THE STATE OF LIFE FOR FOREIGNERS IN FRANCE? Is this your experience too? This post below is part of an email sent to me from great friends of mine who are currently living in Australia, but have lived in France in the past and were hoping to move back here in a few years time. The level of xenophobia is worrying, particularly where it concerns the kids. Ninas teacher claimed in her English lesson that the use of contractions in English was due to the fact that the English are lazy. I let this pass, but perhaps I was wrong to. Has anyone else experience this worrying increase in hostility? ************************************************************************************** I have a network of people in France who are all business owners and retired bankers and accountants and the like and several of them got back to me this morning with a response to a group query that I sent out. Right now I feel like I should be downing a glass (or 3!) of red wine instead of sipping a coffee after reading their answers. Almost every one of them said that if they werent so firmly entrenched in France with businesses or children in school or a spouse that was French who would never consider leaving, theyd be out of there. And this time it isnt just the 63% and climbing tax rate -- its the shift in atmosphere since the Far Right parties were elected in the last election. Hollande is ruining France economically -- just laying waste to it, frankly -- but the Far Right parties in these incidents below seem to be so anti-immigration that theyve begun to actively target English speaking people who have been living in France for decades. And these are all lovely people who had enrolled their children in school, joined in with the village activities, participated in the local events, and contributed rather a lot to the local economies. One woman told me that this is even happening on a smaller scale in some of the suburbs of Paris, but it isnt as strongly felt in Paris because they rely on foreigners to keep their tourism economy afloat! Outside of Paris -- rather different. Our friends M & S down in the Midi-Pyrenees had alluded to their teenage daughters being bullied in the local school because they werent French and they were even bullied by the teachers until S marched into the school and had an eyeball to eyeball with the principal. But I didnt know until I sent out the question to several friends who live in other parts of France that its turning into a significant issue. You may not have experienced any of these issues with your girls since they are actually French citizens and your ex, for good or bad, is French. J & J are near Limoges and they have just removed their children from the local school and are amidst moving back to Scotland after their children were beaten up by a gang of kids who were screaming at the Anglais to go back where they belong. And the teacher stood on the schoolyard with her arms crossed and watched! The leader of this mini-gang was the son of the local Mayor, the local head of the Communist party, and J said he really aligns himself with the current nationalistic tendencies of France for the French. They never expected any of that sort of thing, but another British couple in the village raised an eyebrow when they said they planned to send their children to the village school and told them that perhaps they should consider a good boarding school in England so theyd be safe. J didnt catch on at the time to how large an issue this might be. J said that a nicely dressed couple actually shouted at her in the pharmacy when she was first in line and the pharmacist was assisting her when the French couple screamed at her and told her she should know her place and let REAL French people be served first. When J began to protest, no one at all in the pharmacy came to her defense. And the French couple waited on the footpath after the fact and actually shouted at her again. J said she was shaking like a leaf as this elegant woman stood there in her pearls and silk scarf, screaming at her, and she said, We dont put up with Les Romas (the Roma gypsies), so why should we have to put up with Anglais in our midst! What??? The French are comparing the decades long stream of British speaking settlers, people who have boosted their wobbly economy, with an invasion by the Romany gypsies??? One man who answered lives down in Provence -- a true tourist mecca, for heavens sake -- and he said his car had been repeatedly vandalised by Neo-Nazi teenagers and 20-somethings since the elections a few months ago. NONE of his neighbours are having this issue because they are all French. He has lived there for over a decade and he thought he knew the way things worked since he speaks fluent French, his late wife was French, he doesnt hang out with all of the Brits down there and hes a tax-paying law-abiding full time resident. But when he called the police, they shrugged -- seriously shrugged! T has just retired in the UK, is an ex-policeman, and is in the process of moving down full time to France and hes going to do it anyway because hes in a British enclave in Gers where theyll look after each other. Theyve actually all had to put up fences, install security alarms, and get large dogs because of the shift in the village attitudes to having the British living amongst them. Several of these people were really heartbroken about it because their neighbours, who had formerly behaved quite pleasantly, have used this xenophobic shift in the political climate to suddenly begin a campaign of harassment. But some of these sturdy 70-80 something year old men and their wives have been there for over 20 years and they are simply not going to put up with it! Hence the organisation of their own version of a neighbourhood watch. Hell Polly, thats a fortress mentality and my own husband and I dont relate to that either. 3 more stories in my email box this morning... 1. A is a Danish woman who has lived in a village outside of Paris for many years. She has just given up and moved back to Copenhagen because shes been so badly harassed since the last elections. This is a direct cut and paste quote from her -- Some of the behavior has been downright primitive. I am licking my wounds up here in the North and seriously thinking about never returning to France, even though the police - yes, the police - in my zip code told me that the easiest thing would be to find another place to live in another part of town Then in a second note she said, Yes, I have been shocked as well, so it took me a while to actually confront this ... I still try to understand why this is? This change. I have been living in France since 2007, and then about a year ago, everything just changed, and then you are hated, due to your nationality. The last month for me in France was beyond horrible, almost felt like a Jew in Berlin in 1936, or at least as wanted. 