How I Got My Visa to France

I’ve been in love with France ever since my first trip to Bordeaux in 2010. Friends I had met back in Thailand showed me around the area and introduced me to French culture. It was my first time in France and I loved the food, the wine, and the people.

But that love became an obsession when, after Bordeaux, I stepped out of the Paris metro and onto the Champs Élysées. The lights, the energy, the mystique! There was magic in the air. I felt like I had known the city my entire life and I was simply returning home.

Since then, Paris has had a firm grip on my heart. Over the years, I spent countless visits exploring France and Paris in particular. I’ve run tours in the city and I spent a few months living there in 2019.

Last August, after yet another sojourn, I thought to myself, “What if I moved back?”

I was growing a bit tired of the NYC dating scene, the rising cost of living, and felt like creatively, I was in a rut. With AI coming for creators like me and the industry changing, I was a little lost on what, career wise, would come next.

In short, I needed a change.

And Paris seemed like the best place to go.

It’s cheaper than NYC, I had friends there already, I’ve always wanted to learn French, it would make a great base for exploring Europe, and I could start writing my next book there. There’s nothing like a change in scenery to get the creativity flowing!

But the question remained: how do you move to France?

After all, they don’t have a digital nomad visa, and you’re limited to three months if you visit on your regular Schengen tourist visa.

Well, it turns out that it’s not actually that hard. (And while I can only speak for Americans, I suspect the criteria are similar for Canadians, Aussies, Kiwis, and other “developed” nations.)

If you want to move to France, you have four main options:

• Student visa
• Long-term visitor visa
• Entrepreneur
• Talent visa

The student visa is pretty straightforward. You need to enroll in a full-time university program and show you have enough funds to support yourself (around 600 Euros per month). A friend is currently there on this visa, as she is doing a nine-month intensive French program to become fluent. You still have to apply for the visa, but if you’re enrolled in an accredited school, you’ll likely get approved. Another benefit to this visa is that you can work part-time on it!

But this visa is contingent on being in school, so if you leave or quit, it’s voided. However, when you are done, you can change this to a “job seekers” visa, which can give you up to another six months in France (or more depending on how long your program was).

I thought about applying for the entrepreneur visa, but the application process is pretty complex and can take months to be approved. You have to set up your business in France — and that is a lot of paperwork. You have to show that your business makes money, has clients (at least one of them being French), and can support you full time (you have to make at least the French minimum wage). They will scrutinize your assets and financials a lot and you’ll need to register your business in France and pay French taxes.

Additionally, France offers a talent visa. If you’re an expert in your field (with verifiable accreditations and accolades), this could be a good visa to apply for, especially if you plan to stay in France for a long time and want to physically work there. But, again, you’ll need to have some source of income and plan to do physical business in the France. If you’re not an academic but someone in the arts, you have to show how you are going to add to the “culture of France” in some way.

While I would meet the requirements for both those visas, the process for either would have been time consuming, and, since I’m not sure France is going to be my forever home, I decided not to go through that process.

So I went with the long-term visitor visa, officially called VLS-TS visiteur. This allows me to stay up to 12 months in France and is renewable in the country. It does come with a lot of restrictions, however: I can’t physically work here and I am not allowed into the French social welfare system.

It’s also the visa a lot of Americans (and most retirees) are coming in on. If you have passive income or retirement savings and just want to live in France, this is a good option for you. It allows you to set up a bank account and it can be renewed pretty much indefinitely.

The paperwork for this visa (which I’ll get into in a bit) essentially comes down to whether or not you can support yourself. French authorities want to make sure you won’t be a burden on the system.

My biggest question centered around whether or not I could “work” on this visa. A lot creators and digital nomads are applying for — and getting — this visa.

But remember: you aren’t allowed to work on this visa so how are you going to work if you can’t work?

So let me take a moment to talk about “work” from a legal standpoint.

As I mentioned, there’s no digital nomad visa that allows you to work in France. And the French tax office said last July that remote work is considered taxable — but there are no official laws that. That’s just their opinion and there’s been no progress in codifying that opinion. In fact, my visa doesn’t even come with a tax number, so it’s impossible for me to be taxed. I couldn’t pay taxes even if I wanted to.

The visa office asks how you’ll support yourself when you are in France and one of the sources of income they accept is “income from work.” I was very open that my means of support would be the income from this blog and my books.

The system there really hasn’t caught up to remote work. It still defines “work” as something you do physically that could take away a job from a French person.

So could I run walking tours in Paris? Nope. Could you work at a café? Nope.

But does writing this blog post count as work? After all, no one is paying for it. It’s a free resource. Does going to a café to work on the next great American novel count? What about my weekly newsletter that has affiliate links (that generate income) in it? Is writing that considered work?

The gray area is considerable, so the best thing to do is to talk to a lawyer. I recommend Daniel Tostado (yes, that’s his real name), one of the biggest American-French immigration lawyers in Paris. He has a huge law firm and regularly meets with government officials to clarify the rules on this. He gave me some solid advice.

For this long-term visitor visa, the application process is pretty easy. You go to the French government website, fill out your application, take the application number to the TLScontact website, and make an appointment. (France outsources the appointment process to this company, which then sends everything to the French consulate for approval.)

The main things you’ll want to demonstrate are that you have accommodation for 90 days on your application and enough income to support yourself. They just want to make sure you aren’t going to be a burden on the system. I went overboard. Here’s what I brought to my appointment:

• The application (you need to bring a printout)
• A confirmation of the appointment
• Extra passport photos
• Proof of accommodation (this can be Airbnbs, hotels, or someone’s home — if it’s the latter, make sure that they are the owner!)
• A letter attesting I won’t work
• A financial summary letter explaining why I am moving there and my source of income
• Health insurance that meets French legal requirements (I used Mondassur.)
• Three months of bank statements showing regular deposits
• A second bank account, my tax returns, and my W-2

I didn’t need the second bank account, tax returns, or W-2 (they weren’t required) but the woman at the appointment said the more proof you had the better and it wouldn’t hurt. And another friend who got this visa didn’t bring beyond what was asked in the application form. But I wanted to take no chances!

At the appointment, the staff double-checks your paperwork, takes your biometric data, collects the fees, and then sends your passport to the embassy for processing. Officially, it takes up to 15 days to process your visa, but everyone I know seems to get it back within a week.

The worst part was not knowing if you are approved until your passport is returned. While you can track the progress of your application, you don’t know the verdict until your passport is back in your hands. While I was waiting (and anxiously spiraling), I looked on Reddit and found that most denials were for lack of income or issues with their accommodation, which seem to be the two most important things to have perfect on your application.

Once you get your visa back, you can enter France any time after the start date. After you enter, you have 90 days to register your visa with the state (they give you a little QR code with instructions). This allows you to “officially” be on this long-term visa. (It’s a more paperwork kind of thing.)

Once that is done, there’s nothing else to do and you can stay in France (and Europe) until your visa expires!

So, if you’re considering moving to France, these are your options. But, as always, I’m not a lawyer and this is not legal advance. In regard to work and other issues or questions, it’s important that you seek legal counsel and get their expert opinion!

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