06 September 2019

Renewing French residence cards (3)

Read part 2 of this series here.

Okay, I need to talk about the naturalization/citizenship vs. long-term residence question. Walt and I had spent a lot of time over the past five years gathering up all the documents we needed, and getting them notarized and translated for a citizenship request. A lot of those documents had to be obtained in the U.S. — birth certificates, for example, as well as the international notarization forms called apositlles for each U.S. document, to prove that they are authentic. On our regular trips to the U.S. to see family and friends, we would devote some days to going to get documents we needed to become French citizens.

As you can imagine, we spent many dollars getting the documents and then many euros  to get them translated by a court-sanctioned translator here in France. We found a good translator up in Blois, and we spent time working with her to prepare the documents by transcribing the hand-written ones on the computer so that she would be able to read them. We also spent time consulting with the translator on how to interpret American terminology having to do with counties, towns, cities, and villages.

Then for me, all hell broke loose when my mother learned that she had cancer. I made five, I think it was, trips back to the U.S. in less than three years to be there with her, my sister, and our closest cousin and to talk to doctors and other care-givers. All the physical and mental stress of that ordeal led me to put the citizenship application on the back burner, until my mother passed away a year and a half ago. It took me a year, I realize now, to grieve and to recover mentally and physically from those trials.

And all of a sudden, it was 2019 and our resident's permits were going to expire. You probably know that getting citizenship is a long process, even after you've got all the documents and translations the government needs. In our case, citizenship applications are handled over in Tours, which is farther away than Blois and a much bigger city. I never got far enough in the process to find out if the officials over there would accept dossiers by mail, or if you had to go over there in person to submit your forms and paperwork.

Here's today's coastal North Carolina postcard.

I follow a Facebook group where people going through the naturalization process give each other support, information, and advice. You are probably aware that the United Kingdom — made up of the countries of England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland — has been going through a process and crisis for three years now that is just the opposite of naturalization. They are trying to withdraw from the European Union. There are at least 150,000 U.K. citizens living in France, and there may be as many as half a million — numbers are hard to come by, because as long as the U.K. is still a member of the European Union, its citizens are allowed to move to France to live and work here with no formalities or red tape at all. For them, it's like American citizens moving from Pennsylvania to North Carolina, say. They can just pack up the car and move and not have to worry about visas, customs, and border controls.

Nowadays there's a little bit of panic in the air here. A lot of U.K. (British) citizens are realizing that they'd better prepare for the day when they will be treated the same way Americans and other non-Europeans are by France — as actual foreigners who need visas and either resident's permits or citizenship to live here. Sixteen years ago, Walt and I worked on getting our visas for months before we left the U.S. to move over here. It got pretty complicated, because we started the process in California, where we had been living for more than 15 years. We sold our house out there and stayed with generous friends for a month or so after we became "homeless." Then we thought we'd better move on, so we packed up the Jeep and a U-Haul trailer and drove across the country with our suitcases and the dog, to go spend the rest of our time in the U.S. at my mother's in North Carolina.

It took us a week to drive across the U.S., visiting friends along the way. We still didn't have our visas, but we had our fingers crossed that they would actually come through before too long. We had already had a container-load of our furniture, clothes, books, and other possessions sent off to France on a ship. I don't know what we would have done if we had been refused visas by France. As it turned out, just two or three days after we got to N.C., the phone rang and we learned that our visas had been granted and we could go ahead and move to France, where we had already bought our house. However, the people at the French consulate in San Francisco told us that we would need to come pick up the visas in person!

I told them we were in North Carolina, 2500 miles away. Could we have the visas sent to the consulate that serves the southeastern U.S. states and then go pick them up there? They said yes, but they required that I send them a pre-paid Federal Express envelope to ship them in. And the consulate we needed to drive to was in Atlanta — that's a eight-hour drive from the N.C. coast, where we were staying at the time. So we threw some clothes and the dog in the Jeep and started driving as soon as we were notified that the visas had arrived in Atlanta. We spent the night, of course, and we took the dog with us because we didn't want my mother to have to take care of her (my mother's yard was not fenced in). You get the idea — it was pretty complicated and expensive. At least we got to see Savannah and Charleston, which neither of us had ever visited, on our way back to N.C., visas in hand.

 Pelicans and the Cape Lookout lighthouse in Carteret County, North Carolina

So you get the idea. When we finally got to France in June 2003, we had to go to Blois and apply for residence permits immediately. We had interviews at the préfecture. We had chest x-rays to make sure we didn't have tuberculosis, and urine samples taken to make sure we didn't have any STDs. And I don't remember what all. For the first five or six years, we had to re-apply annually to have our permits renewed. We translated documents. We sent in bank statements every year to prove that we had the financial resources to live here without seeking employment (we had residence permits but not work permits). We drove back and forth to Blois I don't know how many times to turn in papers and pick up new permits. No matter — we were young and energetic in those years. Finally, in 2009, I called the authorities in Blois and asked if we qualified for a 10-year residence card. If you have, for example, a retirement pension, you do, I was told. And I did. So for 10 years we didn't have to renew our permits — until now.

