Carte de sejour recepisse expiring when abroad

I'm English, We live in France and my Thai/Chinese wife has a 5 year article residence card, which expired last year. She still does short term work for an international company and is having to rely on Recepisse's to travel to Europe as after 9 months they are still processing the renewal of that card. ( maybe Brexit related ?)

The last recepisse runs out beginning of next month and she was due to return here before that. However her company need a Chinese speaker and now want to send her to China for a few weeks instead , which means it will have expired before she can get back here .

I'm guessing she have to apply for a new visa either in China or Thailand before she can return - will it need to be a long or short term one ? Will doing that affect her current resident status ?

Hello

I spent 3-years in France with that blue recipisse. It's equivalent to the CoA provided by the Home Office when you lodge an application.

It's common for the French authorities to play a despicable game with applicants: when you are entitled to something and they don't want to give it to you, they just delay delay... They hope you will get tired and leave, or the law changes for the worse... etc. In my case, they used to tell me "oh sorry, but your documents are now too old, you need to submit fresh ones again."

As for your wife, I don't recommend she lets her document expires. It would be a very bad idea.

There is a visa called Return Visa ("Visa Retour" or "Visa de Retour") but this one is only for people who actually have a valid residence card or a Recipisse that expired or was lost while they were abroad. It's delivered in "exceptional circumstances" by French Consulates after consulting and seeking the authorisation of the French Prefecture where the applicant lives.

Here is a page in French (French Consulate in Ouagadougou, Africa but the process is the same everywhere).

https://bf.ambafrance.org/Le-visa-de-re ... un-visa-de

They really insist on the "exceptional" and "discretionary" nature of that visa. They want a "detailed letter" explaining how come you need such a visa. If she tells them she let her Recipisse expire on purpose because she prioritised some professional commitments abroad over returning to France, they might not like it.

It's a risk to take really. It's up to you guys to see if you want to risk it or not.

I thought that, as a general rule, one cannot travel (and needs to ask for return visa which is only given "exceptionally") when one applies for 1st carte de sejour, but when one applies for renewal one can travel with expired CDS + recipisse.
?
I actually wonder what happens if one asks for 1st CDS, one is non-EU, but does not need visa to enter Shengen/France (say, USA, Canadian etc passports)..

A no, they say you need visa if your recipisse expires..