Playful Rooted

One reason I started this blog was to help other people in my situation and to share what’s worked for me. If you’re not at all interested in moving to France, feel free to ignore posts like this one. 🙂

But if you are interested, keep in mind that the experience can be vastly different depending on the government worker you deal with, the type of visa you’re applying for, or just the day of the week. Rules are always changing, but this is what my experience at the French consulate in Houston was like.

Ben and I drove down the night before and stayed at a hotel close to the consulate. The next morning, we got up early and headed to our appointments with a whole stack of papers in hand:

• birth certificates
• marriage certificate
• Ben’s convention d’accueil (work agreement)
• passports
• visa applications
• passport photos
• proof of international insurance
• round-trip plane ticket confirmations

I thought we had enough documentation to cover any scenario, but as soon as we walked up to the door, my heart dropped. A sign on the door said to have your printed appointment confirmation with you or you’d be refused. That was the one thing I didn’t have! I panicked a little but tried to keep it cool as we walked through the door. Luckily, I had recorded our confirmation numbers in Evernote, so I was able to pull them up on my phone. Ben asked one of the consulate workers if we could just write them down. The guy gave us a piece of paper and a stern look, but he accepted our handwritten substitute.

We waited for about a half an hour with a group of other nervous-looking people. The room was small and very public. There was a little waiting area and there were two consulate workers behind desks on the opposite side of the room, but everyone could hear what you were saying, so nothing was private. If you were missing a document or were made to look foolish some other way, everyone knew it! That was a little intimidating. We did learn that they were fine with you speaking English if your French wasn’t up to par, so I was relieved about that. I think I probably could have used French and gotten by, but it was much less stressful to just speak English.

Because Ben was applying for a special type of visa for scientists and researchers, the woman we worked with didn’t know which rules applied to me as his spouse, so it was a little disorganized. She basically told Ben his visa was approved right away, but she spent a lot more time on mine. She looked through my paperwork several times and kept acting like I was missing documents. (Terror!) She also kept saying I’d need to provide a police report from Houston and a signed letter stating that I wouldn’t work in France. That scared me a little since I did plan to work and I would have been super upset if I weren’t allowed to! I mentioned that I had researched his type of visa thoroughly and that the spouse is allowed to work in France, but she kept saying she didn’t know anything about that and just brushed off my commentary.

She gathered up all our documentation, gave us the paperwork we would need for immigration into France* and sent us on our way, saying we could fax in the police report and the letter the next day. Ben and I were both skeptical that we even needed to provide those things, but we figured it would be better to be safe than sorry. So we went to the Houston Records place and got a ($20!) notarized letter stating that I’ve never had a criminal record. In Houston. Where I’ve never lived. It was ridiculous, but you never know.

We left Houston not really knowing what our next steps should be. I was still stressed because we didn’t have any answers yet and it seemed like there was more we needed to do. Luckily, a couple of hours into the drive back to my parents’ house, we got a call saying that both our visas were approved. Hooray! So clearly, we didn’t need the police report, but I was too relieved to care. This was the last giant hurdle in going to France, and after months of apprehension, we’d cleared it!

Although I was super relieved after that phone call, I was still a little anxious until our visas actually arrived. We had purchased an urgent USPS envelope, but it still took a full 10 business days to get to my parents’ house. But we finally got them, requisite terrible pictures included. 🙂

*Here’s what went wrong (which I didn’t realize was wrong until we got to France). The consulate worker gave me the paperwork for a regular long-stay visitor, which is not correct. This led to a lot of unnecessary runaround at the immigration offices in France. Everything worked out eventually… although I really had to check my Type A personality at the door. Another post for a different day!