Créteil

It’s a good life here in France. There’s plenty of great food, excellent wine, an incredible health care system, more stinky cheese than you can shake a baguette at and plenty of museums, history and culture for everyone.

Of course it has some negative aspects, too. That’s to be expected. Things like no Arby’s, milk in a freakin’ box, people eating the cross-section of a veal’s head and the occasional strike or car burning.

But, the worst has got to be visa renewal if you’re an immigrant living in the Val-de-Marne départment.

Visa renewal in Paris was a walk in the park. We made an appointment with the préfecture, waited a few minutes, then an employee actually possessing the ability to smile and be friendly processed my paperwork. I was given a date at which time I could pick up the new visa and within 15 minutes or so, the entire process was completed.

This is unheard of in Créteil. Créteil is where the préfecture is located for the Val-de-Marne départment – the capital, basically. This is a city of roughly 90,000 in the southeast suburbs of Paris and the préfecture is handling the visa renewals for an area that spans about 30 different towns in the Val-de-Marne départment.

The first time that we arrived at the préfecture, we saw four surly employees in place to handle the few hundred of us who had visa problems, questions, issues and concerns.

We stood in line for a couple of hours. We were smooshed, pushed, shoved, touched and poked. Something touched my butt. Claustrophobia was setting in. We were informed that it would be another 3 hours or so before we would have the chance to speak to someone. We surrendered and walked out of the building, only to return a week later.

This time, we arrived 2 hours before the préfecture opened its doors. There we were, bright and early at 7am, camped out at the gates. The only time I had ever stood in line for such a ridiculous amount of time without receiving concert tickets or getting a ride on Space Mountain.

Many of us stood in line on a chilly morning, waiting for a man to bring us a little ticket with a number on it so that we could establish our place in line once we were allowed inside. It’s just not enough to follow the rules, to submit the necessary papers at the right time. Sarkozy and the préfecture of Créteil want to be sure that all of us foreigners in Val-de-Marne are appropriately humbled and down on our knees for our visa.

One of the most amusing observations that I made that day was this: why in the hell did they spend the money to make all of those umbrellas for all of us fucking saps to stand under while waiting in line instead of forking out that dough to hire another employee?

Once we got inside, we stood around for 2 hours waiting for our number to be called. The woman who assisted us glanced at my visa and passport before handing us another number and directing us to go upstairs when our number was called, which didn’t happen for another 2 hours.

During those 4 hours, we saw people that had stood in the cold all morning being turned away with an abrupt “no” and little to no explanation. I also learned that day that after living in France and paying taxes for 40 or 50 years, you are still expected to “justify your presence in France” and are treated no differently than if you had just scurried across the border.

We also found out that being white and holding onto an American passport with a blue cover means that those surly employees are likely to be a little more friendly and cooperative. I’ve got to call bullshit here, too. There’s no reason why any of us should be treated any differently from the next person, whether it be based upon the color of skin, or passport. I mean, hell… we all camped out in line together all morning, so why stop there? We’re all there for the same reason.

I suppose that in Créteil, they’ve adopted some of the American ways of doing things. Just because I happen to have an American passport doesn’t mean that I want to be sucked into any American-type assholery.

Suddenly, I have the overwhelming urge to burn a Citroën.