Playing Bureaucracy

I’d made up my mind that Italian bureaucracy wasn’t going to bother me. It was going to be a learning experience, a chance to see things from another perspective, another window to a different culture. And I definitely wasn’t going to complain about it. Well: resolve broken, resolution broken! I’ve officially “had it up to here.”

I got a letter from the Immigration department fixing my appointment to “finalize” my permesso di soggiorno, the magic document that makes it legal for me to be here, in March. I put “finalize” in quotes, because I’m certain that there will be a problem and that it won’t, in fact, be final. Italian bureaucracy is kind of like Monopoly. I mean: Do you know anyone who’s ever finished a game of Monopoly? I don’t. You just leave it there, set up on a folding table on the front porch, for days and days and days, until finally fall comes and your friends go back to school, and you have to reorganize all the fake money and find the little silver shoe that somebody lost and pack it all away.

They scheduled the appointment, naturally, for Easter week. Since I’d hoped to use my Easter vacation to go trekking, I decided to see if it might be possible to change the date of the appointment. To be honest, I didn’t have high hopes that this would be possible, but I figured it’d be worthwhile to “ask the question.” Naturally, I tried calling the phone number. There are lots of phone numbers to use when playing Italian Bureacracy, but rarely anyone who actually answers the phone. Having become accustomed to this, I didn’t expect to succeed, and already had the city map in hand. I went to the Immigration headquarters and talked to a nice policeman. He talked to a colleague on the phone, handed me a slip of paper with an address, and told me to head across town to another office. “There’s a bit of a crowd, though,” he said. “Be sure to check with one of my colleagues there where you should go.”

“A bit of a crowd.” This could possibly be the biggest understatement I’ve heard in my entire time in Italy. The Immigration office was so crowded, so chaotic, so breathtakingly disorganized that it’s hard even for me to describe. Go to your mental Rolodex – not to be confused with Rolex – of images, and pull out “Moroccan street market” and “Tower of Babel.” For those who have been to South Bend, add “the ‘Backer on a football Friday,” and, for those who haven’t, substitute “your local dance club” for the “’Backer.” There were loads and loads of people, all jockeying to be at the front of the “line” – ha! there was no “line”! – and I just kind of pinballed about the throngs for a few minutes before managing to collect myself and take some kind of constructive action.

It turns out that there were two “lines” – ha! – one for carrying out immigration-related activities, and one for getting information about carrying out immigration-related activities. Theoretically, you would stand in Line 2 to find out what you needed to then do in Line 1. I wanted some information – to see if were possible to change the appointment – so I went to Line 2. I took a number (like at the deli counter, which is a great system, according to me). My number? 122. The number they were on? 19.

Holy smokes. To hell with the trekking plans: I figured I’d be in line until Easter week if I wanted to change – or see about changing – the appointment. Forget that.
Which reminds me of another round of Italian Bureaucracy that left me dumbfounded. I needed to established myself as a “resident” of Bologna. This required a trip to the Anagrapher’s Office, taking the number, waiting in line, and so on and so on. When I got up to the window, I presented all my documents, carefully prepared. After a little while, the woman took my passport, consulted a colleague, and returned to inform me of the problem:
- But . . . you’re not in Italy.
- Bu . . . I . . . what????
- We have no record that you actually arrived in Italy. There’s no stamp in your passport.

So I took my passport, I found the stamp, and I passed it back to the woman.

She looked at it quizzically for a few minutes, consulted the colleague, and again returned.
- But this is a problem. See? She pointed to the stamp. It doesn’t say “Rome.” It just says "Fiumicino."
- But isn’t there only one Fiumicino Airport? The one in Rome? Hence if I arrived in Fiumicino, I must have arrived in Rome? And hence I must be in Italy?
- Yeah, I see what you’re saying – she was real nice – but it doesn’t say "Rome." This is the problem.
- Ah . . . but . . . if that’s the stamp used by the Italian Immigration office at the airport . . . ?
- I know. Odd. Hmmm.

And so, I am not an official resident of Bologna, because I haven’t actually arrived, officially, in Italy. How do you like that one?

If the United States treats its immigrants half as badly as the Italians treat theirs – and I imagine they do – I’m about ready to start welcoming illegal immigrants into my house. For me – ok, in the end, everything will work out. But can you imagine if, instead of coming from a friendly country to study for a few years, you’re fleeing poverty or persecution in a lesser-developed, possibly unfriendly country? I can’t imagine how they treat you.