And so it continues

Remember this post? Permesso di Soggiorno: The bane of my existence

Well today (Monday Jan 11) was our “second” appointment for our Permission to Stay (because we missed the first one). When we got there, I had no idea how they would know we were there (there’s no front desk, and everyone just waits in the hallway) so I saw the lady who spoke English with us before, and asked her if they will call our name or not.

She looked at the sheet that had our appointment on it and then went to another room. Turns out that, even though they told us that our appointment would be at that office, it was actually booked for Rome! So she said she would have to book another appointment for us. This system is so frustrating.

She started looking over our stuff while they were rebooking our appointment (which turned out to be a good thing) because pretty much everything we had brought was wrong for one reason or another:

1. Our “passport style” pictures (which I had printed at Wal-Mart while I was home, the same ones we used for our visa applications) were too big. So we’ll have to go and pay big $$$ for proper passport photos…frustrating.

2. I need TWO photocopies of all our papers; I only had ONE copy of each.

3. She started looking through our passport for our stamp from the Rome airport – we don’t have any stamps, because we didn’t have to go through any customs (I think there WAS customs off to the side, if you were declaring something) otherwise the airport is very silly. After you collect your bags, there are three doors: nothing to declare, coming from EU, and something to declare. Well all doors lead to the same door – OUT. I don’t get it?! Anyways, she said that our visa stickers in the passports were good enough, because they had the date of issuance on them.

4. Marriage certificate, and Finn’s birth certificate were supposed to be translated into Italian at the Italian Consulate in Vancouver. How are we supposed to know this before hand?!? Anyways, she said it was fine, so never mind that one.

5. Now for the most frustrating one! Health Insurance. The first problem with our health insurance, back when we were applying for our visa to come to Italy, was that we ARE covered by MSP (BC’s health care system) because Conor is a student, but the letter that they sent us to show we were covered says nothing! It has our names on it, our birthdates, the day we started coverage (which for each of us is our birthdays) and it says we are covered until “present”. Obviously insufficient. It needs to have a specific end date, say that we are covered overseas, and have an amount for emergency coverage.

So because our MSP letter didn’t state all of that, the Italian Consulate in Vancouver told us to just buy a couple months worth of travel insurance. So we did – it expired Dec 12, 2009! So now we need to figure out some sort of insurance to show them…we’re going to contact Conor’s school and see if someone there will help us out. It’s annoying that we have to pay for insurance here, when we have coverage already, but oh well. Technically I only have to have insurance that will cover us until “sometime” after our next appointment (in Feb).

Then she tells us that, at that office, they only take the paperwork, but the office in Rome actually issues the permission to stay. Our letter from the school says that we are here studying for 2 years, but she said that they might only issue us a permission to stay for 5 months, 6 months, 1 year…but probably 2 years. If they issue it for less than 2 years we need to REAPPLY and go through all of that again! (starting with filling out all those forms again, paying 70 Euros, waiting for another appointment, etc)

Is it worth it?? I think not.

Oh, and they have another students address on file for us, because we were still at the hostel when we actually applied. So I asked if I could change it with them, and she said that we have to apply for residency or something, and it has to have all of the members of the household on it?? I don’t know where to do that…I’ll probably just skip that! haha