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…
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