Adventures in French Bureaucracy
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On the afternoon of August 6, a Friday, I checked into the Office
des Migrations Internationales in the 11th arrondissement, a modern
building in a neighborhood that has its bright spots but that frankly I
do not like. Grit just doesn’t work in Paris like it does in New York.
But what I really do not like are medical visits and believe me I would
rather fly cattle class to Pluto than submit to a chest X-ray.
Things
got off to a chipper start, however. After presenting the récipissé at
reception I was asked to wait with the rest of that afternoon’s group
in a big room overlooking the rue de la Roquette. By and by a female
fonctionnaire walked in and gave us the drill: first we would all watch
a video presentation, followed by a language evaluation and medical
exam. And who were we? A casual glance around the room revealed, first
of all, disappointment. Looking at the sad sartorial show I had to
pinch myself to remind myself that this was Paris. There was a
middle-aged Russian man, who turned out to be as reflexively combative
as he looked, accompanied by a French woman who had the apparent
misfortunte to be his wife. There was a good-looking man who I deemed
to be Iranian but who turned out to be Armenian. There was a “couple” –
I use the term loosely – comprised of a young, attractive woman
insouciant of aura and North African of origin and a young French guy
so geeky-looking he’d make Stephen Hawking look like Johnny Depp. As if
we all didn’t know exactly what was going on here. (I wondered if he’d
go for booze or therapy after the divorce.) There were a few others and
there was me, dressed informally but conscientiously (sportcoat, no
tie) and probably looking somewhere between resigned and dazed.
But
once the film started to roll I really perked up. The title was
“Welcome to France,” the subject, an introduction to the kingdom, I
mean republic, and a condensed lesson on how to integrate into its
glimmering social fabric. I was prepared for ultimate propaganda piece:
visions of pastel-colored meringues crowding bakery windows, Loire
Valley chateaux untrammeled by hordes of tourists, gleaming Parisian
monuments. Indeed, there was some of that, but you can always count on
the French to surprise you. Because the film also showed an RER covered
with graffiti, a cluster of HLMs (low-income housing units), and an
ugly, overbuilt port. What would come next, a desecrated Jewish
cemetery in Alsace? Not exactly, candor does have its limits. There was
a scene of everyday Parisian gaiety, or what passes for it; in other
words, a cross-section of people at a place that looked like Place de
la Republique, politely chitchatting and shopping, the kinds of things
you have to do in a cramped urban setting to avoid offending your
neighbors and touching off a riot. Oh, it was good fun, this film.
But
the meat of it was integration, with recurring emphasis on the
secularism of the French Republic and guaranteed rights of women in
France. I just wished they would call a spade a spade, but I suppose
that’s too much to ask of any government. I say this, because it was
obvious that all the pronouncements of the word integration were veiled
references – you’ll forgive the pun – to the crisis of Islamic
assimilation in France.
And
so it goes. The film ended and I had my French language evaluation.
Actually, I didn’t. On the way to a smaller room down the hall I
engaged in a bit of small talk with the language officer. After sitting
me down in her office she said that based on that small talk I didn’t
need to take a test or the stable of language lessons which the state
offers free of charge for new residents. She gave me a grade four, the
highest on their scale, and sent me back to the big room where I
awaited the medical visit.
Someone
else fetched me and led me down a hallway in the opposite direction to
the medical office where I started to get really nervous because it was
a medical office. A receptionist called my name, mispronouncing it
which was normal but my nerves were too frayed to bother correcting
her. I had to take a vision test, which I easily passed. The nice nurse
who guided me through that told that next up was the chest X-ray. I
dreaded this because I knew from previous experience that in some
instances French doctors do not offer their patients X-ray protection
whereas American ones do. In a dental chair I was willing to let this
go, but at a higher dose I was not.
“Will there be a lead shield?” I asked.
“We usually don’t use them,” she said, “but I can go and find one for you.”
Great,
I thought. What else could you get around here just by asking – an
Orangina on the rocks, playing cards perhaps? I didn’t have much time
to consider it because before I knew it she had shunted me into a sort
of compressed hallway that served as a changing room and shut the door.
Before I had even put my bag down another door on the opposite wall
opened up to reveal a doctor or technician (I’m still not clear on that
one) with an agitated air and slightly disheveled long white lab coat.
“Change and follow me,” he said to me using the familiar tu form to address me. This, and the absence of s’il vous plait, shocked me. Judging by his accent he was from Guadeloupe or Martinique, but it wasn’t the time for small talk.
“I’m waiting for the lead shield,” I replied.
