like the one I have described.

I want to stay away from this debate, as I feel totally incompetent as a grammarian, whether in French or in English. I would just point out that English as it is spoken all over the world stigmatizes gender differences a lot less. And yet Anglophone countries are facing sexual harassment issues as much as France, and many other countries, for that matter.

Women in many countries, including France, the USA and the UK, have been revealing sexual harassment and even criminal offences, by prominent men. Have Western societies at last reached such a turning point that there will be no going back? Perhaps, but it is too soon to be sure.

In the 1970s I saw the Scandinavian countries address gender equality in a definitive way. From education to the surrounding culture and the media, it felt like everything needed to change, pretty much overnight. These countries now face their own issues, mostly related to immigration and integrating the refugees who have arrived in recent decades. Nevertheless they remain steadfast on gender equality, in a way that is somewhat mindboggling for the rest of the world. I saw what it took for these countries to turn things around on this issue.

Clearly education – in the broad sense, not just in schools – has something to do with changing behaviors and expectations. The way language and grammar deal with gender affects people nearly as much as the way people speak and the words they use. But I am not sure that changing grammatical rules is the top priority in this matter. I might go so far as to say that significant improvement could be made without changing French grammar, which might be the right fight at the wrong time, when more urgent and effective measures should be taken.

On a totally different and much lighter note, I would point out that French is already quite complicated when it comes to mastering masculine and feminine. Adding another layer of complication will not make it any easier to learn.

For more info (in French), see http://abonnes.lemonde.fr/education/article/2017/11/08/apres-l-ecriture-la-grammaire-inclusive_5211949_1473685.html?xtmc=inclusive&xtcr=8

HOW TO FIND OUT WHERE A FRENCH WILL IS HELD 
Someone recently asked me, “How do I know if my deceased French resident client has a French will?” The American answer would be, “Who is their lawyer? Where is their safety deposit box?”

It is quite common in the USA for an individual to have a private lawyer, and many more keep valuable stuff in a safe at home or safety deposit box at the bank. This is mainly because most wills in the USA are drafted by lawyers and are witnessed, and thus in many ways are more public than French wills.

By contrast, the typical French will is handwritten on a completely blank sheet of paper by a person who is totally alone in the room. A French will is generally one page long, rarely more than two. So it is hardly an excruciating physical exercise, even now when few people write by hand anymore. One reason French wills are so short is that it is impossible to disinherit your children or, more recently, your spouse or to favor one child over another. In fact, there used to be so many limits that many thought it was not worth writing a will. The most common will, in my experience, pretty much just states, in this order:
1 – I bequeath everything to my surviving spouse.
2 – I bequeath the rest of my estate in equal shares to my children.

A notaire then takes this document and registers it, for a cost of about 30€, at the central database in Aix-en-Provence.

At the time of a loved one’s death, sometimes even before contacting a notaire, it is possible for a member of the family who is considered to be “the public” by the notaire profession, to check whether the deceased left a French will. However, it is only possible to see if the will exists and which notaire registered it. So it helps to know whom to contact to handle the estate.

Here is the site to check. One needs to know the details of the deceased and the closeness of the relationship to the deceased in order to get access to this information. A third party cannot get it.
http://www.adsn.notaires.fr/fcddvPublic/profileChoice.htm

THE FRENCH ADMINISTRATION WANTS TO REVIEW HLM LEASES EVERY SIX YEARS
HLM stands for habitation à loyer modéré, or low-income housing project. Most American or British people think of public housing as rundown, poorly maintained and dangerous. That is true in some cases in France, but the vast majority of HLMs are in much better standing. I know a few in Paris that look like quite desirable places to live, and there are HLMs in some of the most expensive districts of Paris. So people should look at French housing projects very differently from American or British ones.

