French bureaucracy: What do we want? Copies of everything! When do we want it? NOW!

This post is a breakdown of the paperwork TAPIF assistants need to file for their stay in France and my experience with the process so far. If you’re thinking of applying to be an assistant (the application for the 2017-2018 year just opened this week!) then this is for you. I’ll link this year’s assistant handbook as it’s a much better source of information. I’ll mostly be commenting on what this process has actually been like on the ground and any other tips I’ve found along the way. It seems silly to add yet another how-to post about this when there are already so many wonderful and thorough blogs on the nitty gritty of TAPIF out there.

Oh, French bureaucracy…it’s just as delightful as they say. Thank goodness TAPIF has been around for a while and former assistants have created helpful blog posts about how exactly to file all of your important paperwork, otherwise most of us would be pretty lost at this point. Basically, the French government wants copies (yes, multiple) of any and all important documents, thorough paperwork needs to be filled out, and then…you wait. And wait and wait and wait. Sometimes, your paperwork gets lost in the shuffle or you have to pester the contact person for whichever office you’re dealing with as to when you should expect to receive your very important documentation for x that you filed over a month ago. I appreciate the thorough documentation and paperwork, there’s ALWAYS a paper trail here in France, but I'm American and hate waiting. I'm lucky enough to be placed in a school with an extremely organized secretary who helped me fill everything out correctly and then mailed it for me. I haven’t been here long enough to know if I will need to spam OFII or CAF to get my answers, so we shall see.

First things first upon arrival in France: GET YOUR PASSPORT STAMPED! This is absolutely vital for your immigration paperwork. It’s easy enough to do, just make sure when your passport is checked at your arrival airport that they stamp it. I simply asked the agent (?) to stamp it, and he did. You should already have the top half of your OFII paperwork filled out from when you went to apply for your visa, and there should be a stamp about halfway down the page.

Once you arrive in France and have your living situation figured out, the bottom half of the sheet is filled out and then dropped off or mailed to the OFII office for your particular académie. If mailed, you’re supposed to do the equivalent of insured mail so you are notified when they have received it. This office can get backed up and the paperwork is time-sensitive, so it’s important to make sure they actually receive it and don’t lose it in a huge pile of other mail.

Once OFII processes your document, they mail you a confirmation in a few weeks and then within about a month you’re supposed to receive the date and time of your medical visit. There’s an X-ray to make sure you don’t have tuberculosis and then they put a sticker in your passport to validate your visa. The initial paperwork needs to be sent to the OFII office within three months of your arrival in France, otherwise your visa is invalid and it’s illegal for you to stay in France, which I would assume is because Americans can travel in France for up to 90 days without a visa, so once this allotted time is over, it’s visa time, and it needs to be validated!

Another sticky point is that you need to be careful about traveling outside of France or the Schengen Zone if your visa isn’t validated as it could be tricky to re-enter France. For example, if I couldn’t find a place to live until two months into my stay in France, I would have to wait to mail my OFII paperwork until that is sorted out and I have a personal address. Then it can take up to another month or so for my medical appointment just to be scheduled. Where most assistants run into trouble with this is when they want to return home over Christmas break. If someone arrives in France in late September, is unable to file their OFII until late November, and then they don’t receive their appointment time until December, they could very well be unable to leave the country as their visa would be invalid to re-enter France after Christmastime. I hope that all makes sense! But this is why it’s so essential to find a place to live as quickly as possible and to stay on top of all of your paperwork.

CAF is a rent reimbursement you can apply for based on your income. There’s a handy calculator tool on their website so you can kind of predict how much you would be reimbursed every month before going through the application process. It seems like it can really vary based on how much you’ve made the last few years and what exactly your living situation is. I’ve heard you get more back each month if you have roommates, if your apartment wasn’t furnished, or if you have children that you need to provide for. I went through the predictor tool and it said I would only get 28€ back each month *womp wompppp*. Some assistants get up to about 150-200€ back every month, but it can take a while to kick in. You’re also not allowed to be reimbursed for your first month’s rent through CAF, just fyi. When it’s time to leave France, you have to be sure you close your account with CAF, otherwise they will continue to pay you reimbursement and then later come after you for taking extra money (even if by accident!). It’s totally worth it for most assistants who rent their own apartment and are eligible for a higher amount back each month, so definitely look into it and apply right away to get the process moving!

More bureaucratic wonderfulness in banking and cell service Assistants are required to have a French bank account for direct deposit of their salary every month. However, opening a bank account is quite the task. Mine was officially set up and ready to go just last Friday (Oct. 14), so it took about three weeks.

Banking in France feels very formal as you have your own banker and need to make appointments to see them. At my bank, there is only one teller, so I usually have to wait quite a while when I need to make a deposit. Another big difference is when you make online purchases, once you hit “place order” or whatever final step for the purchase, you’re redirected to another screen and have to enter a six-digit code that is texted to you from your bank to make sure that YOU are the one making the purchase. Here are some of the steps to opening an account and things to watch out for:

1. Branches of the same bank can treat you completely differently and may or may not be willing to open an account with you. An assistant in one city could have a great experience opening an account with a particular bank, but another assistant could go to a different branch of the same bank and receive a completely different answer on whether or not they can open an account there. For example, I went to a few banks in Colmar when I arrived and still thought I was going to live there. I didn’t have my own place yet, but one bank was willing to temporarily use my United States address in order to open the account and I had to bring more documentation than normal because of this. Another bank turned me away because they required accounts to be open for three years minimum, even though I had heard via Facebook that other assistants had had luck with this particular bank in other locations. Your account is tied to the specific branch and banker where the account was opened, so it needs to be easily accessible from where you live!

