violated my french au pair visa
Hi, I’m an American on a French au pair visa and I messed up and I’m looking for advice.
I totally forgot that I’m not allowed to do paid work when I agreed to do some work on a big budget film. I’m working as a silhouette (basically a slightly more visible extra, still not a speaking role). I’ve only done one day of filming so far, but I’ve signed a contract for around 15 more days.
I know this was super dumb of me—I genuinely wasn’t thinking about the visa rules at the time and I fully realised now that it’s not allowed under my visa. I feel really stupid about it and I’m pretty stressed because I know I should have checked properly before agreeing. I've received 140€ via payroll already for the one day I filmed.
I also really love my host family and they’ve asked me to stay another year, so I was planning to apply for another au pair visa to continue with them. Now I’m freaking out because I feel like I might have messed everything up.
Has anyone dealt with something like this or know how serious it is / what I should do next?
I know this was extremly extremely stupid of me to do and not being able to get another au pair visa will be a natural consequence of my dumb mistakes but I guess I'm more worried about never being able to live in France ever again as I've fallen in love with the country and the language so much and thought about staying here even beyond another au pair year. I'm really heartbroken sorry again for being stupid everyone lmao gonna go cry myself to sleep.