However, it is true that there are problems with the HLM program. To start with, obtaining an apartment takes ages. There was a time when it took ten years except in a dire emergency. Another problem, linked to waves of immigration, is the lowest income families had top priority, which reduced social mixing and resulted in ethic enclaves about twenty years ago, which still exist today. At the other extreme, some Parisian HLMs lost tenants when the family income rose to the point that they were no longer eligible to live there.

In early 2011, an experiment started modeling the amount of rent paid compared to the income earned by the family so as to allow a much wider range of people to live in the same building. One positive financial effect of this experiment is that higher rent is being paid. It also helps keep the buildings in good condition, as people with higher means often have higher expectations.

Meanwhile, the solidarity and urban renewal law (SRU), passed on December 13, 2000, specifically article 55, obliged all major French cities to have a minimum of 20% social housing or be fined. The fines have risen with the passing years so that now only a handful of cities are not compliant. The most notorious one is Neuilly-sur-Seine, whose mayor has full support from the voters to pay the ever increasing fines, no matter how high. But this is a true oddity compared to the rest of France.

A new housing bill, into which the strategy is to be incorporated, is expected to be discussed by the cabinet by the end of the year. It would allow the HLM program to check their tenants’ situations every six years. It is meant to address a particular dysfunction in the system. Say that a young family with two small children gets a three-bedroom apartment. Twenty years later, the parents move out but one of the children stays in the apartment as a newlywed and starts a new family. The old parents still pay the rent and are considered on paper to be the tenants. This shows how much people cling to such housing, knowing how difficult it is to come by. Such situations are not being addressed because they do not create any incidents that would force the management to review who was living there. The biggest problem for HLM authorities is fluidity: People moving out should leave the place for people who deserve to move in. The system would be a lot less clogged if this happened. The proposed housing bill, to be discussed soon in the cabinet, targets exactly that.

It will be a long time before France restores safety and order in all neighborhoods, including those with high concentrations of the worst HLM projects. But I believe these kinds of actions, taken one after another, go in the right direction, although it will be hard to change the true ethic enclaves.

For more info (in French), see
http://www.lemonde.fr/logement/article/2017/09/18/locataires-hlm-le-maintien-dans-les-lieux-sera-reexamine-tous-les-six-ans_5187202_1653445.html

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

OWNING FRENCH REAL ESTATE THROUGH A CORPORATION

I am a partner in an American LLC, which purchased a village house in France in 2006 through the establishment of an SCI. For a while now, we have been receiving requests from the tax inspector for information about the value of the property, the identity and addresses of the partners in the SCI, and the financial conditions under which a transfer of shares would take place. We have provided this information but the requests keep coming. Also, we have no idea what the current market value is. Since the LLC is owner of the SCI, to what extent are the individual partners subject to taxation if/when they decide to sell a share?

QUESTION

CHOOSING FRENCH HEALTH COVERAGE BY WORKING IN FRANCE

My wife and I are American retirees who permanently moved to France this past summer. Our primary income comes from our pensions and my Social Security. We would like to sign up for French national healthcare but are concerned about how much it will cost us. We have health insurance coverage from our retirement and, although it is annoyingly difficult to obtain pre-authorization for medications – we have to pay first and file a claim, and French doctors and pharmacies are baffled by it all – the amount we pay for the insurance is far less than 8% of our gross income. And that’s factoring in the additional premium we have to pay for the “Schengen” insurance that is necessary for the visitor visa (even though our retirement health insurance covers up to 90% of our health insurance costs).

My wife has dual American and Hungarian citizenship and I am American only. Although I have no plans of becoming self-employed in France, my wife does. She has her master’s degree in English and plans to start a business teaching English as a second language.

From the internet, it appears that she could become a micro-entrepreneur and, in that capacity, obtain French national healthcare. What is not entirely clear is, assuming she could do this, whether I could also be covered as a family member. Also, if she pursues this course, we are not sure if our US pension and Social Security income would be factored into the amount we would pay in social charges. Another issue is the effect on the healthcare coverage if she either does not earn enough money to sustain the business or terminates the business.

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?