Carte de sejour???????????????

[Draig]

Thanks for the reply Pucette

Thing is it's a term that hasn't moved on with history. Language evolves and I believe (and hope) that Brittanique will become the common term, but change takes time, after all the term "Great Britain" has only been in official use since 1603

An imperfect analogy, (the best I could come up with at the moment I'm afraid), but if British people used 'Parisians' as a general term for all French people then would the French people accept that it has a different meaning when the British use the term and be comfortable with it? or would they want to correct its' misuse? The latter I suspect.

[Millymollymandy]

Mistral - two questions:-

1. If you are French, then why would you have had a CdS, and not a regular ID card? I thought the CdS were just for foreigners.

2. I'm not French, but my husband told me that one can apply for a regular French ID card after so many years of residency. I don't know anything about this myself, so I assume he read it or was told it by someone. But you say that you have to be French. So I'm wondering. Where would I find the information about it?

[Mistral]

MMM, sorry I wasn't very clear, I'll try to be clearer this time.

1. You're quite right, as a French national, I don't need a CdS. It's just that I only became French a couple of months ago, until then I was a foreigner so I had a CdS.  My CdS is technically no longer valid and apparently I'm supposed to give it up at the mairie (they didn't seem at all interested) But I'm hanging on to it until I have the French ID. Wierd thing (well I found it so, I haven't got any previous experience on getting a new nationality) but you have to have an official French birth certificate, I mean not your UK one translated into French but a real French one. To get it I have to prove I am French (send photocopies of the whole file) I was told very clearly that without a French birth certificate they couldn't start processing my ID application.

2. This is a quote from the vosdroits site "Vous pouvez vous faire établir une carte d'identité si vous êtes de nationalité française." The whole of the text is here. It's probably the best site to get information on any French administrative question. http://vosdroits.service-public.fr/particuliers/F1341.html?n=Papiers&l=N21&n=Carte%20nationale%20d%26%23x27%3Bidentit%E9&l=N358

Maybe what your husband was told is that with so many years of residency, you can become French and therefore have an ID. A lot of French people think it happens automatically. For example  people know that by marrying a French person you can get French nationality after a certain time but they don't realise that you still have to ask for it. A lot of people just assumed that I would be sent the ID in the post without doing anything about it (I wish  )

[Millymollymandy]

Thanks Mistral, it's a lot clearer!

I also realise, looking at that site, that he must have been talking about the Carte de Resident. Think I'll just stick with my CdS with the old address!

[Teamedup]

My friend is married to a french man and she had the devil's own job getting her ID card. Her parents, german, born in the 1920's in Germany, only one of them's birth place is no longer part of Germany. It was the filliale thing that was  hard to sort out.  No matter what papers she furnished, it didn't seem to be quite right. She got there in the end, but she couldn't continue without this information. And she had to have it for her french birth certificate.

[Lassie]

Having had a carte de sejour whilst in department 34, I  attempted to get the addresss changed when I moved to Paris.  We have been told definitively ( and handed a copy of the recent law) by the Perfecture in Paris that they are no longer issued.  Though my CDS bears the wrong address, it is useful as ID so hang on to yours if you have one.  That plus your EDF bill sorts life out until Mr.over the Blanket produces British ID cards.

[I1]

I still have to get round to applying for my CDS. I got a new passport earlier this year (in France) and I don’t carry it around the whole time, and its already falling apart.

Basically I just want some sort of ID to I don’t have to carry round this passport and if I’m ever asked for ID then 50/50 chance I’ll fail the test (at the moment).

[Millymollymandy]

It is all rather stupid that one MUST carry ID but for those without a CdS the only thing they have is a passport. We lived near the border of Switzerland for many years so I am used to having to carry both passport and CdS in my handbag. That's fine for me as my passport is not deteriorating, but my husband's (shoved in a wallet) is not in such a good state.

I still carry my passport with me. I suppose I could actually put it away somewhere now!

Just to go off topic slightly, when you renew your UK passport, who do you get to do the verification of true likeness of your photo? There is only one person in the universe who can do mine (my mother's accountant in England). I never live anywhere long enough that I have got to know a French national for the appropriate 5 years or whatever it is, let alone knowing anyone who is a lawyer, accountant, pompier or whatever. And then they'd have to write (in tiny writing) a load of blurb on the back of the photo IN ENGLISH!

What do you do?

[I1]

I renewed mine whilst in France. I discussed how to do this with the British Consulate (as I had no alternative ID). They said they issue a new passport within 5 working days (took a bit longer in practice but it was within 2 weeks).

I was given two options: visit the nearest British High Commission (which was at that time a Honary Consul in my nearest city – though he (and most other more local consuls seems to have disappeared now). He would validate my application and I could keep my passport. I would then need to collect my new passport from him.

Alternatively, provided my appearance has not changed too much since my last passport (which was stretching things), nobody needs to validate your application/new photo. You just send in your old passport with your application and it all goes through OK.

Contact: British Embassy (Passport Office)

18bis rue d’Anjou,

75008 Paris

Tel: 01 44 51 31 00 or

01 44 51 31 02 (*)

Fax: 01 44 51 31 27

http://www.britishembassy.gov.uk/servlet/Front?pagename=OpenMarket/Xcelerate/ShowPage&c=Page&cid=1059132503646

You can download (PDF format) and print-out the application form.