I’ve been in love with France ever since my first trip to Bordeaux in 2010. Friends I had met back in Thailand showed me around the area and introduced me to French culture. It was my first time in France and I loved the food, the wine, and the people. But that love became an obsession when, after Bordeaux, I stepped out of the Paris metro and onto the Champs Élysées. The lights, the energy, the mystique! There was magic in the air. I felt like I had known the city my entire life and I was simply returning home. Since then, Paris has had a firm grip on my heart. Over the years, I spent countless visits exploring France and Paris in particular. I’ve run tours in the city and I spent a few months living there in 2019. Last August, after yet another sojourn, I thought to myself, “What if I moved back?” I was growing a bit tired of the NYC dating scene, the rising cost of living, and felt like creatively, I was in a rut. With AI coming for creators like me and the industry changing, I was a little lost on what, career wise, would come next. In short, I needed a change. And Paris seemed like the best place to go. It’s cheaper than NYC, I had friends there already, I’ve always wanted to learn French, it would make a great base for exploring Europe, and I could start writing my next book there. There’s nothing like a change in scenery to get the creativity flowing! But the question remained: how do you move to France? After all, they don’t have a digital nomad visa, and you’re limited to three months if you visit on your regular Schengen tourist visa. Well, it turns out that it’s not actually that hard. (And while I can only speak for Americans, I suspect the criteria are similar for Canadians, Aussies, Kiwis, and other “developed” nations.) If you want to move to France, you have four main options: Student visa Long-term visitor visa Entrepreneur Talent visa The student visa is pretty straightforward. You need to enroll in a full-time university program and show you have enough funds to support yourself (around 600 Euros per month). A friend is currently there on this visa, as she is doing a nine-month intensive French program to become fluent. You still have to apply for the visa, but if you’re enrolled in an accredited school, you’ll likely get approved. Another benefit to this visa is that you can work part-time on it! But this visa is contingent on being in school, so if you leave or quit, it’s voided. However, when you are done, you can change this to a “job seekers” visa, which can give you up to another six months in France (or more depending on how long your program was). I thought about applying for the entrepreneur visa, but the application process is pretty complex and can take months to be approved. You have to set up your business in France — and that is a lot of paperwork. You have to show that your business makes money, has clients (at least one of them being French), and can support you full time (you have to make at least the French minimum wage). They will scrutinize your assets and financials a lot and you’ll need to register your business in France and pay French taxes. Additionally, France offers a talent visa. If you’re an expert in your field (with verifiable accreditations and accolades), this could be a good visa to apply for, especially if you plan to stay in France for a long time and want to physically work there. But, again, you’ll need to have some source of income and plan to do physical business in the France. If you’re not an academic but someone in the arts, you have to show how you are going to add to the “culture of France” in some way. While I would meet the requirements for both those visas, the process for either would have been time consuming, and, since I’m not sure France is going to be my forever home, I decided not to go through that process. So I went with the long-term visitor visa, officially called VLS-TS visiteur. This allows me to stay up to 12 months in France and is renewable in the country. It does come with a lot of restrictions, however: I can’t physically work here and I am not allowed into the French social welfare system. It’s also the visa a lot of Americans (and most retirees) are coming in on. If you have passive income or retirement savings and just want to live in France, this is a good option for you. It allows you to set up a bank account and it can be renewed pretty much indefinitely. The paperwork for this visa (which I’ll get into in a bit) essentially comes down to whether or not you can support yourself. French authorities want to make sure you won’t be a burden on the system. My biggest question centered around whether or not I could “work” on this visa. A lot creators and digital nomads are applying for — and getting — this visa. But remember: you aren’t allowed to work on this visa so how are you going to work if you can’t work? So let me take a moment to talk about “work” from a legal standpoint. As I mentioned, there’s no digital nomad visa that allows you to work in France. And the French tax office said last July that remote work is considered taxable — but there are no official laws that. That’s just their opinion and there’s been no progress in codifying that opinion. In fact, my visa doesn’t even come with a tax number, so it’s impossible for me to be taxed. I couldn’t pay taxes even if I wanted to. The visa office
