French residence permit and naturalization privacy intrusion, Digi Mart USA News (France): Applicants for residence permits or naturalization in France must sometimes expose elements of their private lives before the courts in order to challenge the refusal of their files by prefectures.
This is what lawyer Sofian Feriani, a specialist in immigration law in France, denounces. He regrets that “foreigners in France do not have the right to privacy.”
Feriani explains that some applicants must “strip bare and reveal their entire intimacy” before administrative courts. He notes that this often happens when they rely on a private and family life in France while the prefecture refuses their naturalization or residence permit applications.
As an example, the lawyer says one of his clients, a foreigner established in France for about ten years and in a civil solidarity pact (PACS) with a French citizen, recently sent him a photo album of himself and his partner showing them “living moments together,” in order to convince the court of the reality of their shared life.
The lawyer considers this approach too intrusive, since applicants must “reveal everything about their private life so that the magistrate understands that they have a lasting and durable shared life.”
He adds that this is a degrading procedure. “I have clients who claim to be parents of French children in support of residence permit applications, and who must send photos with their children and purchase invoices,” he says, arguing that “this distrust is truly disproportionate.”
Requiring foreign applicants for residence permits or naturalization to expose themselves in this way in order to complete their procedures is, in the lawyer’s view, a “very degrading and very demeaning” ritual. He recalls that “these people live in France on a lasting basis and have all their emotional, personal and family centers in France.”
