Which bureaucrats are worst: American or French?

Since my wife and I moved to America some 45 years ago, we had several years of work within France which entitled us to a tiny retirement that should have been accessible to us upon reaching retirement age in the USA. 

The bilateral agreement between the two countries is a bit complicated and the process took a variable amount of time between our two applications. I got the ball rolling first in October of 2013 by filling a special US Social Security form, that after it had been checked and approved by the American retirement administration would be forwarded to France. 

Just four month latter, by February 2014, France notified me that it received it and sent me a long list of documents to prepare and forward to their State Retirement System. I went through the exercise, and by the end of April 2014, I received my first check. I thought the process was long, burdensome, but not impossible. 

Fast forward to November 2017 when it was my wife’s turn to begin the same process. She filled and send her initial application to the US Social Security Administration. By that time, Trump was in the White House and everyone in the Administration was spooked by the new dictator-president, many had resigned their posts and weren’t replaced, so work piled up. 

The resulting delay forced us to take several trips to the Social Security offices in Salt Lake to no avail, until, two and a half year later, in June of 2020, the French advised her that it finally had received the green light for America. She had still to go through the filing process, and kept her finger crossed… 

When she failed to hear back from France after several months, we contacted France, and after a lot of back and forth, we understood that they had LOST her file. So, not a bunch to get discouraged, we recontacted the Social Security on May 2021, for renewing the whole process (we’re now under full Covid pandemic) and waited, and waited. 

We couldn’t visit the physical office and had to rely on phone, internet or chat inquiries which were next to impossible and had almost given up, when this very week we were told by France that, once more, that they had finally received the green light for America. We only hope these wonderful bureaucrats won’t lose the application a second time!