Living and Working in France

Living and Working in France One common trait among people who study French is a desire to live and possibly work in France. Many dreams of this, but not many succeed in actually doing it. Just what is it that makes it so difficult to live in France? First of all, like in other countries, France is concerned about too much immigration. Many people come to France from poorer countries to find work- either legally or illegally. With high unemployment in France, the government is not eager to give jobs to immigrants, they want the available jobs to go to French citizens. In addition, France is worried about the impact of immigrants on social services- there is only so much money to go around, and the government wants citizens to receive it. Finally, France is infamous for its extensive red tape, which can make everything from buying a car to renting an apartment an administrative nightmare. So with these difficulties in mind, lets look at how someone can get permission to live and work in France. Visiting France Its easy for citizens of most countries to visit France- upon arrival, they receive a tourist visa which allows them to stay in France for up to 90 days, but not to work or to receive any social benefits. In theory, when the 90 days are up, these people can travel to a country outside the European Union, have their passports stamped, and then return to France with a new tourist visa. They might be able to do this for a while, but its not really legal. Someone who wants to live in France long term without working or going to school should apply for a visa de long sà ©jour. Among other things, a visa de long sà ©jour requires a financial guarantee (to prove that the applicant will not be a drain on the state), medical insurance, and police clearance. Working in France European Union citizens can legally work in France. Foreigners outside of the EU must do the following, in this order: Find a jobObtain a work permitObtain a visa de long sà ©jourGo to FranceApply for a carte de sà ©jour For anyone who is not from an EU country, finding a job in France is extremely difficult, for the simple reason that France has a very high unemployment rate and will not give a job to a foreigner if a citizen is qualified. Frances membership in the European Union adds another twist to this: France gives first priority for jobs to French citizens, then to EU citizens, and then to the rest of the world. In order for, say, an American to get a job in France, s/he essentially has to prove that s/he is more qualified than anyone in the European Union. Therefore, the people with the best odds of working in France tend to be those in highly specialized fields, as there may not be enough qualified Europeans to fill these types of positions. Receiving permission to work is also difficult. Theoretically, if you are hired by a French company, the company will do the paperwork for your work permit. In reality, its a Catch-22. They all say that you have to have the work permit before they will hire you, but since having a job is a prerequisite for obtaining the work permit, its impossible. Therefore, there are really only two ways to get a work permit: (a) Prove that you are more qualified than anyone in Europe, or (b) Get hired by an international company that has branches in France and get transferred over, because their sponsorship will allow them to obtain the permit for you. Note that they will still have to demonstrate that a French person could not do the job you are being imported to do. Other than the above route, there are basically two ways to get permission to live and work in France. Student visa - If you are accepted to a school in France and meet the financial requirements (a monthly financial guarantee of approximately $600), your chosen school will help you to obtain a student visa. In addition to giving you permission to live in France for the duration of your studies, student visas allow you to apply for temporary work permits, which give you the right to work for a limited number of hours per week. One common job for students is an au pair position.Marry a French citizen - To some extent, marriage will facilitate your efforts to obtain French citizenship, but you will still need to apply for a carte de sà ©jour and deal with abundant paperwork. In other words, marriage will not automatically make you a French citizen. As a last resort, it is possible to find work that pays under the table; however, this is more difficult than it might seem and is, of course, illegal.

Slope of Regression Line and Correlation Coefficient

Slope of Regression Line and Correlation Coefficient Many times in the study of statistics it is important to make connections between different topics. We will see an example of this, in which the slope of the regression line is directly related to the correlation coefficient.  Since these concepts both involve straight lines, it is only natural to ask the question, How are the correlation coefficient and least square line related?   First, we will look at some background regarding both of these topics. Details Regarding Correlation It is important to remember the details pertaining to the correlation coefficient, which is denoted by r. This statistic is used when we have paired quantitative data. From a scatterplot of this paired data, we can look for trends in the overall distribution of data. Some paired data exhibits a linear or straight line pattern. But in practice, the data never falls exactly along a straight line. Several people looking at the same scatterplot of paired data would disagree on how close it was to showing an overall linear trend. After all, our criteria for this may be somewhat subjective. The scale that we use could also affect our perception of the data. For these reasons and more we need some kind of objective measure to tell how close our paired data is to being linear. The correlation coefficient achieves this for us. A few basic facts about r include: The value of r ranges between any real number from -1 to 1.Values of r close to 0 imply that there is little to no linear relationship between the data.Values of r close to 1 imply that there is a positive linear relationship between the data. This means that as x increases that y also increases.Values of r close to -1 imply that there is a negative linear relationship between the data. This means that as x increases that y decreases. The Slope of the Least Squares Line The last two items in the above list point us toward the slope of the least squares line of best fit. Recall that the slope of a line is a measurement of how many units it goes up or down for every unit we move to the right. Sometimes this is stated as the rise of the line divided by the run, or the change in y values divided by the change in x values. In general, straight lines have slopes that are positive, negative or zero. If we were to examine our least-square regression lines and compare the corresponding values of r, we would notice that every time that our data has a negative correlation coefficient, the slope of the regression line is negative. Similarly, for every time that we have a positive correlation coefficient, the slope of the regression line is positive. It should be evident from this observation that there is definitely a connection between the sign of the correlation coefficient and the slope of the least squares line. It remains to explain why this is true. The Formula for the Slope The reason for the connection between the value of r and the slope of the least squares line has to do with the formula that gives us the slope of this line. For paired data (x,y) we denote the standard deviation of the x data by sx and the standard deviation of the y data by sy. The formula for the slope a of the regression line is: a r(sy/sx) The calculation of a standard deviation involves taking the positive square root of a nonnegative number. As a result, both standard deviations in the formula for the slope must be nonnegative. If we assume that there is some variation in our data, we will be able to disregard the possibility that either of these standard deviations is zero. Therefore the sign of the correlation coefficient will be the same as the sign of the slope of the regression line.