Good evening. I have a long séjour visitor visa vlsts and we applied for the same for my partner and child and they revived long séjour temporaire v2 vlst dispense ts. At the beginning I did not pay attention and now we realize that this is non-renewable and carte de séjour could not be applied. Any similar experience ? What could be done ?
You have options. Either try to make contact with préfecture to get change of status, which is not easy as préfectures don’t like doing this and can take a long time. Plus if you do make contact they may well not even accept an application until a couple of months before the current visas expire, and then won’t reply quickly so you risk being in an irregular situation when the current visa expires.
Or you make a new application for the correct visa, and return to your home country for the final processing and hope with all your might that they accept this was a mistake and give you the new visa. Some countries like a break between dispense TS visas so that might be a risk too.
But again are unlikely to look at it until just before current visa expires. Which is presumably quite a while as my guess is you only realised when you tried to validate in first 3 months?
Thanks so much. Do you think reapplying for another visa is an option ?
Just checked we all had same type of visa application and not sure why they got a differ t one, especially my child.
@JaneJones for my child, they said I do not need to validate as he is minor and I can apply for dcem. For my partner, it is quite recent. We realized only today when he went to sous préfecture with an unrelated question.
Where did you do the processing of the visa application? You could try to contact them and ask if it can be rectified perhaps?
Thanks so much for the support. Checking with the embassy. No response yet.
@Anika did you manage to resolve this as we have the same thing. My wife and I have standard VLST-TS visas but both of our kids have been given “long sejour temporaire v2 vlst dispense ts”
I initially thought it was just because they were kids as they’re still valid for 12 months but I can’t find any more information on whether I just validate them in the same way as ours or need to get them amended as we won’t be able to renew them.
Hi I have the same problem, my husband and I applied for exactly the same visas with a view to becoming residents after 12 months. I have received a ‘long sejour temporaire V2 VLST Dispense ts’ which I believe you cannot renew in France but have to return to England. My husband received ‘Visiteur V1 VLSTS A Valider En Ligne.’ which apparently you can convert to a residence permit in France after 12 months.
Our plan is to permanently reside in France. We both filled out identical visa application forms and submitted them together.
I am going around in circles with the French Consulate and UK TLS who keep passing me back over to each other.
Any suggestions would be gratefully received.
@Stuart_Mac apologies, seeing this only now. My understanding is that for kids it is a bit different as they do not need a carte de séjour as such. What they need instead is a travel document called DCEM which allows to travel as per my knowledge.
@Maddog unfortunately can not help much as we are still exploring. Maybe you could also contact the consulate from where you applied. In our case, they said that they review and evaluate each application individually.
Hi Anika, I’m in the same situation. Were you unable to validate with OFII after your arrival? In my case we validated and the certificate they returned clearly says VLS-TS Visitor, so we’ve been extra confused.
The situation is confusing. We have not found a solution. Did you manage to validate the Visa type “long séjour temporaire v2 vlst dispense ts”? Is there an option for that type of visa?
Yes, our visas had a note attached stating that we needed to validate, so we did here: https://administration-etrangers-en-france.interieur.gouv.fr/particuliers/#/
We got a certification via email from OFII (that states VLS-TS, Visiter) and we were asked to complete the medical exam which we did in September. At the end of that we got a medical document we were told was needed for renewal.
Our current plan is to try and request Residency online on February 14th (120 days before expiration) and see how far we get in that process. If that fails we’ll have to return to the US for 3 weeks while a new visa is in process.
I’ve also sent an email to my local OFII with my concerns and they just said I had to request Residency from my préfecture to get an extension.
What exactly do you mean by “request residency”?
You validated your visa so in effect that is now your titre de séjour, ie it confirms your right to live in France.
Two months or so before its expiry date you start the renewal process online, with a view to being issued a new titre when this one expires. This time it will be a card that you will collect from the prèfecture when you are notified that it is ready for collection. Ditto the following year etc. It is the normal process for CdS holders.
As long as you have a valid unexpired titre de séjour you are legally resident. Basically you just keep renewing it. I am wondering what special request you feel you need to make?
On the page https://administration-etrangers-en-france.interieur.gouv.fr/particuliers/#/ the second option is to request or renew my residency permit - it was my understanding that I needed to request a permit (to be retrieved at my local préfecture).
My consern is due to a discussion I had with an Immigration Lawyer last week who audibly moaned when he saw my visa type.
Perhaps I didn’t explain clearly that we were successful in validating, and maybe that changes things, but I was pretty shocked at the time.
What you’ve detailed makes sense but I don’t want to be in the situation where I have just 2 months remaining only then to find I cannot renew.
If the type is vls-ts it is renewable.
It’s VLST, and it’s not renewable because it is exempt from residence. However our visa had a note (from our consulate) stating we must apply for a resident permit within 3 months, so we validated and received the titre de séjour.
My current thinking is our Consultate made a mistake by telling us to apply for resident permit (when we were exempt), and then the ministère de l’intérieur made a mistake by accepting our validation.
Either way I have a validated titre de séjour. If they only looked at that when we apply for the actual card I think I’m good, but they might realize the mistake(s) if they also look at my passport visa page.
What’s strange is that there are only a handful of posts/mentions (via Google) of the 12 month VLST being an issue, or that it even exists.