Visa Overstay? Other Options??

[Bevdeforges]

Originally Posted by aubrey64

Hello,
most likely the worst thing that would happen is that the agent at the airport will tell you that you overstayed, but nothing else would happen. This is so common that there is virtually no enforcement unless you are trying to work. I know several americans that have had apartments in Paris for years and regulary spend 6 continuous months a year here and have never had a problem. One even stayed for 4 years, traveled back and forth on the holidays, and never a comment from the border agents.

Audrey, in the past that all has been very true. However, lately they seem to have tightened up the rules a bit. France has generally been pretty "casual" about checking passports on entry and exit. It's when you need to show that you're legally in France that this sort of thing comes back to bite you.
Cheers,
Bev

[jteets]

Hi Chameleon,

When he applied for a long-stay visa and later a carte de sejour in a French consulate with overstay stamps, he didn't experience a problem?

Thanks for any tips regarding overstaying and when applying for a long-term visa.

[evian1]

Hey instead of flying back to the states, why don't you just fly to a non-schengen country, say the UK? then when you return you will get another stamp at the french airport?

[misskris]

Aubrey & Chameleon,
These types of posts I've seen on so many forums made me very optimistic and I wasn't worried about it. But then I started looking for some instances of a bad experience and started finding recent occurrences in which people: were arrested (and held until after their flight left for questioning and then had to buy a whole new ticket), received a big red "Illegal Immigrant" stamp in their passport, incurred heavy fines ($1100), were banned from the country (for 3-10 years), or a combination of some of those. I think these cases were the more recent ones because, as Bev said, they are starting to crack down on people overstaying, much to my dismay.

Evian,
I thought about that but the new(ish) rules that they are enforcing more as of late require you to stay out of the Schengen Zone for 90 days after a 90 day stay inside it. (Am I right on this Bev? Or could this be an option?) I have read several things stating that now they are checking by scanning our passports, which calculates for them (instead of them checking the date on the stamp) whether or not someone has overstayed. (I don't remember anyone scanning my passport in London when I arrived, and I'm almost positive I only received a stamp when I arrived in Italy). I don't really have the means to stay in the UK for 3 months without working and paying for rent somewhere. Thank you for the suggestion, though!!

[jteets]

Could you point me to the forums you are reading about recent crack-downs? Do they involve American nationals or nationals of other countries outside of Schengen?

[Bevdeforges]

The UK is not part of the Schengen zone, but it's a bit touch and go whether spending time in the UK will "reset" the Schengen area visa or not. And in any event, the 90 day Schengen visa allowance is 90 days out of any 180 day period.
Cheers,
Bev

[chameleon]

We just have a CDS for him. It's different because I'm a Brit and not French. We simply got married (he had already overstayed by 3 months), got our papers together and applied for the CDS. We were going to use a lawyer to help us out but ended up going it alone.

I'm not telling anyone my experience in order to encourage them to overstay; it's just my experience and there are many others.

[chameleon]

I have to add that we had no idea how it would go, were expecting the worst and it was extremely stressful. We have been "lucky".

[dijid]

On another forum I participate on (and it's not an ex-pat forum) there is someone whose daughter was caught leaving France after a more than 90 day stay and was given an "on the spot" fine. I don't remember what it was, but she didn't have the money and he had to transfer it to her account so she could pay. She missed her flight and then they had to deal with all that as well.

Unfortunately, no one can predict what will happen if you stay in France illegally. But you can know what will happen if you don't stay illegally.

[misskris]

Jteets,
I went back and redid a google search: "Overstaying French Visa" or even adding "problems" to that search. A lot of them aren't technically on a forum, I just read through a lot of the information that was given. I still think I found some good information/warnings/experiences (especially here: Overstaying Schengen Visa - The Facts!!! - Lonely Planet travel forum, take note of the date and the responses...). The problems I read about, in general, seemed to be occurring more recently than the stories I read of people staying for multiple years, travelling in and out on holiday without even being noticed. I read several places about our passports being scanned to better track our stays and detect overstays.