09.23.07

Residency for Dummies

Posted in culture, family at 3:09 am

Our team calls it “slaying dragons.” It’s our term for beating back those cultural beasts that threaten to overwhelm lesser missionaries and send them running for comfortable America. But not team Ancona. We slay the dragons. My most recent dragon? Residency for Heidi and the kids.

Heidi needs to go to driving school. In order to enroll she must be a resident of Ancona. So we begin the process:

Step 1 - Permesso di Soggiorno. Permit to Stay. Last time we renewed, it took 9 months and 1 police investigation.

Step 2 - Codice Fiscale. Fiscal Code. This is a series of numbers and letters based on your name and city of birth that is something like a Social Security number. The fact that it is based on your name will be important later on.

Step 3 - Contratto di Affitto. Rental contract. Assuming your landlord is legally renting you the apartment, you should already have one.

Step 4 - Passaporto. Passport.

Step 5 - Certificato di Nascita e Certificato di Matrimonio. Birth & Marriage Certificates. Translated into Italian by the Italian consulate in the US.

Take all of this stuff, a bunch of photocopies of everything, and go to the Anagrafe. The residency office. I explain to the nice woman (using the formal Lei to speak to her) that I need residency for my wife and kids.

Problem #1 - Americans have middle names. Most Italians don’t have these, and are generally baffled by people who do. When filling out forms, do I put Brian or Brian David as my first name? Will their computer allow for a first name with a space in it? And, unfortunately Brian Rotert is not the same person as Brian David Rotert to an Italian, unless I have documentation to prove it

Problem #1.5 - At the codice fiscale office, the nice man would only give my kids a number based on my kids’ first name, which is what’s written on their permesso di soggiorno. But their passports list both names (remember how I said the number changes based on how you spell your name?). So these documents don’t all match each other. The codice fiscale office refuses to assign a number based on what the kids’ passport says. And I don’t have 9 months to get the permesso di soggiorno changed.

Problem #2 - The city of a person’s birth is generally unimportant to an American. In Italy, you can’t even get a video rental card without it. My birth certificate unfortunately does not have this information. I can tell them the city I was born in, but I can’t prove it.

Problem #3 - States are a confusing thing here. On this particular trip, the person behind the counter insisted that the city of my birth was actually the county of my birth. In Italian the word stato can mean country. But you translate the word “state” as stato. And there are no states here, only regions. Do you see the room for error?

So all of these problems add up and cause the people behind the counter to have to check big thick policy manuals and go back and ask their bosses if such-and-such is OK. I can hear all the employees behind the thick glass talking in hushed tones about the crazy Americans.

However … dragon slain. In about two months, they will be residents.

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