A long stay in France requires a trip to the Office Français de l'Immigration et de l'Intégration, or OFII. It's a process that we were warned about in our information packets, a process that we received a lecture on during orientation, a process that I believed I should be freaking out about. In reality, though, it's not too scary. It just involves a lot of waiting. Here's how to (barely) survive.
PART 1: VISA APPOINTMENT
Yup, this process starts back in the States. Arrive at your local consulate, in this case the Embassy of France in DC. Surrender your ID at the front gate, get a badge, and head up to the visa section. Pick a number. 87. Look at the screen to see the numbers currently being served. 59 and 60. Excellent.Sit and wait with everyone else. 61 gets served, then 62. 63 does not exist. Neither does 64. Or 65. Eventually somebody figures out that the numbers 63 through 83 have all been ripped off the ticker and thrown into the trash. It’s 10am.
87 is called just as you're getting to an interesting part in your book. Haul your huge bag up to the window and empty out all your papers. Copy of your passport. Passport style photos. Long stay application form. Proof of address. Arrête de nomination and work contract from the DIRECCTE, original and copy. Some other random stuff the website didn't say you needed, like your birth certificate and your social security number. You did this before to get a visa for study abroad. You’re a pro.
The man at the window asks if you have your OFII form.
You don't.
Begin to stutter some apologies and some nonsensical, grammatically incorrect French, thinking about the threats on the website. Things like, “You MUST have all of your documents present or else you WILL have to reschedule. We DO NOT have copy machines so you must make sure you have COPIES of EVERYTHING. Failure to comply WILL RESULT in the harvest of AT LEAST one of your KIDNEYS.” You leave in less than a month. You’re doomed.
The man in the window just rolls his eyes and prints out a form for you. Fill it out in silence. When you go back to sit in the waiting area, notice a copy machine for public use in the corner.
PART 2: SENDING YOUR DOCUMENTS TO OFII
As soon as you get a French address, by which I mean like three weeks after you get your address, fill out the second half of the OFII form. Then mail it to your region’s OFII office, along with copies of the passport pages with your identity, your visa, and your stamp from when you entered the Schengen Zone. You must mail it. You can’t drop it off at the office. Not even if the office is about a 10 minute walk from your house.
Now wait.
In a few weeks, about mid-October, you get a nifty little notice that basically says “congratulations, we received all your documents and we will be calling you in for a medical exam within the next three months.”
Continue waiting.
By the beginning to middle of November, most of the other assistants have received their appointment dates and are getting ready to be done with this process once and for all.
Continue waiting.
Worry that they found something wrong with your documents, that somehow you are living here illegally, that you will be removed from the country before you even have a chance to show your students the glory that is Nicole Westbrook’s It’s Thanksgiving.
Continue waiting.
Pass the OFII office late one night while heading from Rue Royale to Rue Solferino. Point it out to your friends. Complain about how much this whole process sucks until you get to the bar. Know that you are not alone.
Continue waiting.
Get a letter from the Caisse d’Allocations Familiales (CAF) that basically says, “Hey, we’re here to help you with your rent! But we can’t give you any money until you give us the number on your OFII sticker. You're on your own until then. Sucks to suck.”
BUT YOU’RE STILL WAITING.
Finally go to the Office and show your nifty little notice and try to figure out whether this is France’s fault or yours. The woman at the desk just shrugs and tells you that you’ll probably get an appointment in January. Leave feeling disgruntled. Stop by your favorite coffee shop. It’s closed.
Continue waiting.
PART 3: THE MEDICAL EXAM
Finally, finally, finally, you get the appointment date in January. It’s on a Friday, in the morning. You only work two mornings a week―Mondays and Fridays. WHAT ARE THE ODDS.
Now you’ve got even more documents to bring―appointment notice, passport, passport style photo, proof of residence. You also pack up your arrêté de nomination and some copies of your passport and a bank statement, just for kicks. Haul everything over to the office on one of the coldest mornings you’ve faced so far in this city. Tell yourself to stop being such a wimp because you spent four years living in Ohio for God’s sake.
Enter the OFII building and begin to thaw. Present your appointment letter at the desk and get pointed over to a row of seats. The only one available is the one closest to the automatic door, which keeps opening and closing.
Wait. Again. Play solitaire on your phone. Get bored. Use a lot of data and download pictures of Michael Cera.
Your first stop once your name is called will be the radiology room The nurse will lock the door and ask for you to take off your top. Consider saying, “Hey, I thought you’d at least buy me dinner first.” Assume the joke will be lost in translation. Shut up and get your damn chest xray.
Put your clothes back on. Wait again.
Next you’re called into a different room for average checkup things. Height, weight, eyesight, all that. It’s your first time being measured in centimeters, which has apparently caused you to shrink slightly.
Wait again.
Get called into an office where you are greeted by a photo of your own lungs―the chest xray is blown up on the computer screen. A quick-talking doctor asks you questions in French while taking your blood pressure. It’s a bit overwhelming. Eventually he sits down and asks about your family's medical history, which is complicated enough in English. You forgot to look up words like "stroke" and "blood clot" before coming. Wing it. Exit wondering if the doctor understood that you are not one of the ones who had a stroke and that you're just a carrier for the blood clot gene. Or if he understood, like, anything you said.
Wait again. Look at your Michael Cera pics and wonder if it was worth wasting all that data to download them.
It was.
Get called up to the front desk and asked for your proof of residence, which is, of course, the last document in your pile. Your “passport-style photos” fall on the ground as you scramble through your papers, so lots of people get to look at your lovely resting sad face. Hand those over as well. Then a stamp gets printed with that coveted number on it and placed on the opposite page in your passport from your visa. It’s official. OFFIcial, rather.
The woman placing your stamp makes a remark about how your visa says you’re leaving in May and how she’s surprised that you’re having this appointment so late in your stay. Realize that you spent more months prepping for and worrying about this OFII number than you will spend actually having the number.
Go home and go back to bed. At least it's over. And you survived.
No comments