2. You have to go to the bank and ask if it’s possible to open an account, and if so, make an appointment for a different date to meet with a banker to open the account. Make sure to ask about fees as some banks will charge you monthly for having the account open for less than a year (some assistants are successful in being vague about how long they will be in France and need their account, my banker was perceptive and noticed from my visa that I will only be here seven months and thus, I have a small monthly charge) and you may also incur charges when you close your account. If you want to transfer money from your American account to your French account, ask about how that process works at your bank and if there are fees. Don’t be afraid to ask questions until you feel like you fully understand what you’re agreeing to!

3. You’ll need to bring quite a bit of documentation with you. I needed copies of my birth certificate, visa, passport, and a justificatif de logement (either a bill with your name and address or in my case, a letter my landlady wrote saying I officially lived at that address and was signed by her). Sometimes you’ll also need to provide a bank statement from your U.S. bank for the last three months. It took a full hour at my appointment to open my account, and it sounds like that’s almost everyone else’s experience. You’ll receive copies at the end of your appointment of what’s called a RIB, to my understanding this is like a routing number and proof of your account. You’ll need this for your sécu (social security), to apply for the October advance on your pay, and for anything where you are billed monthly, like for your cell phone, so it’s important to try to get your account opened as quickly as possible!

4. Once the account is successfully opened, you have to wait up to 10 business days to receive a letter stating that your debit card is available at the bank, then bring it to the branch and get your physical card. Your pin is mailed separately. I received my card before my pin, so I couldn’t do anything with my account until then.

To set up cell phone service, you need a RIB for monthly charges and a justificatif de logement. When I first arrived in France, I didn’t yet have a French bank account, so I went with a prepaid month of data and unlimited texts/calls within France and was able to use cash and my American debit card for the purchase. I had heard of a much better deal from a different provider, so I went to Mulhouse last week to get switched over. I was able to keep the French phone number I had gotten from the original provider, and they had a kiosk that printed out my new SIM card. My account is supposed to switch over tomorrow, so I’ll get a text saying that it’s time to put in the new SIM and hopefully be successful in getting switched over. I’ll have more data and can call the US with this plan, so I’m happy!

Setting up internet is a different story, and I’m unsure how much of this is tied to my unique living situation, but here we go. When I was in Mulhouse, I wasn’t able to sign up for internet as my landlords are currently using the landline with a different provider, so I was told to go home and see if they would install a second phone line or something so I could have my own internet. Mrs. A said, “oh no no no no we can’t do that, that’ll be 20 more euros a month!” and wasn’t willing to let me pay the difference (I was desperate at this point and was willing to pay 50 euros a month for internet at home). She said she’d call her grandson and see if he knew an easy way to get it figured out, and 20 minutes later, she knocked on my door saying that she was going to change her landline plan to add what they call a box (modem) this week. She has an outdated plan and found out from her neighbor that she’s paying twice as much as she could be and doesn’t have unlimited calls (on a landline…how old is this plan?!). So, it all worked out for both of us! She will be paying much less, have unlimited calls to her friends and grandkids, and I’ll have internet free of charge! It should *hopefully* be ready to go early next week. It’s a whole other long process that involved her neighbor on the phone with the phone company for over an hour.

If I had my own apartment, there would presumably be a landline that wasn’t being used and could be utilized for internet. I have heard of assistants who live in buildings that are too old for an internet connection, so it’s not always so simple. And sometimes when they are successful in getting signed up for wifi, it's really challenging to set up the box and get it to work correctly. If you want to avoid this mess, look for an apartment that has wifi included!

Last weird and annoying French item for this post is the mail. I was under the impression that if I wanted to mail letters to the States that I could buy envelopes and the right stamps at the post office. NOPE. I walked to the post office with letters in hand and asked about envelopes and stamps to send mail to the U.S. The clerk looked at me like I was insane and said, “No, we don’t do that HERE!!! Not for other countries!! No no no no we don’t sell things like that here. You’ll have to go somewhere else.” So I asked where to go and he directed me to the tabac (kind of like a bodega but mostly sells cigarettes and magazines). The tabac is right across the street, and the man working there almost laughed and said, “You need to go to the post office for things like that!” and when I told him that I had *just* been there and been told to come here, he shrugged his shoulders and said he couldn’t help me. I’m not sure if maybe the guy at the post office somehow misunderstood me or if because I live in a small town they don’t sell things for international mail and he wasn’t used to that request. Either way, the experience left me feeling very cut off from the outside world: no mail, no internet, and no calls or texts home unless I’m on wifi elsewhere or use my very limited data. Luckily, I’ll have that new phone plan by the end of this week and can at least call home and will have a little more wiggle room with more data to send texts.

If you move to France, be prepared for the mountain of paperwork and time spent waiting for things to happen. It never seems clear-cut and like it has to have been designed to be as convoluted as possible, but that's how it is here. At least there are pretty views and amazing food to balance out the frustration :) If you want more info than I have here, I encourage you to research other TAPIF blogs; I have links to some of my favorites in my FAQ section.