Applying for French Nationality as an American
Applying for French nationality as an American married to a French national was the last step in my administrative journey as an immigrant living in France. This was not like any other process/appointment I’ve had with the préfecture. This is like the mother of all appointments, one I had been slowly preparing for since my arrival in Paris. Here’s a peek into how this process went and my timeline for obtaining nationality.
Table of Contents
Where to even begin
Your first place to start will be your local préfecture, they will have all the information that you will need in order to prepare yourself for the application process. Depending on the path that you will apply by will depend on the type of documents you need to provide. For the purposes of this post, I will be recounting my experience as an American applying for French nationality through marriage. As I live in the Hauts-de-Seine (92) département, I applied through the Nanterre préfecture. I followed the procedure that is listed on their website for what steps to take and in what order.
My situation/timeline
I became eligible to apply for nationality after 4 years of being married to Thomas, on November 17, 2023 (married 2019). I came to France on a VLST-TS VPF (visa long séjour valant titre de séjour – vie privée et familiale) that I applied for through the French consulate as the wife of a French national.
I arrived in France March 4, 2020 and validated my visa within the first 3 months of my arrival. I renewed my titre at the end of the first year and was granted a carte de séjour pluriannuelle (valid till 2023). Near the expiration of my card in February 2023, I applied again for a renewal, but this time I requested the carte de résident de 10 ans due to being married to a French national. I was granted this and picked up my card in May of 2023.
Because the language test I took in preemptive preparation for my 10-year card also allowed me to use it for my nationality application, I spent the rest of 2023 gathering the required paperwork .
I submitted my application in person to the Nanterre préfecture on Thursday December 7, 2023.
I received an email from the commissariat de police of Saint Cloud on January 25, 2024 requesting an interview at my home (apparently they had tried calling at the end of December, but I did not answer and they did not leave a message). We fixed a meeting for Thursday, February 1, 2024.
The brigadier-chef came to my apartment (with an intern in tow) and we had a brief, about 30 minute, interview. I was asked questions about my relationship/marriage with Thomas, how we met, what we liked to do together, my friends, his friends, and why I want to be French. I was asked to show Thomas’ dresser/closet as well as his side of the bathroom (mainly toothbrush and personal toilettries).
I received an email on Friday, May 24, 2024 for an interview with Thomas at the Nanterre préfecture’s Bureau des Naturalisation for Wednesday, July 3, 2024 at 11 AM. I was not asked to bring any extra or supplementary documents (I did bring my binder just in case).
The interview last about 30 minutes in total and we were interviewed by 2 agents. They verified our information in the dossier and asked questions on our life together. They asked about my every-day activities, about things we liked to do together, what our ‘family project” was and how we spent our free time. They asked Thomas to step outside the room and asked me about why I wanted to be French. They also asked me which of the devises I felt most in line with. Once satisfied with my answer, they called Thomas back in. They said I would hear within 12-18 months (which I felt was a bit long for a request by marriage) and that I could check the Official Journal (which I knew was wrong as my name would appear on the electoral list and not the JO as application by marriage) after 6-8 months of this interview.
I started checking the electoral list at the end of August (because summer holidays) and found my name on the list Friday September 6, 2024. The following week I received a letter in the mail of the office of immigration and naturalization informing me that I was granted French nationality on Monday August 27, 2024 and was being invited to a ceremony in mid October.
Documents submitted for application
You must make sure that you have a valid titre de séjour when you submit your application. You also need to make sure that you have the correct language test (at the publication of this post the requirement is B1) .
I followed the list on the Préfecture’s website for déclaration par mariage . These are the following documents I submitted with my application:
- Cerfa formula n°15277-04 filled out by both parties.
- A fiscal stamp for French nationality (55€)
- 2 ID photographs from my local Photomaton (first & last name, birth date written on back)
- A photocopy of the front & back of my carte de résident
- A photocopy of my passport ID page and every marked (stamp or writing) page.
- A copy of my birth certificate, apostilled, and translated.
- A copy of the birth certificate of each of my parents if my birth certificate does not indicate their birth dates.
- A copy of the transcription of my marriage license that is dated less than 3 months (because we were married in the USA).
- A copy of the birth certificate of my French partner (dates within 3 months)
- Any recent bill (electricity, water, gas, CAF, etc...) that mentions both names.
- Any legal document that proves community of life for a minimum of 4 years (tax returns).
- Proof that we've been living together for at least 3 years in France (previous and current rental contracts).
- FBI background check (done back in Ohio).
- TCF IRN test results for proof of language.
TIP: Only French documents need to be less than 3 months old. This is a common misconception and does not apply to foreign documents. This is also applied to translations and apostilles of those foreign documents.
Applying for French nationality through marriage at the Hauts-de-Seine préfecture requires you to physically drop your application off to an agent. You will need to get an appointment in order to do this through their website. At the time of the publication of this article, the only path that you can apply through online is décret. Please be sure to check your local préfecture to see their rules and stipulations for applying for French nationality through marriage. You can also check out the national guidelines , which are a good place to start if you want to get a general idea of the documents you will need.
