HOW FRENCH BUREAUCRACY WORKS...REALLY

I am fond of saying that the French didn't invent bureaucracy but they did refine bureaucracy to a high art. And indeed, although the French economist Jacques Claude Marie Vincent de Gournay is credited with having coined the word, pejoratively at the very outset, there is convincing proof that bureaucracies predated the current French version by millennia. Why are our most common examples of ancient scratchings on clay tablets lists of mercantile goods or stockpiles in royal coffers if not for the overriding need of humankind to keep official records as though they had value in and of themselves?

We all hate paperwork. I get it. Damn those bureaucrats, keeping us buried in piles of paper so that they can draw a pay check. Petty. They find reasons to deny our most reasonable requests. Their rules are arcane, defying understanding. How wonderful life would be without those officious paper pushers.

You are wrong. Bureaucrats are your friends. Yes. I repeat. Bureaucrats are your friends. You just haven't been viewing them through the proper lens.

You see, you have the idea that bureaucracies are created to throw obstacles in the paths of the daily lives of ordinary citizens. Not true. Not at all. Rather, bureaucracies exist to confer power on the petty bureaucrat. That's the real secret. And though that sounds dangerous, think about it. The petty bureaucrat is so well versed in the confusing, often contradictory jumble of rules and regulations that they are charged to enforce that they know how to create any result, circumvent any prohibition. Approve any request.

Approve any request?

Yes. Approve any request. They just need a reason.

How does that work, you ask?

Well, 50 years ago in Mexico, it meant keeping a wad of money folded into your passport. If you had a problem with a functionary of the Mexican government, you would first be asked for that passport. You would hand it over, wad and all. It would be returned, intact but lighter. Papers stamped. Problem solved.

That was then. In Mexico. This is now. In France. I wouldn't try bribery. Nope. As tempting as it might be, I wouldn't. Here's what I would do, what I have done. I would contact a professional, someone with experience dealing with the bureaucracy/bureaucrat in question.

Money changes hands, it's true. But we're talking fee for service in the professional sense. Not bribery.

Case in point:

We are Americans. We don't have an EU passport, any EU identification cards, or any other form of paperwork that would ease us into the French social system. Our one saving grace is that we are of full retirement age. (Saving grace? Being old? Ah, well...) In theory, all that we had to do was to fill out the paperwork, make an appointment, and we'd be on our way. And how many times have you heard that? Rather, how many times have you heard the horror stories of dossiers thick and overflowing, of requests for more documentation and more documentation and more? And after not months but years, the desired result is still somewhere over the horizon? How many times?

We chose a difference route. We have an English-speaking French accountant - Sarah Vedrenne of AdviceFrance. We began using her when we bought our holiday house in 2005 and rented it out when we weren't using it. There's history there. so we called Sarah and asked her to assist us with our titres de sejour and our registration with CPAM. Sarah had us round to her office in her home up above Pezenas. She gave us a list of documents to bring including those that required an official translation. When we arrived, we reviewed the documentation piece by piece. We reviewed our American tax forms. We discussed what qualified as French income and what did not. Sarah made photocopies. We called the sub-prefecture and made an appointment. On the day, Sarah met us in the waiting room.

Now comes the good part.

When our names were called, Sarah greeted our examiner with a smile and a handshake. They had danced this dance before. Sarah not only had every document required but she had them arranged in the order in which the examiner asked for them. Question asked. Question answered. No muss. No fuss. No searching through files for that one particular, elusive piece of paper. Our two dossiers were opened, completed, and approved in less time than it took the single woman before us to complete her interview. Smooth as silk.

Having been approved for our titres de sejour, Sarah immediately filed with CPAM. Yes, a round or two of additional documentation was required. And yes, once approved we had to file a raft of paperwork to get refunds for our expenses back to the date of application. But less than six months after that application, our bank account was enriched by several hundred euros, the amount that CPAM covers for visits to the doctor and for our prescription meds.

Could we have done it by ourselves for ourselves? I have no doubt. Would it have gone as smoothly? Not likely. Was it worth Sarah's fee? Every penny.