2. Another man and his family were planning to run a bed and breakfast business in the Dordogne that catered to the British tourists. They purchased a very grand but very run down 3 story house surrounded by a couple of acres and it had a stone wall around the entire border that was crumbling in places. An old woman in the village told them that the walls were damaged during WWII and people had only sporadically lived there ever since. The man said that there was a simply beautiful well on the property with a stone surround and some sculptured features, too. He hired some stone masons to repair the walls around the property and set about the renovations. Almost immediately, he began to get complaints from the farmers all around him stating that they had the right to come and use the water in his well. And they also had the right to pick ALL of the apples and pears from his orchard because it was historical. When the vandalism started up because he flatly refused to agree to that, he found all three of his dogs poisoned and very carefully laid out on his front doorstep. But when he went to the gendarmes and the Marie, they told him he needed to be more flexible so he could fit in and they refused to do a thing about all of the threats and damage and frightening actions being taken against a very peaceful family. The man who was telling this story said that he was greatly relieved that his 2 daughters were at uni in the UK since one of the village men commented on their attractiveness and how doable they would be. I seriously gasped out loud as I read all of this! And yes, the house is back on the market, they have returned to the middle of England, and they may have lost a huge chunk of their life savings that they will never get back. 3. Another thoughtful response just now from an older man in the Dordogne... We have had a month in Spain during the last winter and are going back for 10 weeks over this coming winter and we are thinking that we want every winter somewhere warmer and perhaps that living where we are and in France in general, is actually hard work. Very little changes here, the Dordogne may have all the wonderful chateaux, the weather in the summer, the tourists but that is very short lived, the Departement remains one of the poorest in Metro France and the locals are, in general, stuck in a no-progress, rather stagnant, way of life which I see up-close working on the various commissions through the Conseil. The main reason, other than illness and incapacity, that the retired ones seem to be leaving France in other places though is that the French government has decided, after theyve lived there and purchased houses there and given up their lives in other countries, to tax their pensions quite heavily. Also, the interest on their Term Deposits, which is under the taxable threshold in England and Australia, is now ALSO being taxed in France. They had planned on that interest being part of their income stream to live on, Polly -- just the way we would have done. Theyve already paid their taxes back home in the UK or Australia or South Africa and the reciprocal tax agreement with the EU states that you are not meant to be double taxed. But the French government is just doing it anyway. One woman said to me, And just TRY and get it back from the French treasury after the fact! According to 3 separate people who wrote to me, theyll actually take the money right out of your bank account with no notice! A South African woman told me last night that since her husbands pension was from a private pension and not a government pension from South Africa, they were going to tax it at MORE than 50%. They are staggered and plan to move back rather soon. Late in the afternoon I got a charming and informative note from a fellow Australian expat who has completely given up and moved back here because of the difficulties with pensions and so forth. He actually retired from Centrelink, the Australian government branch that administers pensions and employment rights, so he certainly knows what he is talking about. After that, I got more notes from Aussies who were scraping by on the smallest amounts because of the pension issues and the fact that Australia and France do NOT have reciprocal rights for their social networks. This one man, A, also used to be a public servant in Australia. But he said it is particularly dire with the medical issues since Australia and France are not linked. In fact, France is one of the few major EU countries that has not signed a reciprocal treaty with Australia. He and his wife are too old to be employed now and hes wishing they had moved to Italy where the two countries are linked by a reciprocal treaty that doesnt tax their pensions and also gives them reciprocal health care. If you personally came to Australia on holiday with a medical emergency and you were French, you would not be entitled to medical care in the hospital. But if you were Italian or from the Netherlands or any number of other places, you would be entitled to that free treatment. Heres a list of countries that we are reciprocal with. Its good to know before you travel because it makes you better informed about what travel insurance cover you may or may not need. Germany, Denmark, Spain, and Portugal are NOT on this list either. humanservices.gov.au/customer/enablers/medicare/reciprocal-health-care-agreements/health-care-for-visitors-to-australia There were so many other stories in that small flurry of emails I got back. But Ive picked some of the highlights to share. I was frankly bowled over by the stories of harassment and unpleasantness, but for some reason the financial stuff didnt surprise me. It made me sad, but it didnt shock me too badly. The levels of anger and rudeness and outright violence against people who just happen to NOT have been born in France is another thing altogether though. M and I dont really need that level of unpleasantness in our lives! And to be truthful, I dont want to be made to feel like I have leprosy since I am not French or feel unsafe in my own home. What about Normandy? None of the friends who wrote to me live in Normandy. Theyre all in Brittany (where there are apparently many quite depressed people from the UK living in damp cottages with no way to sell up and go back) or Paris or the Cruese or Dordogne or Provence or outside Strausbourg or even a few stories from our old stomping grounds in the Midi-Pyrenees. That is a BIG stretch of France and they all had some shocking story to share with me. Every single one of them who replied yesterday said a variation of the same thing -- DONT do it -- stay in Australia. (groan!) Guess well just plug away on this house for the next few years and have another appraisal of the situation in 3-5 years. I have always looked at it as the Five Year Plan, but I certainly hadnt expected France to just get knocked out of the running! I find Australia to be abysmally boring and its hard to NOT be depressed by living here in America-Lite with the bushfires, heat, and deadly snakes. It seems to be a growing trend all over Europe actually -- this pulling in and hunkering down. And its a very recent trend, too! I do know that for the last decade, the populations of various countries have been getting angrier and angrier as they were overrun with people from other countries. And overt racism is on the rise everywhere -- unfortunately even here in Australia. I find that sickening because I dont personally judge anyone else by the colour of their skin or what language they speak, so I cant relate to racism. The newly elected Far Right politicians are playing with peoples minds and ramping up that fear of -- shock, gasp -- outsiders who will ruin their way of life. And in places like formerly peaceful Scandinavia, all of a sudden there is a re-emergence of almost Nazi-like tendencies and talk of racial purity being infringed on. Do we want to live in a place like that? No! This has gotten quite long -- sorry about that. Im just venting my disappointment and sharing the latest news with you.
Posted on: Wed, 16 Jul 2014 12:06:31 +0000