When I dropped off my application for French nationality on December 7, 2023, the agent that received me went through my paperwork to verify that everything was in order and there wasn’t anything missing. The agent seemed pretty nervous for some reason (quite possibly new on the shift?) and had to ask his colleague on several occasions for verification. I had brought with me my big binder of documents just in case, but didn’t need to use any of it. The agent did ask me to write down all of our significant dates from when we first met and where all the way up to present day. After the fact, I thought to myself I should have typed a timeline up just in case.
Interview with the Gendarme
On January 25, 2024, I received an email from the commissariat de police de Saint Cloud informing me that she had tried to contact me in December but had no luck. I looked back through my phone log and indeed had a missed call from a private number (numéro privée) on the December 29, 2023 which was in the middle of my holiday vacation with my family. She did not leave a voicemail. After an exchange of emails, we settled on a date that she would come to the house to interview me in person, February 1, 2024. I had asked several times if my husband needed to be there as well for the interview and she said no, that was not necessary.
The day of the interview, the gendarme showed up and presented herself with her ID. We had a brief 20-25 minute conversation, she had a form that she filled out that was similar to the form I had already filled out with the application: contact information for me and my husband, the name and information of my parents, the name and information of my husband’s parents, had either of us been previously married, how long I had live in France.
She also asked about our personal history, how we ended up meeting, what our journey together looked like, what our future plans were, why we moved to Saint Cloud, what I do for a job, what my husband does for a job, what we do for fun, do we have any future projects together. As she was asking me these questions, she was filling out her form.
At the end of the interview, she asked to see Thomas’s closet space as well as is space in the bathroom. I wasn’t prepared for this, especially the closet part, as I had a pile of clean clothes on the bed. She just peeked at everything and validated that his presence is definitely in the home. When she seemed satisfied enough, she said that she didn’t need anything else from me and that the interview was finished. She said the next steps would be her filing her report through the commissariat to the préfecture and that the préfecture would be contacting me for the next step, an interview on site with my husband present. She had no idea of a timeline, but said it could take up to 6 months to have word.
Convocation to the Préfecture
On May 24, 2024, I received an email informing me that I had an interview at the Préfecutre of Nanterre Bureau of Naturalisation on July 3, 2024 at 11 AM with an official convocation attached to the email. I needed to print this off and bring it with me to the préfecture. The convocation did not indicate any extra documents that I needed to bring along with me, just that my husband and I needed to bring our IDs. Although I did not need to use it, they had given a number that I could contact on the off chance that the date and time of the interview did not suit my schedule.
(unlike the time that I needed to try and change my appointment time and date for the renewal of my carte de séjour where I had tried calling the number given as well as an email address from the Préfecture and found out that no one was manning the phone line nor was there a response to my email.)
Interview at the Préfecture
The day of the interview, we showed up 15 minutes early, which was a good thing as the escalators were out of order. The lovely security gentleman let us use one of the elevators since I was 6 months pregnant at the time and going up that many steps would have completely winded me out.
We made it to the 2nd floor, in the same place where I had dropped off my application back in December 2023. There was a small sign that indicated that I needed to sit in the waiting areas in front of the red doors. This was the Naturalisation Interview waiting area and that my name would be called by one of the agents. There was one other person in the waiting area and it looked like all 4 cabins were being used at the time (see photo below).
Our name was finally called a little after 11 AM. We were welcomed into the room by 2 female agents, who quickly got to business. They explained how the interview was going to go: they would verify our information and make sure everything is correct. They started asking similar questions that the gendarme asked me in my interview with her. How we met, what do we do for a job, how we occupy our free time, do we share any common interests/hobbies, did we have any family plans for the future.
At this point, they asked Thomas to step out of the room while they interviewed me individually. They both asked me more specific questions about my relationship with Thomas, how we divide the household tasks, what happens when we have an argument, how does he support me as well as how he treats me. They asked why I wanted to become French and if that would impact my future. They wanted to know how often I visited my family as well as what my family thought of my decision to move abroad. The last question they asked me was which of the 3 devices did I most identify with. Once I had answered all their questions to their satisfaction, they called in Thomas.
At this point, they went over some formalities like how long the process would take (they said 12 – 18 months for a decision) as well as how I could check to see if a decision was made (that I could start checking 6 months after the interview in the Journal Officiel, which I knew was wrong as I was applying through marriage). I then received a récépissé (receipt of proof that my application along with its paperwork were being submitted to the minister for a decision whether favorable or unfavorable) as proof that I had gone through the interview and that my application was being moved on to the next step.
This whole process, from start to finish took about 30-35 minutes.
Waiting for the decision
Since I applied for nationality by marriage, I had no way of checking an online account to see the status of my application, it was a wait and see type of deal. Since my appointment was at the beginning of July and August is typically a holiday month, I started looking at the electoral list at the end of August. It was a simple step where I signed in to my account on Service Public and had to input my name and zip code where I lived and where I would vote. It would then tell me if I had been registered or not.
On Friday, September 6, 2024, I checked the Electoral List and found my name on it! On Monday September 9, 2024 I received a letter from the Préfecture des Hauts-de-Seine Directions des Migrations et de l’Integration Bureau des Naturalisations stating that I had received French nationality on Monday August 27, 2024 and I was being invited to a ceremony at the Préfecture to celebrate this achievement.
Nationality Ceremony
COMING SOON.
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