Chronicle of departure: D-180 - Tellement French!

Another month past, and I felt like I had made some progress … until I changed my mind recently.

– Visas

Theoretically things were clear: the university that will hire my husband would take action for visas in April. Then came the great chaos: the immigration ban of the new American government against the nationals of 7 countries…

For three days my husband and I were confident, thinking it didn’t concern me. Indeed, although originally from one of those countries, I obtained French nationality more than 20 years ago, and I have not returned to my country of origin for even longer. It just happened like that, I always had a more exciting trip to go before I went back there…

But after a few days we began to doubt and to reassure us, my husband wrote to his contacts at the university to ask for their thoughts. And these duly informed persons were not sure at all. They answered very cautiously and apologized by e-mail for the trouble that was caused us (even if it was not their fault!), they felt like there might be a risk for me to be impacted. So we dug into official texts on the websites of the US Embassy in France, France Diplomacy and the French Embassy in the USA.

It seems that my country of birth is one of the countries whose nationals had to apply for a visa already as of April 2016, even under the presidency of Obama. But I travel to the United States for 20 years for my work as well as for leisure, with or without my husband, without a visa. Even last September we traveled to Monterey, California without any visa (well, with the ESTA procedure)!

Since then there has been this legal battle between the American president and some American judges. On our side, it looks like if I traveled to the USA in September 2016 without a visa, it’s probably because I’m not considered as national of this “incriminated” country, and since I have not returned there for more than 20 years the problem should not arise. But this is only pure supposition.

– Travel for to find our future house

As a result of these uncertainties on visas and given the delays in American embassies around the world to ask for a visa, the university told us that they would initiate the visa application process well before April, in fact in February.

Besides, we decided to make a short trip to our future city of residence in April (a few days during the holidays) to look for a house. But if I had to apply for a visa for this trip in April, should I apply for it before or after the immigration visa process? Or should I do just as before, take a plane and use my passport to enter in the US? Isn’t it a bit risky? With all this bustle would I be repressed?

More generally what will be the outcome of this legal battle between the judges and the American president? Against the common sense (the earlier you buy your plane tickets, the best prices you get) we have for the moment left out this trip project.

– Choice of the moving company

One year ago, when it seemed that my husband had a chance to get a job offer, we asked for a quote to 3 moving companies between Lille and the USA. Then he accepted the offer but we realized that we could not apply for a visa before January 2017, so we decided to postpone our departure to the summer 2017. So we left those quotes aside.

I contacted these companies again a few weeks ago, I read and compared their quotes in detail (which not surprisingly didn’t take into account the same things at all), I read all the paragraphs written in very small letters and I asked them questions… Finally last week I thought I got the most interesting company, corresponding to what we were looking for. But thanks to a last small innocuous question before signing the contract, we realized that there was a misunderstanding between us on an essential issue… So I came back almost to the starting point, since none of the companies has presently correctly integrated this key point in its estimate. We are up to a new turn.

– The everyday life influenced by the perspective of our departure

The course of our daily life is of course greatly impacted by the perspective of our departure. For example, when the visa problem came up (as I mentioned above), I began to think for a moment about everything that I had to plan again if our departure was delayed: To register our children in April at the Music Conservatory for September 2017, to register them at the swimming pool in May for next September, to declare our choice for my son’s second language option next year (in 7^th grade) whereas we declined to choose, etc.

There are also regular daily situations for which we must make choices: initiate actions or leave things as they are. For example, our commitment time with our internet, TV, phone and mobile operator expires in a few days. The price of our subscription will climb since we are no longer committed to the operator. This means choosing to re-engage for 12 months and renegotiating prices or letting prices rise. Technically, with an employment contract abroad you can put an end to these contracts when the time comes, even when you are still engaged. So I chose to re-engage and “re-sign” for 12 months. It was supposed to be quite easy, almost as easy as a phone call.

But it turns out that our current operator is Numericable and when you re-engage, it is with SFR (since Numericable is absorbed by SFR). While things are supposed to be very simple, in fact you must change your Internet box, take an appointment with a technician, and so on. Psychologists are familiar with this process: when you put your finger in the gear (in this case you start to say yes to the salesman who harasses you on the phone), it’s difficult to go back. That’s how I made an appointment with a technician, who didn’t show up (the salesman had unsurprisingly promised the earth). So I decided to withdraw as the law now enables costumers, to cancel my order. But not surprisingly it is much more complicated than expected: I have to wait until I receive the material, then send it back (surely by registered letter to be able to prove in case of litigation that I did the steps well).

To sum up, now I am with a more expensive contract (since we are at the end of the negotiated prices), but with partially canceled procedures, awaiting to return material with registered letter.

I have the feeling of having made a lot of effort lately in vain!