We finally hit a Catch-22 we're not willing to fight against.
Let me start off by mentioning that we still don't have our residency permits. My salary was 12,000 euros short of what was promised after taxes, and I can't get a straight answer from my boss or his accountant about whether the money is coming back to us from Luxembourg as an overpayment of taxes or not.
Without the 12,000 euros, the prospect of getting a car anytime soon is dim. You would think that we could get a loan for a car, but even that hope seems dim. I applied for a VISA card, and the bank said they would give me one with a limit of 1,250 euro, but only if I kept 3,750 euro in a special "saving account" that would not draw interest and we could not take the money from. When I seemed shocked that they would require this from us, they explained that we had never had a credit card before. Never mind that we have excellent credit in the United States. In Luxembourg, it's like being a teenager and starting from scratch.
Then came the Catch-22.
We have been telling people that our kids are doing correspondence courses from the States. It turns out that will work only if you can prove that you are in the country on a temporary basis. My work permit says that we are here indefinitely. If my boss had applied for a work permit for only a few years, then they would have denied the application because obviously, if it's only temporary, then he doesn't really need someone from America. I mentioned to my boss that we were in trouble with the Luxembourg administration for not having the kids in school. He said that we were terrible parents for not making the kids go to school because as parents we all have to make kids do things they don't want to do. The problem is that it's not only the kids who don't want to be in the public schools -- the public schools don't want my kids. It's against the law for us to have them here at home, but Luxembourg doesn't want them in the public schools, and we can't afford private schools in Luxembourg.
Everyone seems to have the attitude that if we just put them in the public schools and let them struggle and fail for a while, after 3 or 4 years they will be fine. By that time, we would really like to be back in the States. But that assumes that Luxembourg will actually try to teach my children.
So we're going home.
My provisional contract ends at the end of February, and I gave my boss the 1 month notice required by the contract three weeks ago. We're looking for a mover and a real estate agent back in the States.
I think we really have learned "How Not to Move to Luxembourg."
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3 comments:
Hello,
First of all I have to say I've been a big fan of this blog. I'm terribly sorry for what happened to you. Luxembourgish burocracy can be a pain and the american school isn't free either.
I hope that a least the move back to the States happens smoothly.
Sam
Hi,
Just wondering, aren't employess of euostat entitled to send their children to the European School on the Kirchberg? This school provides excellent results by putting children into language sections (British, Spanish, etc) where they study their normal curriculum though at a more advanced level. Furthermore, they will speak one other language (french or german fluently) as history, geography and exonomics are all taught in french alongside of course the French class itself.
Employees of Eurostat are entitled to send their children to the European school. Unfortunately, I was not (and still am not) European or an employee of Eurostat. I worked for a private company headquartered in Belgium that does contract work for Eurostat. There are sometimes openings for non-Europeans, but the cost is prohibitive. To send three children to the European school or the International school would have cost between $70,000 and $90,000 USD, and my husband and I together were making considerably less money than that.
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