Again? Sure...

Hooray for trips to the prefecture! That’s all sarcasm, by the way.

Living in France, we have to apply annually for the proper paperwork to legally live here and work here as foreigners. Something like the green cards in the States. Assuming it’s even half as difficult there, I now have sooooo much sympathy for people that have to deal with the same thing in my own country of citizenship. It’s funny here that we have to apply annually, since the process seems to take almost a year to complete.

After sending in our initial paperwork late last year, we moved. So we had to request a transfer... which amounted to reapplying and resubmitting everything. Then one day we received this little piece of paper with my wife’s name and photo telling us that the application was close to complete. Odd to get something back for her and nothing for myself, since we sent the two in together, in the same envelope. But we shrugged and waited. A month passed and nothing else came. We’re a few months past the expiration of our visas, so I went to the prefecture today to see what’s going on.

Pulling up our files in the system, the lady there told me that jj’s file was essentially complete, but mine appeared to be non-existent. As if it had never been submitted to begin with. I told her that the two were mailed in together (they have to be mailed, hand-submission is unacceptable), so it’s sort of impossible for them to have my wife’s and not mine. She sighed some French sayings for “yeah, it’s impossible and those people are _____ (insert insult),” then handed me a new form and said I should fill out a new submission with all of the supporting documents and come back tomorrow.

I’ve learned my lesson. Make copies. Even if it is 100 pages long. I will have to resubmit it. Again. And again. And then again next year.