I went through the process and I finally got my Laissez-passer to visit my girlfriend in France after 8 months. From what I understand, the procedure is 2 steps, first it has to be validated by the consulate from which you depend, for me it's Atlanta. Then, if your application is complete, it has to be validated in the services of the ministry of foreign affairs in Paris. The whole process is very long, so don't buy your plane tickets before you get an answer. The guys at the consulate are awesome but they are like 1 or 2 for all the applications. Make your application easy to handle, word documents, easy to copy and paste, list of the documents... Be nice ;) it's kind of an odd process, decided during the course of a crisis... so be patient!