The Hollywood actor is a prominent donor to the Democratic Party in the United States. In recent years, that has regularly led to criticism from President Trump, who has called him a “second-rate movie star,” among other things. According to Clooney, it didn’t bother him much. “It’s not my job to keep the President of the United States happy.”
Must be nice to have “Buy Myself French Citizenship” kind of money.
He didn’t buy it, his wife has french citizenship so he can get it too although I bet the process was faster for him since he is rich and famous while I have been waiting 8 months for my wife to be allowed to enter the country.
You only need savings of about 1.5x the SMIC (minimum wage) - currently 1801.80€ monthly for 12 months and you can get a year visa. If you have enough the following year, you can renew. Do that four times and you can ask for a more or less permanent multi-year residency if you speak french by that time. So as you can see, you could probably sell a house in the US for a decent profit and invest time enough to gain French residency without needing George Clooney money.
In the process of moving to Fr myself (diginomad). As I understand it you don’t even need 1.5x SMIC in savings just prove you earn 1.5x monthly x12. I could be wrong, still trying to work the plans out if you have any resources you can recommend would love to learn more!
The other big aspect to getting your temp long stay (1yr) visa, if you’re not being sponsored by a company, is to prove your income is solely from non-EU companies. Since I’m WFH American business, I basically just need to pay rent+insurance.
Yes, there seems to be some confusion in the french interpretation of non lucrative visa categories. The benefit of this is that some remote work may be tacitly allowed. The complexity comes really from French taxation and social charges. Nobody can really say whether you will be chased for 9% of your income, 17% of your income, or 47%.
The problem is nobody can actually give you a clear and definitive answer, so if you do things like stay past six months, get a permanent apartment, get rid of your home elsewhere, there is a risk you could be asked to pay even several years later. It makes for a complicated situation, and for this reason I think another country with a clearly specified digital nomad program and tax regime is a much safer bet.
I can get more detailed outside of a public forum.
Add I understand it, permanent residency also requires a language exam and doesn’t guarantee employment rights (because French voters don’t want people “stealing jobs”). So it’s more complicated than that.
The multi-year residency requires B2 proficiency as of this year, and also allows working in France. It is of course up to french authorities as to whether it is granted, taking into account your time in the country and your level of integration.
I’m pretty sure France has all the retail workers they need.
Now if you are a medical doctor or a reasonably famous scientist, famous actor, or just rich, they will also be happy to take you in. But plebes generally need not apply for citizenship in almost any nation on this planet.
I am speaking of highly specific regulations in France which I have direct personal experience of. If you decide to work in retail after receiving your multi year residency, the French government has no objections to this as long as you have sufficiently integrated.
He could do it for under $500K. He probably started the talent investor visa process during the 45 administration, as they take about 4 years to get approved.
Super easy for him to spin up some production company that makes 2 art movies a year, hire 3 French people he knows on 5-year contracts, and he’s basically at the minimum requirements. If he’s bought and invested more than a certain amount in a home as well, that also counts towards citizenship.
Oh, is that all? Let me check my couch for loose change.
I’m sure he has a home in the South of France. Probably walking distance from the Cannes movie festival
I’m sure you’re correct. And yes, these are trivial amounts for him – and not exactly insane amounts if you simply owned a house in LA and sold it to flip it into EU citizenship. IMO the key point is that this is a 4-year process that I bet he started in mid-2021. Time is something he can’t buy.
The US has its own citizenship by investment schemes as well, well before the “Gold Card” or whatever scam that is. Usually the base investment levels on these things are $100K-$300K and then you’ll be on the hook for taxes and admin fees and a lawyer as well. It’s why so many UK cits bought property in Portugal or Greece as they had lower levels for investment to count.
Home bought 2021, according to reports. Not long enough for the normal 5 year residency requirement, plus he’s probably away lots. Looks fishy. Nice to be rich.
Cool to see he already knew back then (this is a comple guess, of course) that getting out of the US was needed. If this was the plan all along it still took this long, but there are obviously many more things than just the citizenship to make a move like that.
Probably cheaper than a “Trump Card”