“You don’t need a lead shield,” he said, “and I haven’t got all day. Now change and go over to the X-ray machine.”
The
Armenian man was standing near the machine, dark and handsome and
knowing it, especially with his shirt wide open. He buttoned it up
slowly.
“As
I just said,” I said, “I’m waiting for the shield that the nurse just
promised me she would find. I’m not going to have this X-ray done
without it.”
Whereupon
the tech began throwing a fit. There is no other way to describe it.
“You must be an American!” he blurted out, waving his arms about.
“Never have I ever –!” and “Only an American–!” Various invectives
rounded out his unpolished sentences. Red cape meets bull.
“Do
you have a problem with that?” I cut in like a rabid disco queen at a
GOP-sponsored square dance. “Because if you do, I have no problem
reporting you to a supervisor, and not only for rudeness and denial of
a legitimate medical request, but discrimination. I didn’t ask where
you come from, though wherever it is I wouldn’t exactly say you’re a
great ambassador for it, and I didn’t come here, Monsieur, to an office
of the French government, to have my nationality insulted.”
Nasty
look time was over – it was time to exchange blows. (Where was that
nurse, already?). Only one tiny thing prevented this escalation, a
single glance in my direction from the hirsute Armenian, over the
shoulder of the raving maniac of an X-ray tech, as if to say, “We can
both see that this fellow is out of control, but just think, if you do
this now, you’ll be out of here and never have to see him again.”
I
weighed that unspoken communication, and the fact that even if I didn’t
have the lead protection and something went haywire, it’s not like I
wanted children anyway. I mean, I’d have traded in my own childhood if
it meant I could have spent more time ironing out my adulthood. But
just at the moment of my submission, the nurse entered with the shield.
Above the clamor she asked what on earth was going on. She calmed down
Techzilla, to a degree. He stormed out of the room, the wind gone from
his sails, the very picture of impotence, and she put the shield on me.
Backwards, as it turned out, but I wasn’t going to push my luck.
“What happened?” she asked me after the machine had done its thing, probably at a triple anti-American gamma ray dose.
“He seems to think I’m being difficult because I’m American,” I said.
“Oh,
never mind his bluster,” she said, with a subtle roll of the eyes as if
to say his short temper was no secret. She folded the heavy apron and
paused before adding: “All the same, have you seen that new film by
Michael Moore, Fahrenheit 9/11?”
I
couldn’t believe it. Was there no space in France that could escape the
great Bush debate? Was this nimrod from Texas going to poison my every
move?
“No, I haven’t,” I said. “But not every American voted for Bush, you know.”
“Of course,” she said, “but still, after seeing that film, I pity the American people.”
“You do?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Promise me you’ll go and see it.”
At that point I just wanted to get out of there. I couldn’t take one more political tirade. “O.K.” I said. “I promise.”
I
left the waiting room and chatted with the nice Armenian man before
having my second evaluation, a discussion with a real doctor who was
not only nice but expressed a sincere interest in my American origins.
Once it was established that I didn’t have TB he warmed right up to me,
even wishing me good luck in France – in English.
I
was given a yellow slip of paper that said I had passed the exam. I
brought it on Monday to the Préfecture de Police, where I had to
forklift over 200 Euros’ worth of special OMI stamps that had to be
affixed to a piece of paper as proof of payment of the administrative
fee. With these things in hand I went back to Salle Nord Est and
finally received my carte de séjour.
A
pretty pink sticker in my passport. That was all. But I had it. And how
would I celebrate my newfound freedom to join the ranks of the French
employed, squeezing into the metro at 8AM to huff and puff my way to
some activity of questionable value to society only to forfeit half my
salary to the very bureaucrats that made it all possible? Why, isn’t it
obvious by now? I left the country.
Coda: America Strikes Back
every intention of returning, of course. After all that, who wouldn’t
need a break? Before I left Paris I applied for a position with the
American Embassy. A few days after doing so I received an e-mail to the
effect that my carte de séjour would not be considered as valid for
Embassy hiring purposes – essentially because I am not married. Having
obtained the legal authority to work in France, my own country
dismissed my application, on grounds questionable at best, with the
swiftness of a guillotine. And I was fool enough to think our
government only bungled foreign policy on the macro level!
An
inquiry made with the Department of State was met with stock responses
not worthy of robots, followed by silence. Which leaves the impression,
false or not, that the government is a club run for the benefit of
members only. Which I suppose would be fine if we all suddenly got a
huge tax refund. In the meantime, I’ve said what I had to say and
they’ve said what they have to say, so it will be interesting to see
what the courts have to say, too.