Sadly, inconvenience plays a major role in this country especially when you're a foreigner. When I say inconvenience, I also mean - susah, complicated and everything that comes with it.
If there is one thing I've learned from living in France is that, the French love complications. I'm not just saying this from pure observation or obvious circumstances but I've been told by a few French friends themselves that they like complications, they crave for it as life is simply too boring without!
I'll enlighten you with one annoying factor (and place) every foreigner has to go through - The Prefecture.
In the Prefecture is where French administration, particularly the immigration bit, is done. When you have to stay here, for whatever reasons as such marriage with a French citizen or for studies, you need to prove that you are entitled to stay here. They demand a copy of for your personal documents, example: a copy of the birth certificate recently translated in French (of course) for the first year of application. Then for the second year, they ask, again for a copy of the updated translated birth certificate. The third year comes and they still ask for what? A copy of the recently translated birth certificate! What the hell!? The information is not going to change no matter how many times they ask for it. And this applies to all the documents they require which I had to keep submitting countless times, the same documents over and over again! Imagine the amount of papers used just so they don't have to dig up old files. Makes me wonder if they honestly care about the environment as much as they say they do.
In a way, I suppose it makes perfect sense, they WANT to make it inconvenient for you so you'll give up and return to your homeland!
Anyway, after 4 years of agony, mental torture and ridicule, this 'inconvenient' but inevitable part of my life is over! Alleluia!
3 comments:
You've just got to love red tape! I'm so glad you're through with that. If it's anything like here, it cost me $200 to get my birth cert in BM translated in English... I was furious as I coupld have done it myself but that was not allowed!
Here in the US, it's not so bad with regards to duplication, just the wait and uncertainty of whether they're going to reject your application because you've forgotten to dot and "i" or crossed a "t". It's almost over for me, I stay at the PR status for 5 years before going through the citizenship process so that leaves 2 more years to go and cramming American history!
I don't understand, you birthday doesn't change every year??? Be careful Helena, if you give the same birth certificate every year, the Prefecture may suspect you to provide a fake one...
Tell that to the Prefecture! I only have ONE birth certificate and every year they ask for it hence I have no choice but to provide them with the same one every year. Which is my point in this post, it's VERY silly! Anyway, it doesn't matter now. I'm done with all that, I got my carte de résident.
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