flemmings | (no subject)

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I keep reading about these foreigners who live in Paris or live in France. 'A year in Provence'-- off we go, happy carefree, to our new house. No one ever tells you what the foreigners *do* so as to be able to live in France, let alone how they got a visa or whatever. I must assume they're all independently wealthy or working for a foreign firm, because I know living in Japan involves definitely being independently wealthy, working for a foreign firm, or teaching English.

Oh, forgot the obvious-- married to a French person.

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Pre-contracted with a book company to produce a novel series about their experiences? Though I imagine that's the rare case....

Just be a member of one of the EU states; I have the right to live and work in any of them.

The practicalities are not so simple. I think most lose a lot of money when they find it's not an extended holiday and that work is work the world over and harder in a foreign language.

I tried the EU route on the basis of my maternal grandparents having been born in France. No go. My mother would have had to register her marriage at the French consulate and have it inscribed in the family's own carnet. Of course she didn't, being a Canadian citizen by then. (Didn't know the french had the equivalent of Japanese family registers.) I gather it's somehow easier for the Irish-descended to get citizenship via grandparents, or was, because several friends have done it.

Granted work is work the world over, it helps to have French wine and bread, and not pale simulacra thereof, waiting for you at the end of the working day.

You're considering it seriously? Then my answer that was a variation of "choose your parents carefully" wouldn't be of much help.

They (visa and immigration rules) all seems to be so petty and restrictive compared to when I was travelling. Visas were no problem compared with having an blatantly Irish name in the 70s.

I got a student visa then, uh, y'know, wandered off into the countryside . . .

And when you left the country, no sharp-eyed bureaucrat observed you'd overstayed your visa by a year? Do they even give student visas to grandmother-aged people like me?

Nope. Technically, I was still covered by the visa (I think); I just hadn't been using it to attend a university. (And yeah, I'm sure they would -- if you enrolled as a student. :) I hopped back and forth over the Swiss border constantly, and occasionally had to dig out my passport. I could have been deported at any point because I had no work visa, but no one seemed to care.

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