Last year, I came to feel that we had to choose between continued residence (the equivalent of a U.S. green card) and citizenship. All those British people (and some Americans and people from other countries) who live here started seeking naturalization. The whole French system started scrambling to process all the applications they were receiving. The process started taking months, even years. People send in piles of paperwork, waited many months, or even a year or more, for a decision. Sometimes they just got all their documents sent back to them, rejected. Oh, and there are also language requirements, of course. Until Brexit happens, British people don't have to be able to speak French in order to come live and work in France. Proving you can speak French, however, is a requirement of citizenship, and applicants have to be able to pass language tests.

Walt and I speak French, so that's not a problem, and we had all the documents and translations, but we also needed to have our residence permits renewed this year. We couldn't live here without them, even if we had already started the naturalization process, which could take a year or more. Re-applying for legal residence and simultaneously launching the process of getting citizenship was an overwhelming prospect. So we opted for renewed residence. There's nothing, really, to prevent us from now requesting citizenship by getting all the paperwork together, filling out the forms (we had already started), and sending them in. But at my age, I might not outlive my 10 year residence card anyway...


Meanwhile, this morning CNN is carrying non-stop reports about Hurricane Dorian as it rides up the coast of North Carolina. It hasn't yet arrived at Morehead City, but it's very close now. There were tornadoes about 20 miles west of Morehead yesterday. Wishing everybody all the best luck.

32 comments:

  1. You have been having a very stressful year, actually more than a year. I hope all the visa business goes smoothly and then I hope Dorian will not affect Morehead City too much. It looks a bit scary at the moment. But I hope it will not do much harm. So sorry, and wish I could help somehow. But I really cannot. I do expect you will outlive this next residency visa, though.

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  2. Don't the documents have to be less than three months old?

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    1. My understanding is that only French documents have to be less than three months old. Not American ones.

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  3. Is it a good time to apply for citizenship when so many English will be applying for residency and perhaps citizenship too?

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    1. I decided that it wasn't the best time to apply for citizenship.

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  4. I keep my fingers crossed!

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    1. Our resident's cards have been renewed. I thought I had said that.

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    2. I meant for your sister and family.

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    3. Oh, okay, I misunderstood. The last e-mail I got from my sister was timestamped 7:05 a.m., French time. So 1:05 a.m. Eastern (U.S.) time.

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  5. At your age you might very well outlive your 10-year card! Your mother lived a very long life and so might you.
    To Taste of France, I believe the rules about 3-month-old documents have been relaxed except for proving your address. However, on some of the expatriate group forums there are indications that not all préfectures seem to be aware of the relaxation.
    I am one of the very lucky ones. I got married in 1971 when France still granted citizenship to anyone who married a French citizen. I did not have to request it, which, at that time, would have meant automatic renunciation of US citizenship. In 1972, France changed its laws to make citizenship by marriage to a Frenh citizen something that had to be requested, which was granted without much hassle. Since then, though, hassle was introduced and has blossomed. The US also changed its rules and requesting another citizenship is no longer an automatic renunciation.
    The upshot, in my opinion, is that dual citizenship is good. I can vote.

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    1. Yes, dual citizenship is great; it makes things so much more simple. I don't have to request a visa to spend four or five months in France every year. I don't remember when the law was changed in the US, but when I became a citizen, in 1978, I didn't have to renounce my French citizenship.

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    2. We also don't have to have visas for France or the U.S., because we are official residents of the former and citizens of the latter.

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    3. But it's true that we can't vote.

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    4. CHM, France never had the same automatic renunciation policy that the US did about taking on another citizenship.
      Now, of course, to renounce US citizenship is not easy. You need an appointment or two at the embassy, some questions, and a hefty $2350 fee. If you want to be absolutely free, you have to have your last 5 years of US tax filing in order and you will have an extra form to fill out for the year of renunciation. For many, getting the tax situation clear is prohibitively expensive. If you choose to renounce without a cleared tax situation, you're considered a "covered" expatriate, which means the US still considers it has rights over you. If you are rich, with a big annual tax bill or over $2M in assets, you are still a "covered" expatriate, even with a cleared tax record. Yet, so many are choosing to do this.

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    5. Yes, the US taxes its citizens living abroad and has a hefty expatriation cost. This is why many born to US citizens in other countries don't become US citizens: to stay off the "tax grid."

