Offshore yourself: Making the move to Paris

Working in Paris is an acquired taste that ranges from those who couldn’t get away from the City of Light fast enough to those who loved every minute of it.

On the other hand, another IT professional who asked not to be named for fear of ticking off customers, found setting up house in Paris, or anywhere in France for that matter, to be a trying experience filled with official red tape. “It took me two months to get a checking account,” said the anonymous and annoyed resident who is now gratefully back home.

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What’s hot: If you want to give Paris a try, you should know that there is a Web design renaissance going on and that many of the major European design and marketing firms are setting up a main base in Paris. Companies are looking for those with skills in .Net and Flash, especially.

Experienced developers and application architects who can create RIAs (rich Internet applications) are much in demand. Local companies such as Jooce are looking for what its calls “visionary and entrepreneurial developer engineers to help push the envelope.”

U.S and multinational tech companies: There are of course many major U.S. high-tech firms and international consultancies like Accenture,Infosys, and Tata that use France as the base for their European headquarters. If you work for one of those corporations, you might be able to snag a two-year assignment in Paris — if you have the right skills.

Red tape: Currently, the unemployment rate in France is about 12 percent, so major French IT firms typically choose French nationals over foreigners, and E.U. citizens will get preference over non-E.U. citizens in many cases.

But France, like Great Britain, is moving toward a so-called selective immigration scheme that puts a premium on highly skilled workers over family reunification and other typical rights of residency. So that shift may make the work-permit process a little easier over time. Those with the right skills will be granted a three-year resident status.

Americans can stay in France for as long as three months as a tourist without a visa. If you plan on working in France, however, you must have a “long-stay” visa — a visa de long séjour. And you must apply for this visa while you’re still in the U.S.

Language: Although knowing the local language is always a plus, you can usually get by with just English if you’re working for an American firm. But French fluency is a requirement for any French firm, according to the American Chamber of Commerce in France.

Financials: The cost of living in Paris is high. Salaries at first seem comparable, with a $75,000 position in the United States typically paying about €75,000 in Paris — but with the current exchange rate, that’s just $48,000.

A two-bedroom apartment in the heart of Paris could set you back $2,600 per month. A loaf of bread is about $4.15, a Coke $2.23. A beer is cheap at 86 cents. A cell phone will set you back $80 and a pair of men’s shoes about $60. Note that France, like most Western European countries, includes the sales tax (the VAT) in its prices, unlike in the United States.

Family: The history of Americans in Paris goes way back to Benjamin Franklin, so as you can imagine, there are dozens of good schools that cater to English-speaking students. There are three schooling options: private American schools, bilingual schools, and the official French school system, taught in French of course.

Doctors, dentists, and hospitals are, as you might expect, plentiful, in a major European capital. The American Chamber of Commerce in France provides a list of facilities where English is spoken and that cater to relocating families.

Daily life and culture: Daily life can be trying if you’re used to the American way of doing things, Gray says. Getting a bank account is difficult; getting a landline phone is practically impossible. France’s government and utilities are a lot more regimented, with a great deal more bureaucracy than you may be used to. But transportation is easy with an extensive network of buses and subways, as well as highways and rail lines to the rest of the country and Europe.

Paris is filled with parks, museums, nightclubs, expositions, concerts, and any cultural event you could desire. Add to this the fact that Paris is now also a city of international immigrants, so you will find restaurants and neighborhoods catering to almost every nationality and ethnic group.