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Hi we are considering a change of lifestyle for a couploe of years, and looking at up and moving to france, i just found this site and looks helpful. We only have australian passports (yet to use them). we been looking for info on how to go about it all, i would need to find a job, and a place to live for family (wife & 3 young kids). From what i have found out its a complex process getting a long stay visa,as you have to have booked plane tickets etc, before you find out if can get Visa to get there!?. The other possibility lies in that my Father in law is a pom, but been in oz for 35 years, but still has family living in England, so that might be a easier way in?
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Its looking like that might be the easier way, i think its easier to move to uk and visit France and the rest of europe, but i would be looking for a job in vehicle restorations, as thats what i do here at the moment, just dosent sound as exciting moving to uk as we were after the whole culture/lifestyle experience of moving to a foreign country. I ve been trying to find car restoration businesses in france on the internet but cant seem to find any, suerly with all the wealth in the south of france there must be some collectors of classic cars? and someone to restore them? Any body know of any?

thanks.
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Wealth in the south of France! You must be joking. The local population in this part of the Dordogne are farmers who drive 10 year old vans and 30 year old tractors.

France is not the only country where it is difficult to come and live in, you should see the rules for us Europeans wanting to move to Australia.

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The French long stay visa to which you refer is primarily aimed at well off non EU retirees and prohibits employment.

As Ozies your visits to France are limited to ninety days and any form of employment including running your own business is strictly prohibited.

Obtaining a work visa is very difficult unless you are being transferred by an existing employer to their French operations, or you have specialist skills that a French employer must demonstrate it has been unable to find a suitable qualified EU citizen to undertake.

Your only realistic option is for your wife to apply for for UK citizenship.

As Bob T said, Australian immigration restrictions on Europeans who want to move to Oz are incredibly tough and these things tend to work on a reciprocol basis.

Whilst collecting classic cars seem to be a very popular thing in the UK, I have not come across it in France, where culturally the French seem to have a negative attitude to old cars and houses, as new ones are cheaper to run!
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[quote user="old car nut"]Hi we are considering a change of lifestyle for a couploe of years, and looking at up and moving to france, i just found this site and looks helpful. We only have australian passports (yet to use them). we been looking for info on how to go about it all, i would need to find a job, and a place to live for family (wife & 3 young kids). From what i have found out its a complex process getting a long stay visa,as you have to have booked plane tickets etc, before you find out if can get Visa to get there!?. The other possibility lies in that my Father in law is a pom, but been in oz for 35 years, but still has family living in England, so that might be a easier way in?[/quote]

Methinks you are looking through rose-tinted spectacles [binoculars]? and need to do a great deal more research before you even think of coming here with 3 children [kids, as you put it]. Do you speak French? Does your wife? Would you know how to fill in a French tax return? Do you understand the workings of buying a house, signing a lease? It's not easy without sufficient preparation and hard work. We moved from South Africa to Australia and found that a tremendous culture shock [no further comment] and it was with a common language. Maybe you should think again?

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If your other half's dad is a pom then she is eligible for a UK passport.

I guess you would still need a visa but I would assume it would be based on your wife's nationality.

You would still find a culture shock going from Oz to the UK. I did it the other way round and found it a shock. And then moved to France which was another culture shock and now in the States and again that's another culture shock.
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Hi thanks all for your input, at no stage have we assumed this would be a walk in the park experience, yes my wife speaks french, and yes we are still reasearching lots of stuff, but finding the info we want is not easy, hence i joined this forum and thank you all again for your input. On a even longer shot, my mother is dutch, but immigrated when she was a child, but my grand parents have been back a couple of times, and we had relatives who live there come to OZ for a holiday late last year, im trying to contact them at the moment, Whats your views of the Netherlands?

Thanks
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I like the Netherlands. We have holidayed there quite a few times, have friends, both dutch and irish there. Would I like to live there. Yes, I could live there. If I could live in France, then I reckon that I can live anywhere. Same thing though getting in, the easiest is with an EU member state passport.
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I lived in the Netherlands for a couple of years - it was fine, but France is a lot better - weatherwise, space-wise (NL is a small country with a large population - houses tend to be small, with minute gardens), and the language is really difficult - even our Dutch friends admit that it is tricky to learn.  We were in Den Haag which has a huge international population so it wasn't too hard to find a niche - from what I heard out in the countryside it would be very difficult without speaking dutch (hmmmmm, remind you of anywhere???)

But any move to a different country is going to have its difficulties, all part of the fun!

You don't say how old your children are - the older they are, the harder they will find learning a new language and fitting in - my daughter was 8 and she found it quite hard, and only now, nearly 3 years later does she really feel settled, my son who was 6 has become a small french person (even down to al-fresco widdling [:$]) and I have to correct his English ....

