The Process of Getting Long Term Visa for France

Our hope from the start of our plan for our trip was to be able to stay in continental Europe for the majority of our 9 month stay in Europe. I'm writing this in case anyone is interested in the specifics of what we did for our process.

Schengen Zone

Because of the way the standard European visa rules work for Americans, we could only guarantee staying in Europe for 90 days and then have to leave for 90 days before we returned.  This meant we would have to leave any area in blue in the map below.

We came up with all sorts of machinations for doing this.  90 days in the EU, 90 days in the UK/Bulgaria/Croatia/Cyprus/Ireland/Morocco and then 90 days back. But as my father-in-law once said,

"That's no way to live!"

So we started our process of getting a long term resident visa in France. Searching the internet, there are quite a few people who complain about getting their long term visa. The goal was to be able to be able to enter and leave Europe for the entire 9 month period without concern of violation of the rules. Since we landed in France, have family there and our business connections are there, it seemed like a French visa was the right one to get.

Getting the Visa

While the visas are "examined by the French Consulate in Washington DC", everything for the visa gets processed through a private company, VFSGlobal. Looking over the rules in the official French Visa Website our option was to apply for "Professional purpose" - as my goal was to do business development for my company during my time there. Interestingly, it was totally unclear which of the versions of this category applied to us. Ultimately, the category I selected did not matter, because when we actually applied, the employee at VFSGlobal had me adjust the type to be the most appropriate. As a result, I don't recall which version of the visa we actually got.

While the information on the website is all there, it is not at all clear to follow. For others trying to go through the process, I would like to provide a list of a number of things which might help them in their own process. So in no particular order, here are some things that we discovered:

1. Applications: You need one application filled out and printed out per person in your family.
2. Appointments: You need one appointment for every 4 people in your family.  We broke it up into 3+3 and they took us all at the same time even though our appointments were 2 hours apart.
3. Return Envelope Type: Call your local VFS office about return envelopes and ask specifically what is needed or if you can purchase at the VFS office. The website said they required a USPS Express Mail envelope, but the office said they only accepted UPS overnight envelopes - but VFS sold us the UPS envelopes onsite.
4. Return Envelope Number: You need one UPS envelope per person.
5. Paperwork: Include all paperwork that you can and everything that is required.  
• Work letters
• Reasons for wanting a long term visa
• Birth Certificates
• Investment/Financial Documents
• Bank Statements
6. Kids: Children 12 and over need to be fingerprinted.  The will do this for you. They said you didn't need to bring in the younger children to the office, but I would regardless.
7. VFS Office: The SF and LA offices are cramped and there are a huge number of people who are doing the same thing you are.  Bring a book and entertainment for the youngsters.
8. Cost: We paid about $160 per person, all said and told. About $100 for the visa application, $30 for the UPS envelopes and labels, and maybe another $30 for fingerprinting.
9. Marriage Certificate: They might ask for a "family book", but your marriage certificate works as we don't have family books in the US.
10. Lodging: Evidence of a place to stay for 3 months - we found a place through Booking.com that was cancel-able/refundable. We had to make three reservations for a month each. It felt sleazy, but we didn't want to lock in a long term place before we had the visa.
11. Services at VFS: The visa company had a computer that we were able to use in the waiting area and let us print things as needed.  It cost $1 per print, but it was nice to have this available.

While many people say they will reject your application if you don't have everything, this was not our case. They asked us to send both evidence of lodging and our marriage certificate - apparently our living will which identified us as married was not enough.

They tell you they will not respond to emails, so it does feel like a black box. They did confirm our email when we sent them scans of our marriage certificate and lodging information. All in all, including sending the new requests for information to us, it took us about 2 weeks.  The hardest part was the waiting and in the end we received our 9 month visa. I would also really have to recommend the personnel at VFS - they know it is a opaque process and really went out of their way to help us.