How to not get your French visa

Now that I'm feeling ten thousand times better than this past horrible weekend (see below), I've decided to enlighten anyone to the joy and wonder that is...French bureaucracy. Or bureaucrazy, as I've found.

In my case, the HR department at work applied for my ANAEM sponsored visa. This was because I was denied a long term stay visa. To work in France and get this type of visa, the company must prove that a non-French or non-European can't do the job in question. Obviously, this is a major sticking point and a major reason it's so difficult to get a job in France. It would have been nice to go this route since I'm being dumped by dad's health insurance in a few months, and the French have the most amazing healthcare and benefits. Anyways, since I got denied my "resident" visa, I had to go another route. ANAEM- roughly means that the company is sending me on "assignment" and I'm going to be paid out of the US to keep me a US citizen that is working "temporarily" over there.

Here come the important steps. First, after the above mess is sorted out, the company applies and gets approved by the French job agency to let me come on over. They send a letter to HR, which is forwarded onto me. This letter states that MY VISA APPROVAL IS IN NEW YORK CITY.

Comes the great contradiction. On the French NYC embassy website, it clearly states that ONLY NJ/NY residents can be issued visas from this consulate. However, since the company is based out of NJ, I am assured by HR that this is fine and to make my online appointment to go into NYC. So, try calling the embassy. There are "no live help" employees to answer calls (ever), and if I have a question, I am to submit an online query form. I do this, and 1.5 months later, have yet to receive a response.

Trudge ahead, and make online appointment on convoluted and confusing consulate website. Appointments are made several weeks out, so much planning has to go into this since of course, the consulate is on the Upper East Side, the most accessible place on earth.

Make your way into the city, and wait outside the French consulate (which is very nice, guarded by an ominous security guard who takes no shit). Wait until your 11 AM appointment, with about 30 other people, and get smashed like sardines into a crowded vestibule. Get yelled at if you step off the step leading to the metal detector.

Be very excited, because you think that YOU HAVE MADE IT. YOU ARE GETTING YOUR VISA TODAY! You have brought 30 copies of 46 different documents, from bank statements to lease agreements. They will not get you on a technicality! I know where I'm living, how I'm making my dough, who I'm sharing with, the technicalities of my job, everything.

Go through security several times, finding all lost scraps of metal placed on and about your body. Begin to get nervous when you see the stairwell directly at your 12 oclock. Become very nervous when you see 1 person standing on each step with timecards reading "10AM appointment."

Make your way to the end of the very long line and awkwardly talk to people around you that are above or below a step. This goes on for about 2 hours before you MAKE IT TO THE TOP! The precipice, the place of my dreams! An uncharacteristically friendly bureaucrat asks to see my passport and visa picture. I hand all over, along with my letter from France telling me to go to NYC. He takes one look at my passport and declares that I am at the wrong embassy! No, I cry! My letter! I HAVE A LETTER!

He declares my letter a mistake. PA residents must go to Washington, DC consulate for their visas. But, wait, I cry, what about my applications from France? He assures me that everything has been forwarded to DC. Well, I plead, can I please have a copy of your letter that assures me I can go to DC and all will be well? No, this is his copy only, he can not guarantee me anything.

Leave empty handed after a day well spent. Almost start crying and am comforted by a Russian girl, which was the nicest thing a stranger has ever done. So, the process will start all over since DC claims to never have received files from NY or France. This was not an easily discovered piece of information, since the French don't answer anything on the phone...they may reply to a fax, which in this case they did, with no recourse or solution to the problem. It's like the age of technology has been lost on their organizational system.

Hopefully this can all get done before June 18th since I also need a physical in France before I start working on June 30th. I know this is very common for France and paperwork, but I am an eternal optimist and had such high hopes. le sigh.