Getting a visa by way of a Pacs

I've been looking up information for someone on applying for long-stay visas, and since things change every few years and the last time I got a visa was 2007, I stopped by the French Consulate of Los Angeles website.

I downloaded a couple of forms and looked at them, and a wave of memories flooded back.
"Oh yeah! I remember how ridiculous the procedure was!"

My husband and I signed a Pacs in France, but after my carte de séjour as an Assistant had already run out. I thus couldn't renew my carte de séjour, and instead applied for a new visa when we went back to the States.

I looked up my old posts, but I didn't have anything "technical" about the application process, so I thought I would write one now.

The Pacs is still in this weird netherland administratively speaking: at the Préfecture it gives you the right to a Carte de séjour vie privée et familiale, but at the Consulate you can't apply for a visa de conjoint français. I had to apply for a visa long séjour visiteur.

Generally the visiteur visa is used for people retiring in France. You have to provide proof that you have enough revenue to support yourself without working and you sign a paper saying you promise to not engage in any paid work. You also have to provide proof of health insurance valid world wide.

But in a logic that can only be described as French, after getting a visa visiteur as a Pacs partner, you can get a carte de séjour vie privée et familiale in France that lets you work.

Here is the list of documents currently requested by the French Consulate of Los Angeles:
1. Proof of residence in their jurisdiction
I think I just used my driver's licence

2. Passport
Mine was valid until 2011, so this wasn't a problem in 2007. There's a sentence about the passport being valid 3 months after your return to the US, which doesn't make much sense to me unless the consulate assumes you're only going for one year and will return to the US 12 months later.

3. Processing fee
I paid $135 in 2007, but it's now listed as $124 or 99€. I guess the exchange rate was different and meant the visa was more expensive in $ back then. Visas are free for spouses of French citizens, but Pacs partners have to pay.

4. Application form
The application form still does not have a box for Pacs, only single/married/divorced/widowed (first of the paradoxes). There is "Other, please specify" so I guess that was the compromise. I wonder if someone could put "common-law partner", like the French status "concubin".
I have to admit that almost 5 years on I don't remember if I checked off "Family stay" or "Private stay/visitor" or "Other" as the reason for my application. I think I might have checked other because I remember writing somewhere on my application that the purpose of my request/stay in France was the live with my Pacs partner. I put down my husband (then Pacs partner) for all the questions about "Will you be staying with family?" "Will someone be supporting you?"

5. Passport photos
When I got my teaching assistantship visa I had my mom take pictures and I printed them out on regular paper. The lady at the Consulate complained that they weren't "real" pictures, so I shelled out $18 to get real ones done. I think I had them taken at the Post Office in San Diego.

6. OFII residency form
Okay, I really have no idea if I had to fill out this form in 2007. It might have been added since then. Since I did the medical visit in 2006 for my assistantship and then again in early 2008 after getting the visa in late 2007, the paperwork I sent kind of morphed together. Following my 2007 visa and carte de séjour vie privée I did have to do the "Formation Civique" however.

7. Recent Police Record
I went in person to the San Diego police department and paid $12 to get my empty record. If I remember correctly, I was able to wait while they prepared the letter.
**I just looked around at the other Consulate websites and apparently Los Angeles is the only one that asks for a police record.**

8. Signed letter promising not to engage in any paid activity in France
I think I typed up a really short letter and signed it. This was the second of the paradoxes since I knew that once I was in France I would have 100% the right to work as the Pacs partner of a French citizen.

**Los Angeles doesn't ask for this to be notarized, but many of the other Consulates do.**

9. Proof of financial means
I didn't have a ton of money in my bank account when I was applying, and since they want to know that you have enough money for your entire stay (ummm, the rest of my life??) they ask for a copy of a bank statement with something like 800€ x 12 months (9,600€). I think I brought a copy of my husband's work contract and a bulletin de salaire and proof of our Pacs saying that since we were Pacsed he was required to support me financially. The Consulate said this wasn't enough, but that I could complete my application with additional financial information from my parents and B's parents if I overnighted it the next day. My mom made copies of the bank account with the second on the house which had just been approved, so there was over $100,000 in the account. I think B's parents also scanned and emailed a bank statement and a letter saying that they would support me financially if need be. I FedExed them the next day and they were added to my application.

This was the third of the paradoxes because the financial information I provided from my parents and in-laws had no relation to the money I would have to live on. Since I was Pacsed, the salary of my partner should have been the primary consideration. The idea of having enough money "for your entire stay" when you are requesting permission to live in France indefinitely is also "n'importe quoi".

**Many of the other Consulates ask for proof of current employment in the US. Knowing that you plan on moving to France, I don't see why this would be relevant, but that's neither here nor there.**

10. Proof of medical coverage abroad
What the Consulate pushes people to do is buy exorbitantly expensive "international health insurance" that often only covers medical emergencies (catastrophic insurance) and isn't really day-to-day insurance. At the time I didn't really understand how the whole Caisse - Complément de Santé thing worked in France, so I asked B to go to our Mutuelle and add me on the account. He did this and got a letter stating that I was covered by Santé Vie. The Consulate accepted this letter, probably because it was in French. (What I learned later was that I was just on the list to get reimbursed the 30% that the governement doesn't cover; to have the first 70% covered we would have to go together to the CPAM when I was back in France and fill out paperwork to have me added as an ayant-droit).

This is the 4th of the paradoxes: as a Pacs partner, you will either have your own insurance through work, or you qualify as an ayant-droit and can be added onto your partners account. I would encourage people to do something like I did: pay 30€ a month for a French complément de santé so you have "proof of insurance" that's valid in France and don't pay the hundreds or thousands of dollars for international health insurance. This may be a problem though if the Consulate wants proof of repatriation. I would recommend seeing if your bank card you buy your plane ticket with has some kind of insurance.

11. Proof of accomodation in France
I had a copy of the lease on our apartment with my own name on it. The Consular officials didn't find any irony in the fact that I was applying to move to France to live in my own apartment.

Some of the Consulates require some kind of proof of your date of departure, such as your E-ticket. This might be because they will start the validity of the visa the day of your departure, but since delays for visas are long in the lead up for September and you might not have purchased your ticket, I don't think a little photoshopping of a previous email confirmation would do anyone any harm. At Los Angeles they just asked me what date I wanted the visa to start, so I don't see why other Consulates must have proof that you've already bought your ticket.

The Consulate website now says you can have the passport mailed back to you with a FedEx envelope(**Some only accept USPS, some only FedEX, some all express envelopes**), but back in 2007 I drove back up to Los Angeles to have it stuck in my passport.  I ended up doing 3 trips to the Consulate because the first time they said I needed a specific appointment for my special situation (and I was also missing a photocopy of my passport). I went back for an appointment in early afternoon, outside of normal hours open to the public. When I was notified that my visa was ready, I made an appointment but discovered when I arrived that I didn't have to and that the visa deliveries were done at the end of the service time. These kinds of things are of course only relevant to the Consulate in LA.

So that's it! That's the nuts and bolts of how I got my visa that wouldn't let me work but in the end did.