Adventures in Immigration

According to the French government, I am an immigrant.  I guess technically that's true, since I live and work and pay taxes here, but it's not like I'm going to live here forever.  Still, all newcomers to France have to go through the immigration process, and I am no exception.  This started in August when I applied for my visa at the French embassy in New York.  A week after my trip to the embassy, my visa was in my passport and I was ready to go to France.  Easy peasy, right? OF COURSE NOT.  Sometimes it seems like France complicates things just to fuck with the rest of us.  Upon my arrival in France, I had to fill in 12356342 forms (maybe that's an exaggeration) and send in copies of my birth certificate, passport, work contract, etc and send it all to the Office of French Immigration and Integration.  Then I had to wait for them to get back to me with the date of my "medical visit," during which an x-ray would be taken of my chest to ensure that I did not bring tuberculosis with me when I "immigrated" to France.  After the medical visit, the Immigration Office puts a special sticker in my passport that validates the visa I've already had since before I even left the United States.  Without this sticker in my passport, it would be illegal for me to stay in France longer than 90 days.  With the sticker in my passport, I can stay until my visa ends in May.  Does this sound complicated enough?  It gets worse.  Without this sticker in my passport, I cannot apply for my French Social Security (health insurance) or my CAF (housing assistance aka welfare) - two things which I really need.  This being the case for all foreigners in France, you'd think that this would all get taken care of relatively quickly after your arrival in the country.  You'd be wrong.  Although European bureaucracy is known the world over for being speedy and effective, it took approximately 3 months for the French immigration office to contact me regarding my medical visit.  If I did have tuberculosis, I could have infected half the country by now.  Way to be proactive about that, France.  In any case, I found out today at my medical visit that I do not have tuberculosis and am thus allowed to remain in France until May.  I even got to keep my x-rays as a souvenir.  Good day?  You bet.