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.”
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.