Dealing with French administration when you don’t have a birth certificate

Some administrative procedures in France require you to provide a birth certificate. This includes, among other things, getting a social security number and getting married.

But what if you never had a birth certificate and have no way of obtaining one? This was my exact situation and it was stressful. The administration assumes that every person must have an official birth certificate, but the truth is that many people don’t, for various reasons.

After months of back and forth with CPAM, I eventually managed to get approved for a French social security number, without a birth certificate. I’m sharing my story so that it might help others who are in a similar situation.

Personal context

I am a Chinese-born naturalized citizen of Canada. According to my research, individuals born in the PRC before 1996 do not have an official government-issued birth certificate because the standardized document simply didn’t exist yet. I was born in 1995.

I moved to France from Canada in 2023. In order to obtain a French social security number (which gives access to public services including health care), CPAM requires applicants to provide a birth certificate. In its place, I decided to present a personal letter accompanied by an article from the Canadian government’s website explaining that individuals born in China prior to 1996 do not hold an official birth certificate.

Back and forth with the authorities

CPAM replied with a letter indicating that my application file was missing a birth certificate. I wasn’t even sure if they had read my explanatory letter.

So I sent the same letter back to them because I thought maybe they missed my letter and thought I had just forgotten to attach a birth certificate.

A couple of weeks later, I got the same request from CPAM. This time they advised me to contact the Chinese and Canadian embassies in Paris to establish an equivalent document for me. My heart sank because I already knew that the embassies wouldn’t be of much help.

As I expected, the Chinese embassy told me they couldn’t do anything for me. I was advised to return to my city of birth to request a birth certificate, which wasn’t a realistic solution at all. Also, even if I were to do so, I’ve had a legal name change since becoming a Canadian citizen so the name in my passport (and even the date of birth, for reasons I won’t go into) no longer matches my birth name anyway. My unique situation would make it prohibitively complicated for any local Chinese authorities to help me.

I contacted the Canadian embassy as well and they flat out told me they couldn’t help either because I wasn’t born in Canada. My home province of British Columbia told me the same thing. The most that the embassy could do was provide me a generic document stating they cannot issue birth-related documents to Canadians born abroad.

So I called CPAM again and repeated what the embassies had told me. I also showed email proof that the embassies couldn’t help me. Seeing that I was truly at a dead end, the representative agreed to escalate my case. She said that someone would reach out to me soon.

The call from CPAM

A couple days later, an agent from CPAM called me and explained that their system requires them to insist on a birth certificate, but that he understands that it’s impossible for me to obtain one. So instead, he asked for my Canadian citizenship certificate. He said that he would submit it to the relevant authorities. He couldn’t promise that it would be accepted in lieu of a birth certificate, but it was the best that we could try.

A couple of weeks after submitting my citizenship certificate, I received an approval notice from CPAM in the mail! I now have a permanent French social security number and access to public services.

Reflection

All of this took about six months. I omitted some other repetitive and inconsequential exchanges from the story because there were just too many to count. It certainly required a lot of patience for all parties involved.

My biggest takeaway is that even for procedures that formally “require” a birth certificate, you may be able to get an exemption if you explain your situation clearly and persistently, because at the end of the day, the ones reviewing and approving applications are humans, not robots. While it may be frustrating, it’s also in your interest to stay polite and cordial with the staff you speak to so that they may be more willing to help.