Internship in France - Non-EU applicant

Dear all,

I've read many interesting advices on this board. However, I was unable to find one that deals with my problem, so I am wondering if you could provide me some information.

I am a Brazilian national, after having spent 4 months in France on an exchange program at a Master level at an university called HEC-Paris, I received a 6-month internship offer from a French bank.

My Student visa expired on June 23, 2007 and I did not have to file for a "carte de séjour", since I was discharged from it. From my research on the internet and various conversations with the French consulate in Brazil, I notified my employer in May that they needed to apply for an authorization with the Ministry of Labor (direction départementale du travail, de l'emploi et de la formation professionnelle (DDTEFP)).

My RH contact indicated me that this application was already done and all I needed to do was go back to Brazil and apply for another visa. To my surprise, when I went to the French consulate, I found out that such application hadn't been filed.

After several conversations with my RH contact, today I received the negative news that my internship offer was withdrawn, since the bank is unwilling to go through all the necessary procedures to apply for the authorization from the Ministry of Labor. I tried to offer all possible solutions to this, only to find that there is no way out.

What do you recommend I do? As you might see, I am in a very difficult position, after having rented a place to stay in Paris, having paid my international insurance and inviting my girlfriend to change her life so we could live together.

I am very much open to suggestions or possibles courses of action. I am quite desperate now with this situation.

Thanks in advance for all your attention and I very much look forward to hearing from you.

In my opinion your an unfortunate victim of circumstances and I can't really see what you can do about it.

We had a similar-ish situation in Germany, on placement (UK term of internship), the visa took so long we incurred housing costs etc for nothing.

Do you have any Portuguese ancestry?