Not Smart

A few months ago we saw a lawyer to advice us on how to get married. This week she finally emailed us back... I guess that's what you can expect when you use legal aid.

It takes a flow chart to consider our future... Ultimately our first choice is to settle in London, when we get married if Sylvain gains employment there, this will (according to our information and the freedom of movement EU law, this is possible) allow me to work in the UK too.

From now until then our plans are rather bizarre... I'm not sure anything would have changed if we knew then what we know now but we are headed back to the states for something like 8 months... Why? Well, the only really solid reason is that Sylvain's internship ends at the end of the month, thus he has the choice of trying to get a job or trying to get an internship in the states: a job would keep us here for 2 or 3 years and an internship in the states although potentially really difficult to get, will give his resume more diversity and a move back to the states will allow me to try and work in my field even if that means being a substitute teacher.

We did a fairly decent job on the research end of getting married in France, the carte de sejours and the rest, when we looked into getting married in the states, we for some reason neglected to look into the greencard issue and only looked into the actual getting married... So, of course, it seemed cheaper and easier to get married in the states... From our current understanding of the situation, a carte de sejour and getting married in France might end up costing about 500 euros- according to a friend who just went through the process this year, and as far as we can tell if I enter with a longterm visa because we plan to marry I can get my papers in within a few months (although or American friend who just got married is still waiting so who knows), or at least have a titre de sejour which should allow me to work while I wait for my carte de sejour... France is notoriously finicky about these things, often one clerk will say one thing and another something entirely different regarding paperwork, and filing processes, so this is in part why getting married in France seemed like the headache of all headaches.

However after consulting the greencard process, we're looking at spending 4-6k dollars and Sylvain wouldn't be able to work during the filing process which our estimate gleaned from the internet would be 7-12 months... Since we want to live in Europe, we just figured, why bother with the greencard, its expensive and the economy is awful.

So I'm not sure any of our grand plans would have changed in the long run, but it feels a little stupid to have neglected to research the greencard more extensively in a post 9-11 America...