My wife and I recently had to make a difficult but necessary change in our own lives, fleeing from the US to live in France while we wait to see what shakes out of the chaotic situation there over the course of the next year. Been starting in on the language learning, but it's been slow going.

[–] Whirling_Ashandarei@lemmy.world 7 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

How was that process? Is your wife French? I wish I had dual citizenship anywhere.

[–] g4nd41ph@lemmy.world 10 points 16 hours ago

It was not as big a deal as you might think. In order to get a visa that we can renew each year, we basically had to prove these things:

-We have valid passports and identities -We are not going to take a French person's job -We have health insurance (so that we don't end up stiffing the French healthcare system) -We won't be homeless on arrival in France -We have enough savings to support ourselves for the time of our Visa's validity (because we're not allowed to work for a French based company while we're here, see second point)

I've been saving 50+% of my gross pay for the whole time I was working, and my wife is doing the same, so we had plenty of money available to buy plane tickets, pay lawyers to advise us, buy health insurance, and get help with the application process. Honestly, the lawyers were not needed and we're very expensive I would not use lawyer again. I used them because we needed to get out fast and I wanted to make sure that the first application would be successful. The instructions on the website for the French government were clear and straightforward and we could have done the application ourselves without major difficulty. There were even versions of the application forms available in English with checklists of documents to bring.

My wife is not French, but my mother, my stepfather, and my three step-siblings are. Unfortunately my mother naturalized here after I could have gotten French citizenship through her (I was 23 when she became a French citizen).