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    6. Ellen, I don't have any intention to renounce any of my two citizenchips, as long as I can enjoy spending summers in France or even coming back to live here permanently. I don't have too many years left anyway. In a litle more than five years, I'll be a centenarian.

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    7. CHM, I understand. I don't, either. But you live in the U.S. and France doesn't ask anything of you or make your life in the U.S. particularly difficult. It's not the same for U.S. citizens living outside theo U.S. From the hassle and expense of having to file U.S. tax returns even when there is no U.S. source income to the banks refusing to open or maintain bank accounts of U.S. persons, and for the banks that do allow standard accounts, the refusal to accord mortgages to U.S. persons, to the difficulty of having standard French retirement and investment accounts, such as "assurance-vie" and "P.E.A.", it has driven many to just give it up.

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  6. Que de tracas ! Courage à vous...

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    1. Ce tracas nous a découragés surtout pendant les semaines précédant notre rendez-vous à Blois. Tout s'est bien passé quand on est arrivés à la préfecture, sauf notre rencontre avec cette personne (réceptionniste, en fait) qui nous avait dit qu'on aurait dû contacter la préfecture plus tôt et qui m'a dit que je n'avais pas vraiment besoin de carte de résident. Je sais qui elle est maintenant parce que j'ai reconnu sa voix quand on l'a vue à la préfecture. Je me méfierai à l'avenir, mais je n'aurai pas besoin, en principe, de retourner à la préfecture avant 2029. Sauf imprévu...

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  7. Interesting to follow this process.
    Hoping things go well in N.C.

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    1. The mayor of Morehead City was interviewed by phone on CNN an hour or two ago. He hinted that the town's waterfront — docks, fishing boats, restaurants, shops — was badly flooded during the storm, and will need major reconstruction work. Of course, he is a real estate developer by trade. I'm waiting for more news reports.

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  8. I just got an e-mail from my sister in N.C. She said all is well where she is. Ouf.

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    1. Glad to know your sister is OK. It sure is a relief for you.v

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  9. So glad Joanna is safe! So glad you don't have to worry about another hassle in Blois until 2029. I understand why becoming a French citizen right now is on the back burner or off the stove. The USA political climate and the Brexit stuff is depressing, but it will run it's course somehow and hopefully rational people will regain control of the US and Great Britain.

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  10. It seems to me that you might be better off applying for citizenship now while you can just about cope with the admin. It means you won't have to cope with the residency stuff in 10 years time when you really may not have the stamina (from the way you are talking -- and it is a total pain in posterior to gather all those documents and present them in exactly the right order and format so they are accepted).

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    1. Well, I have qualified for carte de résident permanente at this point, but I don't yet really understand how that differs from the regular 10-year permit.

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  11. You took a leap of faith in 2003 to get your residency visas. I think it has all worked out pretty well for you two!

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    1. I guess, in hindsight, that it was a leap of faith. But I was young and cocky back then. I had lived in France for a decade back in the '70s and '80s, and had had extensive and successful dealings with the bureaucacy. I knew no fear. Now I'm less confident — more to lose, I guess.

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  12. Glad your sister is OK. It looked, from what I saw reported, that the storm went by but didn't hit the land in Morehead City. On Ocracoke, though, different story -- but they were told to evacuate and some chose not to. Hoping the rest of the hurricane season is relatively uneventful.

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    1. I saw reports that Dorian's eye passed over Cape Lookout, but somehow that didn't count as a landfall. I don't understand why. A lot of longtime locals decide not to evacuate even when the evacuation order is supposedly mandatory. I don't think the authorities can actually force property owners to leave.

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  13. I get grumpy about people who are told to evacuate but don't and then whine when they're in trouble. It puts first responders at risk. Although I imagine the decision either way is a balancing act between go and stay, and everyone always thinks they know "it's not going to be that bad", until it is. But we're coming up on more and harsher storms, so future choices will be interesting.

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  14. I think owners are afraid they won't be allowed access to their property for days and days after the storm has passed through. Or if they go far inland flooding might cause authorities to close roads and make it impossible to get back to the coast. I know it's a tough decision for people in the way of a storm to make. My mother never once evacuated and she lived in her house for 54 years, and then in a retirement apartment for another 13. I remember when the 1989 Bay Area earthquake happened, I was 50 miles south of the city with friends. All I could think about was getting back to SF to see if my apartment was okay. So I got in the car and started driving, not really knowing if the roads were open or closed. I made it, but it took me about three hours to do the drive. Some roads were closed, but I knew the city well enough to be able to get off the main arteries and find my way home on little neighborhood streets. It turned out that I did the right thing.

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