Ever since Theresa May called us citizens of nowhere I have
tried to understand what she was trying to achieve. It was clearly intended to
destabilise at an already difficult time. I guess the Windrush debacle has
unpacked this for us nicely.
I must be the archetypal citizen of nowhere. I was born in Australia and spent many
childhood years in Asia, where my father was posted for work during the dying
days of the colonial era. I returned to a
snowy Britain during one of the coldest winters, 1963. Later in my career, I worked in southern
Africa. Living outside the United
Kingdom is second nature and part of my identity but it doesn’t disqualify me as a British
citizen. So I was disappointed but not
surprised when in June 2016 the vote went the wrong way. I say the wrong way because it has
already had damaging effect on so many people, even the citizens of somewhere.
Couples split and families don’t talk. Savings dwindle and businesses struggle.
Soft power evaporates and reputations tarnish. My country of
nationality is losing credibility and contributing to the instability that
certain interests are trying to profit from.
I moved to France in 2016 so I don’t quite have the required
5 years clocked up for permanent residency.
However, in that time the £ has lost almost 20% of its value, and it’s
still falling. Thank you Brexiteers for
bestowing us this gift. We already have
our private pensions at risk. But the
Brexiteers’ turn to suffer will soon be here as project fear turns into project
reality. I digress.
France has no compulsory registration process for new
arrivals, unlike Spain and Portugal. I
am not one to ignore official advice so my partner and I decided to apply for
the Carte de Séjour. It has never been necessary to do this but to disregard
Ministry and Embassy advice seemed churlish. So we dutifully waited the hour to be seen at
our local prefecture one hot August morning, bulging files in hands. I had the foresight to book successive
appointments so that I could translate for my OH. Unfortunately, we were called in at the same
time, by two different officials. I
explained the problem and this is when the shouting started.
“You cannot expect us
to wait just because your husband does not speak French. Why is he here anyway if he doesn’t speak
French?”
So I go to one cubicle with Madame Reasonable and OH goes to
the other with Madame Shout. The shouting
gets worse as it becomes apparent that no communication effort is being made
other than to shout loudly and hysterically, like a comic colonial from “It ain’t
half hot mum”. I end up translating everything
Madame Shout is bellowing in real time, just like an app:
“She wants to know
when you arrived”
“She wants evidence of
your French income”
“She wants to know why
you came to France in the first place”
“She wants to know why
you have presented her with a baptism certificate”
This last one was particularly explosive;
“How dare you present
me with this religious document. Don’t you know that France is un état laïc?”
This last statement was delivered with all the venom of a
viper on acid. I’m so glad I paid
attention in French class.
After a good half hour of the shouting relay Madame
Reasonable gets fed up with this that she releases me to intervene next
door. I walk in, answer all Madame Shout’s
questions and pull out the relevant documents to prove income, both French and
UK side. As a parting shot Madame Shout
accuses OH of not filing tax declarations appropriately. I muse briefly on the how many times she must
have said those words before pushing the said proof under her nose.
So what happened next?
A letter arrives in the post. Clearly, my partner’s motives are not
believed. The letter asks for all
explanatory documentation concerning our AutoEntrepreneur businesses and five
years’ worth of bank statements. These
are downloadable but there is a two-page pdf document for each month. This is
over seventy pages of A4, just for the bank stuff. We have to supply all the household bills for
the same period (water, internet) so that will be another 120 pages of A4 at
least.
So we citizens of nowhere are busily murdering trees and spending
small fortunes on document translations just to get something that we were told
would be easily sorted out with a reciprocal agreement on citizens’
rights. We wonder how those who might be
older, perhaps frail, perhaps not so tech savvy would cope. We conclude that they wouldn’t.
The prefecture letter also demands proof of identity as the
passport, in my partner’s case, is not enough.
There is a small name difference, accounted for by the highly offensive
baptism certificate. I phone the British
Embassy in Paris for advice and help.
The woman I speak to gives neither.
I email the British Embassy in Paris demanding they do something to
break the impasse on my partner’s identity checks. They finally send me “une note explicative” that stresses the
supremacy of the passport when establishing identity. Theresa was right. We really are citizens of
nowhere.
