On November 16, 2005, Mike woke up at 7:00 in to go to his respective immigration office to get his student visa with all of the documents, plus photocopies, required. He arrived to find nine hundred other people waiting in line. There were three lines at this prefectures:

1. Students,

2. Workers, and

3. Naturalization.

Tracing the lines to the source, he saw that, being a student, he was supposed to be in line one. So Mike took his place as number nine hundred and seventy-three and patiently waited. In fact, he waited in line for four hours in the cold rain moving fifteen to twenty feet per hour until suddenly the line began moving quickly and everybody began getting excited.

Joy soon replaced defeat when he arrived at the front of the line to find several armed police officers standing next to a sign that read “the prefecture will not be seeing anyone else today, please come back tomorrow.”

"It turns out that the outlying suburb prefectures only see a fixed number of applicants each day (500), while the Paris central prefecture is unlimited."

That night, before going to bed, Mike set his alarm for 4:00 in the morning and checked the next day’s weather- It was going to rain again. He skipped class for a second day in a row, but this time woke up at 4:00 am to took the first metro.

"There was no way I was going to lose another day of my life in that d*mn place!"

As Mike exited the metro at the prefecture stop, he looked to his right to see almost 200 people running frantically towards the exit.

"I just began sprinting. One man fell onto the train tracks and had to wait for everyone to pass by before he could climb out. He would probably not be getting an appointment card today. I climbed the stairs skipping four steps at a time, hurdled the metro toll booth, and was cold heartedly running past women pushing baby strollers, the handicapped, and the elderly. They would probably not be getting appointment cards today either, and would have to try again tomorrow. I felt like sh*t for doing it, but in this kill or be killed visa process game, there are no rules, no codes of conduct: only winners and losers!"

Despite Mike's genetic predisposition of height, speed, and agility, all of his hopes came to a complete halt as he turned the corner towards the home stretch to find almost four hundred people already in line!

“This is f**king ridiculous! I couldn't believe what I was seeing! Rumours were circulating amongst the ranks was that the man at the front of the door had taken a taxi at 1:00am and slept at the door!"

Again, Mike waited five hours in the same line as he had in the first day, but this time he knew he was going to get an appointment and would leave with his papers.

"At 9:00am the doors opened and what followed was one of the vilest and dejecting experiences I had ever witnessed! Grown men and women acting like children, climbing over walls and barriers, pushing, and arguing as to who cut who in the line. The crowd had pressed in so tightly that the mother in front of me was forced to hold her baby above their head for fear of being crushed! At the front of the line men were climbing over the ten foot barbed razor-wire fence and their wives threw over backpacks and sandwiches! They were taking this to a whole new level!"

"Police fully clothed in anti-riot gear and carrying machine guns stood above us on the walls. They weren't doing anything to maintain order. They were arrogantly smiling and mocking all of us below them who were fighting and struggling to get permission to stay in France. They were enjoying every minute of our misery!"

But Mike's bad day was about to get worse. It just so happened that between 2:00pm on November 16th and 9:00am on the 17th somebody high up in the French bureaucratic offices decided that they needed to change the line formation at the arrondisement prefecture in which he lived. So this government official spent his/her time writing up an official letter, signed and stamped it, and then distributed it to the prefecture staff.

"After four hours of waiting in that #%! d*mned line, I arrived at the front door ticket booth to take my appointment number and the government worker told me that I was in the wrong line and needed to be in line 2, not line 1."

The government worker then pointed to a brand new yellow sign which translated: “effective 17 November 2005, all foreign students seeking the carte de séjour must be in line 2.”

"Despite my obvious and justified defence of not being aware of the policy change, nor privy to the mass distribution of emails sent out overnight at the governmental level, he simply told me to get in line 2 and motioned for one of the f**cking armed police officers to dispose of me!"

That evening Mike found an advertisement of a man renting his couch on www.craigslist.com, packed his bags, and moved to another arrondisement.

(The rest of Mike's conversation had to be edited due to elicit content.)

True Story.