I think your biggest problem (if you can overcome the visa/passport problem) will be finding a job - without fluent French it will be hard - OH is working in Luxembourg at the moment because, even though his French is perfectly OK for daily life and social chit-chat, and he does some esoteric IT stuff which is in demand, his language skills still aren't at a high enough level to get through a job interview with a French company working in a completely Francophone environment - we're working on that one!

Good luck with whatever you do!

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[quote user="Mr Coeur de Lion"]If your other half's dad is a pom then she is eligible for a UK passport. .[/quote]

 

Probably.

 

It is not in tablets of stone and under some circumstances having a UK parent does not allow you to have UK citizenship

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My kids are 10, 9 and 6, which is why we keen to do something next year, before it too much disturbance to schooling, it looking like we go for the wife uk passport option, and see how we go from there. But as i said above we do have english speaking relatives in NL and wife cousin, Auntie and grandmother all still live in UK. Exploring our options.

Whaat problems are there coming to OZ as some on this forum have mentioned???
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You will need to get advice as to the paperwork required to enable you to work in the EU, once your wife has obtained her UK passport. Not sure that members of this forum will be able to advise, as mostly retiree Brits.

As previously mentioned, Europe currently has serious unemployment and economic problems with forecasts predicting a further slowdown in the eurozone , which is probably difficult to imagine from booming Oz. Therefore, not sure how easy it will be for you to find work with your specialist skills, especially as you are only planning to come to Europe for a year or two.

Your best bet for jobs, would undoubtedly be London as there is a massive Oz community in that City, and you would have that expat network to tap into for job hunting.

Maybe base yourself in the UK and use that as a springboard to travel around Europe, which is what most Ozzies appear to do. (Reason being is that there is a reciprocol holiday work visa programme between the UK and OZ, that enable each others citizens under the age of thirty to work for up to two years in each other countries. Also most Ozzies have UK ancestry and an entitlement to a UK passport.)
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@ Andy UK citizenship is only granted to offspring on the paternal side, so if it's the mother who is from the UK, her offspring are not entitled. It's only if the father is from the UK. How stupid is that?

@ old car nut We have the same issues getting into Australia as you do getting into Europe. They make it so difficult. I think as one country makes it harder, the recipient country does likewise.
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[quote user="Mr Coeur de Lion"]@ Andy UK citizenship is only granted to offspring on the paternal side, so if it's the mother who is from the UK, her offspring are not entitled. It's only if the father is from the UK. How stupid is that? @ old car nut We have the same issues getting into Australia as you do getting into Europe. They make it so difficult. I think as one country makes it harder, the recipient country does likewise.[/quote]

Good to see that "patria potestas" still survives.[:-))]

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During our interview in Pretoria at the Australian Embassy which took place on 02/09/1985, the accumulated points system already being in place at that time, the very aggressive and unfriendly official who interviewed us [grilled us]? and who was filling in points in the margin, suddenly looked at OH and noted "Oh I see you will have a birthday in three days time". When the answer was in the affirmative, he crossed through 12 points he had already marked and re-entered 10!!!

We did subsequently qualify with a sufficient number of points and emigrate to Oz, but - and this is entirely our own personal point of view - wished we had not. Please do not ask why.

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Evianers, that was twenty six years ago and I don't think you would recognise Australia today with its booming economy.

Because of this, at the moment immigration to Australia for young English speaking individuals with the right job skills is the easiest it has been since the sixties, the result of which more Brits are currently immigrating to Oz than any other country. (I say English speaking as they now have an English test for which you are given a lot of extra points if you pass!)
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[quote user="Sprogster"]Evianers, that was twenty six years ago and I don't think you would recognise Australia today with its booming economy. [/quote]

Point taken and of course you are quite correct.

Only thing is, it does not alter the extremely unpleasant experience, one which we vividly remember to this day.

Added to which, we had to return to finish a contract three years ago, so we are more or less up to scratch with what is going on there.

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Strange you saying that, as we hadn't been in France long when I said that if I could live in France I reckoned that I could live anywhere, including Australia!

Not true really, the creepy crawlies there would have had me in a mad house, I don't think I could have coped with that. Anything any human threw at me, well, that would not have been a problem after France in the early 80's.

You live in a 'nice' and expensive bit of France, in the Alps there is Evian, Annecy and Aix les Bains, where life, as long as you have money, is good, as they are all expensive places to live.

I used to go to Geneva quite a lot and in winter, it used to be sooooo cold, still a nice hot chocolate in Arthurs on the rive gauche of the Rhone would warm me up![:D]

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