One last point. While most English speakers that we know use Sarah, and while most are well satisfied as are we, there are some who are not so enamored. That's fine. This post is not intended as an endorsement of AdviceFrance. Rather, it is meant to point to a path that cuts through the bureaucracy, a path that has proven successful for us and many others, a path that starts with hiring a guide. Your choice of guides is your choice.

Dress with respect, office casual. Smile. Be polite.

Hire a guide.

WE'RE AMERICAN EXPATS LIVING IN FRANCE - OFFICIALLY

I don't know the words to La Marseillaise. I don't wear a beret. And I don't eat snails. (Cathey says that she eats snails. I wouldn't know. I've been spared the sight.) But as of today, I'm about as close to being French as I'm ever going to get. On March 12th, our applications for our titres de sejour (our temporary cartes de sejour) were approved. Cathey and I are no longer 'traveling' in France on a long-stay visa. We are now officially resident visitors. If this was the US and we were foreign nationals, we'd say that we'd been granted our green cards.

I suppose that I should feel different somehow. After all, I no longer list an American address as my home address. I'm not considered a resident of any American state. I'll be turning in my American driver's license for a French one. But the fact is, since before we bought our house in Quarante, even while we still owned our holiday house in Cazouls some years ago, on those one or two times a year that we came to France I already felt as though I was coming home. Now it's official. I am home.

I'm still an American citizen and I will remain an American citizen. I have no interest in giving up that citizenship regardless of any tax advantages that I've been reading about lately that relinquishing citizenship might entail. No. I'm an American, born and bred. The only reason that I have the opportunity to live this life that I've chosen is because I was raised in a culture that allowed me to think that this life was possible, that gave me the ability to amass the resources necessary to make it happen, that put no significant barriers in my path during the planning that led me to this day. 

I am not going to detail what we were required to have done before our appointment with the office in the sous-prefecture in Beziers that deals with such matters as approving stays for foreigners and what we had to bring with us when we arrived. France is a sophisticated and ever-changing bureaucracy. A good bit of what I've read on the interweb in the past about the process no longer applies. What I experienced in March of 2015 may not apply when your time comes. That's not a coward's way out of giving advice. That's French reality. In truth, I'm about to give you the best advice that I can give. Hire a professional.

I know folks who have handled their immigration documentation themselves. I have read their stories on the interweb. In just about every case, if they had thought about it, they would have realized that the money that they saved by doing their paperwork themselves cost them hours upon hours of extra work. If you value your leisure time at just a couple of dollars an hour, by all means do the work yourself. We value our time more highly. So we went to Sarah Vedrenne, owner of the firm Advice France.

Sarah is an accountant and tax adviser who we first hired to do our French taxes when we began renting out our holiday house in Cazouls in 2006 or thereabouts. Since those early days of working by herself out of her living room, Sarah's business has expanded  considerably, though still based in her home - or rather, an annex to her home built to house the work spaces of her and her several employees. Since Sarah is fluent in English, she numbers a good many Brits and a few Americans among her clientele. As a result, she is well known to the bureaucrats with whom an expat must deal. 

We met with Sarah in her office. She made photocopies of several documents that she'd asked us to bring with us, gave us a list of documents that she wanted us to provide to her by email, and another list of items (like passport-style photos) that we needed to bring to the sous-prefecture when the time came. She made our appointment for us. She met us at the sous-prefecture. (By the way, a sous-prefecture is the administrative office of a French region that is not in the capitol of the region. The prefecture for our region is in Montpellier.) Sarah bantered lightly with the officer who handled our case and answered most of her questions. We were approved without a problem. Our titre de sejour will arrive in the mail shortly.

How much was all of that worth? Well, that was worth 180 Euros to Sarah. To us? Priceless. 

As we left the office, Sarah assured us that once we received our titre, we would be able to buy into the French healthcare system. The cost would be a percentage of our income minus a small standard deduction. She would have the applications ready to go by the time that our cards arrived. More on that as the story unfolds.