Carte de Sejour

We were so anxious to receive our Carte de Sejour, which gives us not only a legal status to live in France but also to get a cell phone with some companies, as you already know ;).

1) August 17th: We applied for our Carte de Sejour. It feels like a long time ago now.

2) October 5th: Our Récépissés arrived. We were originally told that they would arrive in 10 days, but took 7 weeks.

3) October 14th: I received an invitation to the medical check up at OFII (Office Français de l'immigration et de l'intégration). Nathan's did not come, but we were in "Que sera, sera" mode, and did not worry so much.

4) October 28th: By this time, we were quite worried why Nathan has not received his medical invitation.

5) October 29th: I decided to call OFII and find out what was going on. The person on the phone says, "Oh, he is supposed to be here today." I turned blue, and I regretted that I had not called them earlier. The OFII person kindly arranged his appointment on the same day as mine, and had the letter sent to home address instead of his employer. We have not yet seen this letter which his employer "received" after we contacted them. (To clarify: Nathan works for a university at this moment, but his office is located somewhere else.)

6) October 30th: Nathan received his invitation to OFII at home. The contents of his and mine are quite different. Mine specified that I needed to show my French competency and a will to integrate into the French society, etc. Nathan's requested that he brought his X-ray. We suspected that there had been another letter that had been sent to Nathan beforehand, which is probably sitting at someone's desk.

7) November 8th - Morning: We showed up at OFII at 8:30, where I was escorted to one room and Nathan waited in the lobby. A French-English interpreter came in and offered assistance. I thought that would be a good idea, so I raised my hand. There were about ten people in the room, and I happen to be the only one who needed language assistance. After a social worker explained what we were doing that day, I was called to another room where I sat with an OFII officer and the interpreter. I agreed to attend two days of orientation sessions where I will be informed of French legal systems and so on. I also agreed to take the French test, and if judged insufficient, I would be provided with 200 hours of language classes. These three things are mandatory for me to renew my Carte de Sejour next August.

I thought Nathan was doing the same thing in another room, but he needed not to any of that. All he did was his X-ray, a check up by a nurse, and a check up by a doctor. After I got my medical check ups done, I was again called into a room to meet with an OFII officer. She gave me the document which stated my medical check up had been done, and another letter stating when I should go take my French test. She gave me a nice OFII folder with a pamphlet on French society which I will need for the orientation days.

8) ) November 8th - Afternoon: We headed to the Prefecture. There was no line up, but a lot of people had been waiting to do their business (half of them immigration reasons, and the other half vehicle registrations). First, we bought 340 Euros worth of stamps. Then we waited an hour and half for our number to be called. We presented our medical document, récépissés, and the stamps. Five minutes later, we had our Carte de Sejour. I was hoping it would be a size of a credit card, but it is twice the size. My permanent resident card in Canada is quite intricate so that it is hard to forge. I wonder if no one tries to forge Carte de Sejour...

The biggest mistake we made was that we did not bring our new home contract with us. Our Carte de Sejour had our old address. So on the next day, we were back at the Prefecture again and spent good two hours waiting for a five minute session. The officer printed out a sticky label and put it over the old address and stamped it. C'est tout.

Now we are two happy foreigners living in France :).